Illusion versus Reality

The novel’s Hill House setting instigates its thematic explorations of illusion versus reality. When Holly first invites her friends to come and stay at Hill House, she feels “both exhilarated and queasy” (29). Her initial experiences at the house in the novel’s opening chapters incite her fraught relationship with the setting. The house both grants her the space to “bring [her] vision, and Elizabeth Sawyer, back to life,” and looms over her “like a stone cloud” (25, 27). However, she dismisses her fears, Ainsley’s odd behavior, and her friends’ hypotheses about the house’s haunted history. She chooses to live in her own reality in an attempt to make the house what she wants it to be. The same is true of her friends. Like Holly, throughout Nisa’s, Stevie’s, and Amanda’s first days at the house, they struggle to discern reality...