Point of View

The Haunting of Hill House is told in the third person, by an omniscient narrator. However, the point of view throughout the novel is almost exclusively Eleanor's. Her mindset is unstable, making her point of view extremely unreliable. Her progression from fragile lucidity to complete insanity is gradual enough to take the reader along for the ride. The author's subtle machinations suck Eleanor into the madness of Hill House. As the narrator undergoes her transformation, the point of view becomes increasingly surreal because Eleanor's thoughts get mixed up with the ghosts of Hill House. The house's point of view is expressed through Eleanor, yet the author never explicitly defines which ghosts Hill House represents and so the reader never knows who is speaking through Eleanor.

Is it the spurned elder Crain sister who possesses Eleanor's mind, or the lonely village companion? Perhaps the younger sister is...