Palak Banu HiraniGreg McClureWriting 39B14 May 2014A Place To Call HomeIn Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, the dark energies of Hill House somehow seem to focus on Eleanor Vance - a strange, lonely old woman and a little mysterious. Jackson uses ambiguity in his language to create dramatic irony and a feeling of uncanny as defined by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 historical essay The Psychology of the Uncanny - for Eleanor and the reader, in order to establish a sense of disorientation for the reader. This concept of creating a feeling of the uncanny as a means of making the familiar unfamiliar is used alongside the concept of the traditional Gothic female subgenre, as discussed in Roberta Rubenstein's essay House Mothers and Haunted Daughters, in which the female protagonist tries to solve the mystery and struggles with his personal problems and the loss of a mother. Jackson incorporates these ideas into her novel in relation to the mother-daughter relationship and the fear of being unwanted, and the world outside the home and ultimately supports Rubenstein's idea of ​​being lost or being at home. Eleanor's sense of wanting to be home on her car ride was realized in imagining new homes, homes with stone lions and oleanders and a bowl of stars. Her fears prevent her from seeking her stone lions, oleanders, and cup of stars. These same fears attract her to Hill House. It creates dramatic irony because Eleanor's inner child fears - fear of loneliness, hardship, love, guilt, and the world outside the home - outweigh her fear of ghosts and death. The supernatural events that take place at Hill House may or may not be directly linked to Eleanor. In fact neither the characters nor the reader...... middle of the paper ......and asks Theodora if he can go and live with her. When Theodora promptly refuses, Eleanor sighs that she has "never been wanted anywhere." Shirley Jackson knows how to weave a great story, and while there are no conclusions, this was still an immensely satisfying read that sent many shivers down my spine. While we all need a home and a family to move forward, Eleanor seems incapable of functioning in any situation outside of a home. She is unable to go out and build her own home, and as a child, she needs another person's home to repair her and protect her from the terrors that really get under her skin, like the real world. Thus Hill House becomes an attractive alternative, a place to build a house. When others force Eleanor to leave the safety of Hill House, fear is what ultimately drives her car into that tree. Eventually, Eleanor becomes his haunted house of fears.