Richard Matheson's Hell House took awhile to draw me in, but once it did I was captivated by the hold of the haunted Belasco House. In comparison to my previous post about The Haunting of Hill House, I saw some similarities between the two novels. While both books deal with a group of characters who come to a haunted house for supposedly scientific reasons, Matheson and Jackson have different approaches in dealing with the fate of the characters and the house.
Hell House is much darker than Hill House. Belasco's created Hell comes to life in his depraved home and it gets to the characters in much more deviant ways than the fates of the characters in Hill House, minus Eleanor. This time around we see more vulgarity and destruction, and just how much a haunted house is capable of doing. Matheson does not hold back on the terrible repercussions of staying in Hell House and it makes the novel all the more difficult to put down. The reader is repulsed and intrigued at the same time while reading about what these poor possessed characters end up doing to themselves and to each other.
Hell House is a character all its own. The house becomes a driving source and often dictates the actions of most of the characters, with the exception of Fischer who learns to keep his mind closed off from the spirits for most of the text. The house makes the characters more interesting because their personalities seem a bit bland at the start of the book. We know their reasons for going to Hell House, but it is the house itself that gives us sympathy for the awful occurrences that take place, especially the harm that comes to Florence, and then the loss that Edith suffers later.
All in all, Hell House is interesting because it attempts to give the reader science behind the supernatural phenomena and it is not often books will go that far into the details. Matheson is a clever writer and he does not shy away from details of any horrid sort. He traps us in Hell House with the group of characters and makes us wonder just how much of the depravity is the house and how much has been lurking in these characters before? We move through the rooms looking for clues of Belasco's past and learn the secrets along with the characters. In the end, we are relieved by the triumph of Fischer and Edith and can take a breath...and perhaps we wonder if Belasco's destruction is true, or if it is simply another trick. Can evil of this deeply permeated kind really dissipate from every molecule and atom of Hell House?
"And, every day, Belasco walked among them, cold, withdrawn, unmoved. Belasco, a latter-day Satan observing his rabble. Always dressed in black. A giant, terrifying figure, looking at the hell incarnate he'd created" (Matheson).
Happy Hauntings,
Sara
I agree that the house’s personality far outshines that of the human characters in the novel, including Belesco. The twisted vileness of his personality and his myriad vices was bigger than he was and the house was a much better filter for it than the flesh. I still found the seduction and manipulations clichéd , the doubting scientist and the overeager spiritualist, and the jaded survivor. Aspects of the plot and I found the seductions and manipulations of the house to be tired, but to be honest I think it was more because so many other works in horror follow the same pattern.
ReplyDeleteThe Belasco quote made me think that maybe Matheson saw himself as the man wandering through the hell of his own creation, presenting horrors in unflinching detail. The big question for me in this book is: Was Belasco more evil than the people who stayed in his house? He was the devil archetype--an agent of chaos. He gave people permission to throw off the restraints of polite society. I'm not sure he corrupted them so much as freed them. Granted, the results were hardly noble or good. But it's interesting. I'm thinking of Edith, whose sexual frustration already existed before she went to Hell House. Then, once in that new world where the rules of polite society didn't exist, she is suddenly overcome by her desires. Hell House unleashed the beast inside its visitors, and Belasco was the ring master.
ReplyDeleteI like that you say that the house gives these people more personality because I also thought that they were a bit boring and that the most interesting figure in the novel was the house and the haunting within it. Honestly, I would have much preferred a book about all the insane crap Belasco was doing in this house before he died.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the science part was what really drew me in (along with the graphic violence). If there was one thing I really loved about this novel it was the fact that both views are somewhat right. I love how Matheson didn't just write this one sided argument when there is obviously no way he could know the real answer. The answer in the end of the novel is just a mashup and I thought that was so brilliant of him.
The house definitely came to life more in this novel, at least for me, than the house in Hill House. Maybe it was the depths of depravity that Matheson went into to create the Hellish atmosphere that ultimately took the lives of two of the group. I think it also upped the pace a bit, unlike in Hill House, once the hauntings actually began. What I enjoyed was the back and forth of believing that Belasco had a son and he was good, and Belasco's son being evil - despite the ghost not actually being his son. I wanted to know the truth and ultimately that kept me reading.
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