What does it mean for a haunting to be brought to life? Authors, through the use of personification, are able to take a construct as abstract as evilness and bring it to life within the narrative. Through the use of the literary device of personificaiton in their writings, authors can evoke a deep sense a fear and anxiety, not only in their characters, but in their readers as well. Authors Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Shirley Jackson demonstrate that through personification, the inanimate and the passive can take on the role of active participants in the narrative. In their works, they are able to bring anxieties and fears to the surface. The haunted house becomes much more than just a stage for the plot of the story to unveil. The house becomes a critical character of the story itself. The abnormality of what is traditionally seen as dormant taking on the role of an active participant in the narrative contributes to the fear and anxieties in characters and readers alike. Through the unusual personification of the upstairs room in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman symbolizes the narrators mental and physical entrapment and confinement. The short story itself is written in the form of a personal diary or journal. The narrator, isolated from the world and confined to a small room covered in repulsive yellow wallpaper, progressively undergoes the physical experience of hauntings being brought to life in front of her very eyes. She writes in her personal account: I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. (Gilman 8) This disturbing and creepy passage describes the walls that surround her to be filled with movement and life, the wallpaper itself being a visual representation of the narrator’s fears and anxieties. The patterns and dark figures she becomes so fixated on slowly transform into symbolic representations of herself, a woman trapped. The wallpaper takes on an active roll as the antagonist of the story, torturing and tormenting her as an evil that has been brought to life through personification. In her novel The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson brings evil and hauntings to life with her personification of the mansion. She characterizing the home to have an “evil face,” that seemed “awake, with a watchfulness from the black windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice” (Jackson 24). By giving the house as having human-like features and capabilities, Jackson is able to frame the home as an active character in the narrative. We know from the beginning of the second chapter that the house will not only be the setting for the majority of the book but also a character in the novel, contributing to the conflict and plot of the narrative. We don't watch the house, the house watches us. This is true for both characters and readers alike. As demonstrated by both authors, personification can be used to bring evilness and hauntings to life in the narrative. Authors are able to frame traditionally passive and inanimate spaces and dwellings as active participants in their narratives. Both Gilman and Jackson take what is normal and comfortable and flip it on its head, evoking a sense of anxiety and fear in the various characters in the novel as well in the reader. Works Cited Jackson, Shirley, and Laura Miller. The Haunting of Hill House. Penguin Books, 2016. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. First Avenue Editions, a Division Of Lerner Publishing Group, 2017.
1 Comment
Nina W
9/20/2017 02:04:56 pm
"...personification can be used to bring evilness and hauntings to life"--literally! I just read Eitan's first post, where he talks similarly about the eerie life-likeness of The House of Usher (my favorite description is of the "eye-like windows"). What is it about making non-living things and places seem alive that is so distressing? Is it because their life-likeness sometimes comes from the spirits of people who were once alive? Is it because it should be impossible, that imbuing objects with life is fundamentally wrong and if you start feeling a house is alive it means you're going insane? I just realized that, when we're little, some of our favorite characters are anthropomorphized animals and objects--but as we get older, they become less endearing and, in a way, weird....
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Meredith HoffmanArchives
November 2017
Categories |