• “‘There has to be a first time for everything,’ Eleanor told herself”: Delayed Adolescence and Parentification in The Haunting of Hill House
• Michael T. Wilson (bio)

In Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, of the three house guests Dr. Montague summons to take part in his “haunted house” experiment, Eleanor behaves most erratically, her emotions swinging from one extreme to another as she desperately seeks the one thing she cannot find—an autonomous adulthood in a place where she belongs—until her personality disintegrates into the House.¹ Eleanor’s behavior becomes much more understandable, however, when viewed as that of a young woman struggling through the delayed and parentified adolescence imposed upon her by a needy, domineering mother, a struggle continued and exacerbated by the matriarchal persona presented by Hugh Crain’s seemingly patriarchal creation, Hill House itself.

Nancy D. Chase’s “Parentification: An Overview of Theory, Research, and Societal Issues” usefully surveys current theory on parentification. In Chase’s words, “parentification [entails] a functional and/or emotional role reversal in which the child sacrifices his or her own needs for attention, comfort, and guidance in order to accommodate and care for logistic and emotional needs of the parent[,] [and] the parentified child may learn in this process that her needs are of less importance than those of others, or may actually become depleted of energy and time for pursuing school, friendships, childhood activities, and, at later stages, exploration of career and relationship possibilities.”² Although Eleanor can barely imagine an adult life, her attempt to reach it begins with her acceptance of Dr. Montague’s invitation to join his group: “During the whole underside of her life, ever since her first memory, Eleanor had been waiting for something like Hill [End Page 223] House” (4). Eleanor’s long hope for a positive change in her life reflects the trauma that has been inflicted upon her, the “dire and tragic consequences” that Peter K. Smith links to parentification.³

The Haunting of Hill House is intensely concerned with parenting, although publishers often gloss over the fact. As the back cover of the first Penguin Classics edition informs the reader, “Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past.”⁴ Eleanor’s “dark past” is simply her traumatized, parentified caring for her mother and a past report of poltergeist activity at their house, a phenomenon long associated with troubled adolescents. As Dr. Montague’s invited group of houseguests settles in, they form an informal family, foiling the history of Hugh Crain’s abusive parenting in the House. Apparently supernatural events begin to trouble their nights as Eleanor attempts to establish an adult identity for herself for the first time and her sanity unravels, while the House itself increasingly takes on the attributes of both Hugh Crain and an alternately nurturing and punitive maternality that evokes Eleanor’s memory of her mother.

Jackson’s depiction of Eleanor’s mother seems to reflect her view of her own mother Geraldine as well as 1950s scholarship on adolescent psychology. Joan Wylie Hall argues that Jackson fell from “a tolerable childhood into a pathological adolescence,” that her “mother determined the floor plan of her daughter’s self,” and that “Jackson’s compulsions were constructed on that design.”⁵ Karl C. Garrison, in his 1951 Psychology of Adolescence, notes that parental troubles rank “first among a list of symptoms” that “may take the extreme form of a sharp, emotional rejection of the child by a parent or both parents.”⁶ Eleanor’s own mother-dominated psychology is further framed by Garrison’s observation that “aggressive behavior and instability are related to an early life dominated by authoritarian control. When the father or mother was the dominating (authoritarian) force in the home, the children obeyed, but their lives were filled with tension and frustration.”⁷ Eleanor exhibits both aggressiveness (Laura Miller terms “one of her chief traits . . . a kind of...

• “‘凡事都要有第一次，’埃莉诺告诉自己”：《鬼屋》中的青春期延迟和父母身份
• 迈克尔·T·威尔逊（简介）

在雪莉·杰克逊 (Shirley Jackson) 1959 年的小说《希尔之家闹鬼》(The Haunting of Hill House ) 中，蒙塔古博士召唤来参加他的“鬼屋”实验的三名房客中，埃莉诺的行为最为不稳定，她的情绪在一个极端与另一个极端之间摇摆不定，因为她拼命地寻找答案。她无法找到一件事——在她所属的地方独立自主的成年期——直到她的个性融入了众议院。¹然而，当埃莉诺的行为被视为一个年轻女子的行为时，她的行为就变得更容易理解了，她正在努力度过被贫困、专横的母亲强加给她的被延迟和父母化的青春期，休·克莱恩看似父权制的母权形象所呈现的母权角色继续并加剧了这种斗争。创造，山屋本身。

南希·D·蔡斯（Nancy D. Chase）的《父母化：理论、研究和社会问题概述》对当前的父母化理论进行了有益的调查。用蔡斯的话来说，“父母化[需要]功能和/或情感角色逆转，其中孩子牺牲自己对关注、舒适和指导的需求，以适应和照顾父母的后勤和情感需求[， ] [并且] 被父母养育的孩子可能会在这个过程中了解到，她的需求不如其他人的需求重要，或者可能实际上耗尽了精力和时间来追求学校、友谊、童年活动，以及在后期阶段探索职业和人际关系的可能性。” ²尽管埃莉诺几乎无法想象成年生活，但她尝试实现这一目标是从她接受蒙塔古博士的邀请加入他的小组开始的：“在她生命的整个阴暗面中，从她第一次记忆开始，埃莉诺一直在等待着什么就像希尔[完第223页]房子”（4）。埃莉诺长期以来希望自己的生活发生积极的变化，这反映了她遭受的创伤，彼得·K·史密斯将其与亲子化联系起来的“可怕而悲惨的后果”。³

尽管出版商经常掩盖这一事实，但《山庄闹鬼》密切关注育儿问题。正如《企鹅经典》第一版的封底告诉读者的那样，“四位探索者来到了这座被称为希尔之家的杂乱的老堆：蒙塔古博士，一位神秘学者，正在寻找通灵现象的确凿证据；西奥多拉，他可爱而轻松的助手；卢克，富有冒险精神的未来遗产继承人；还有埃莉诺，一个没有朋友、脆弱的年轻女子，有着黑暗的过去。” ⁴埃莉诺的“黑暗过去”只是她对母亲的创伤和父母化的照顾，以及过去关于他们家里有恶作剧活动的报道，这种现象长期以来与问题青少年有关。当蒙塔古博士邀请的一群房客入住后，他们组成了一个非正式的家庭，挫败了休·克雷恩在众议院虐待养育子女的历史。显然，超自然事件开始困扰他们的夜晚，埃莉诺第一次试图为自己建立一个成年人的身份，她的理智崩溃了，而房子本身越来越呈现出休·克雷恩的特征，以及一种交替养育和惩罚的母性，这唤起了埃莉诺的她母亲的记忆。

杰克逊对埃莉诺母亲的描述似乎反映了她对自己母亲杰拉尔丁的看法以及 20 世纪 50 年代青少年心理学的学术成就。琼·威利·霍尔认为，杰克逊从“还可以忍受的童年陷入了病态的青春期”，她的“母亲决定了女儿自我的平面图”，并且“杰克逊的强迫症就是建立在这种设计之上的”。⁵卡尔·C·加里森 (Karl C. Garrison) 在其 1951 年出版的《青春期心理学》中指出，父母的问题位列“一系列症状中的首位”，“可能表现为父母一方或父母双方对孩子的强烈、情感上的拒绝”。⁶埃莉诺自己的母亲主导的心理进一步被加里森的观察所框定，即“攻击性行为和不稳定与受独裁控制主导的早年生活有关。当父亲或母亲在家里占主导地位（独裁）时，孩子们会服从，但他们的生活却充满了紧张和沮丧。” ⁷埃莉诺同时表现出攻击性（劳拉·米勒称之为“她的主要特征之一……一种……