Hey all. I'm Leigh, the Spanish major of the class. (On a nerdy sidenote, I think it's awesome that we're going to discuss Pan's Labyrinth. Epically more so that we're going to discuss The Orphanage, because Spanish cult horror films make me giggle.)
I've been fascinated by the dark fantastic ever since I was nine years old and read Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Not one of his better known works, I guess, but it seemed pretty awesome to me, so I went on to read pretty much all his other works. I got older, I moved into other kinds of fantasy - The Hobbit was my favorite book for about a year, and David Eddings kept me entertained for a while, but I've always come back to horror. Something about the way well-written horror reflects something darker in ourselves, I guess. Anyway, that's my experience in the dark fantastic and fantasy in general.
For my example of Clute's model, I chose another story from the dark fantastic realm, The Haunting of Hill House.
1) The Sighting: At the beginning of the book, all the members of the research team experience the weirdness of the house they're investigating - the doors never stay open, no matter what you put in front of them, the house seems to twist and turn so that you get lost no matter how often you map it out, and there are weird cold spots and uncomfortable angles. Nothing extreme, but very off-putting for all involved.
2) The Thickening: The weird things begin to get more dangerous. Eleanor and Theodora, the two main female characters, experience these terrifying fits where something horrible is trying to claw its way into their room. It becomes clear that the house is Haunted - not just a little bit weird, but full out Haunted with a capital "H". Like Clute argues in his model, I'd say most of the book is taken up by the thickening, when it gets more and more obvious that something is seriously not right about Hill House.
3) The Revel: The researchers in the house realize that whatever is haunting the house has slowly been taking over Eleanor, one of the female characters. It's this very intense, very subtle realization that the haunting wasn't just taking place outside them, but also inside them - they were being conquered from within, sort of. It's this point where Eleanor is killed - either a suicide or a result of the haunting, whatever you choose to believe.
4) The Aftermath: There is no resolution to the story - Eleanor dies, and, to me, becomes part of Hill House and its general terror. The other researchers go on about their lives, with no happy-go-lucky realization that the house wasn't really haunted, that everything can be explained by freak weather patterns and creaky floorboards. They're left to remember - or forget - everything that happened.
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Leigh, I think I have a chance getting into fantasy. While you know much more than me, I find it hopeful that you loved The Hobbit. That was my favorite book for awhile, too.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, too, and I think Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece. I think for Clute, though, the Sighting in Jackson's novel would be the investigators' first foreboding view of the house itself. I think all those early follow-up moments of disquiet you cite, Leigh, would be part of Clute's Thickening. But it's a great novel and a great example.
ReplyDeleteAfter leafing through my copy of The Haunting of Hill House, I realized my error above. Eleanor is the first member of the team to see the house, and she's alone at the time, and hers is the Sighting I was thinking of:
ReplyDelete"She turned her car onto the last stretch of straight drive leading her directly, face to face, to Hill House and, moving without thought, pressed her foot on the brake to stall the car and sat, staring.
"The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once."
Of course, there's plenty of foreboding even before this, for example the sinister gatekeeper who tells Eleanor: "I suppose you know what you're asking for, coming here? I suppose they told you, back in the city? You hear anything about this place? ... I'll open them; I'm going to open them. I just want to be sure you know what's waiting for you in there."