The Haunting of Hill House Narrator:

Third Person (Limited Omniscient)

When working with the narrative technique in Hill House, you can choose your own difficulty setting. There's the easy setting, the not-so-easy setting, and the give-it-all-you've-got setting. We're going to start things off easy and then make it progressively more difficult as we go on. By following our step-by-step program, you should have no problem going the distance and stunning any teacher or fellow reader when it comes to discussing narration in this novel. Ready for a mental workout? Here we go.

Step 1: Stretching and the Basics

This novel uses a third-person limited omniscient narrative technique. Okay, that might not be easy to say. But it can be simple to figure out with the help of this short example:

Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. (5.1)

Let's break it down.

A third-person narrator never says "I." This narration remains outside the story and enters a character's perspective to tell us the tale. In this example, we see that the narration is third-person because it starts out presenting details from Eleanor's point of view ("Looking at herself in the mirror") before jumping into Eleanor's head to give us her thoughts ("Eleanor thought"). In both cases though, Eleanor is clearly not the one telling us the story. The text doesn't say "Looking at myself in the mirror... I thought"—that would be first-person narration.

An omniscient narrator is an "all-knowing" narrator, so a limited omniscient narrator is a narrator limited in its all-knowningness. In other words, a limited omniscient narrator only tells the story from the perspective of one, or maybe two characters instead of a whole bunch. Since this narrator chooses to stick with Eleanor's point of view for the vast majority of the story, we're calling it limited omniscient.

Put these two together, and what do you get? Why, it's third person limited omniscient narrator.

Step 2: The Core, or Reliably Unreliable

But we're not finished yet. This novel's third-person limited omniscient narrator is also an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is just that: unreliable. You can't trust everything he or she says. There are several reasons a narrator might be unreliable: he or she might be crazy, might not have all the facts, or might just be a human being (hey, people make mistakes).

In this case, the narrator tells the story from Eleanor's perspective, so the narrator inherits any unreliability in Eleanor's character. And Eleanor has got some mad reliability issues. She's prone to flights of fantasy, she's self-centered and quick to judge, and she's either haunted or psychologically off-kilter. None of these things makes for a particularly reliable narrator.

This unreliability can make analyzing the story difficult for the reader, especially when it comes to figuring out characterization and questions about whether or not Hill House is truly haunted. Here's a short but telling example:

They are all carefully avoiding looking at me, Eleanor thought; I have been singled out again, and they are kind enough to pretend it is nothing; "Why do you think [that message] was sent to me?" she asked, helpless. (7.140)

We have to ask: is anyone really avoiding Eleanor, or does she just imagine they are for the simple reason that no one is speaking directly to her? Sure, Mrs. Montague delivered the message to Theodora, but that was a case of mistaken identity. And it could be that no one is looking at her because she isn't saying anything to anyone. People do speak to her directly after she asks her question.

Now, things get way more complicated when Eleanor starts believing that Hill House is talking to her (seriously, Eleanor?), or when she claims a character feels a certain way (she usually has no evidence to prove it).

Step 3: Cooling Down with the Exception

There is an exception to the above narrative rules. At the novel's beginning and end, the narration stays in third person but zooms out of limited omniscience and becomes just plain old omniscient, "all-knowing." Instead of sticking to Eleanor's point of view, this omniscient narrator can give us the thoughts, feelings, and viewpoint of any character.

You'll notice this at the novel's beginning, when the narrator introduces us to certain characters well before Eleanor meets them. You'll also see it occur at the novel's end after —spoiler alert—Eleanor dies. Eleanor can't very well tell us what happens to Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague from the afterlife, can she?

Oh, wait, can she? Okay, we're not going there.

Anyway, these parts of the novel give us our only chance to stop constantly questioning the unreliable narrator's unreliable narration. When this narrator says that Dr. Montague "hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education," we have no reason not to believe it. Since this narration is not limited to Eleanor's potentially psychologically disturbed perspective, we can take this information at face value.