The two stories are tragic in their own ways, both really coming back to these women enforcing their stories on others. Eleanor winds up essentially rejecting real relationships when they don't turn out the way she likes and instead disappears into the house (which in the book I remember she clearly feels she embodies, so she can "feel" where people are in it etc). She winds up only being trapped forever with nothing ever happening to her again.
Miss Giddens is more villainous in that she destroys two children who have already been "used" by others. She's determined to know the truth about what happened and it does seem like a little honesty would be helpful in all this Victorian politeness. But then she, like Eleanor, rejects the real children and the real story in favor of what she wants to hear. She never tries to really talk to the children at all. Perhaps they would like to talk to someone--Miles seems like he might--but she's not interested in listening to them or drawing them out, she just wants them to say what she wants. In this way, actually, she's a lot like fanficcers writing angstfic cliche: the traumatized character always just has to be made to sit down with the lover character, who will insist he "tell her everything." He will spill his guts, she will instinctively understand as no one else could, and then he will be healed. It's really a narcissistic fantasy, and it's the one Miss Giddens has. She demands that Flora tell her she can see Miss Jessel, and instead frightens her into a fit (proving she was right, of course!).
Then, when left alone with Miles, she sometimes seems to accidentally come near the truth but not allow him to speak. It's even played like this a bit--when Miles collapses and seems happy to give himself over to her comfort she blows it by insisting he once again say that he's been meeting Quint and Miles looks at her like she's just nuts. She doesn't understand at all.
The scene where she's interrogating Miles (in a steamy hothouse no less!) is doubly sad when you figure that Miles really does have a secret he perhaps would like to share, and she's poking at it for her own ends. This is where she finally asks him why he was sent home from school (having not asked the headmaster and just imagined he has a "corruptive" influence). He seems to really try to answer honestly and become more of a little boy, but she's listening to him like an eager animal waiting to spring on her prey. He says, "Because I'm different...I said things...Sometimes I heard things. Sometimes at night. Everything was dark. They screamed. The masters heard about it. They said I frightened the other boys."
It seems like there's something really troubling there, but what is it? She only replies by asking him where he "first heard of such things" as if she knows what he said, and then brings it back to Quint again in an openly accusing tone.
To my mind, this connects directly to their inability to see other people as other people, as people in their own right, as people external to themselves and their own fantasies.
I agree-and also that Book!Jack shows some of these same tendencies. It's neat, the more I think about it, how this seems to be at the heart of the "haunted house," where the house is a bad place in itself, like a twisted mind. There always seems to be this idea that the house is giving its inhabitants what they want and projecting their inner desires onto itself. Maybe all the best haunted house stories are love stories!
Actually, that gives me an idea of something I might write about next, though it's an out-of-print book so I don't know if many people have read it! I've been re-reading it again recently and damn if it doesn't come back to a lot of these themes in its own way, so I'll probably write about it anyway with spoiler warnings. It's a book called Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop.
Re: Part II
Miss Giddens is more villainous in that she destroys two children who have already been "used" by others. She's determined to know the truth about what happened and it does seem like a little honesty would be helpful in all this Victorian politeness. But then she, like Eleanor, rejects the real children and the real story in favor of what she wants to hear. She never tries to really talk to the children at all. Perhaps they would like to talk to someone--Miles seems like he might--but she's not interested in listening to them or drawing them out, she just wants them to say what she wants. In this way, actually, she's a lot like fanficcers writing angstfic cliche: the traumatized character always just has to be made to sit down with the lover character, who will insist he "tell her everything." He will spill his guts, she will instinctively understand as no one else could, and then he will be healed. It's really a narcissistic fantasy, and it's the one Miss Giddens has. She demands that Flora tell her she can see Miss Jessel, and instead frightens her into a fit (proving she was right, of course!).
Then, when left alone with Miles, she sometimes seems to accidentally come near the truth but not allow him to speak.
It's even played like this a bit--when Miles collapses and seems happy to give himself over to her comfort she blows it by insisting he once again say that he's been meeting Quint and Miles looks at her like she's just nuts. She doesn't understand at all.
The scene where she's interrogating Miles (in a steamy hothouse no less!) is doubly sad when you figure that Miles really does have a secret he perhaps would like to share, and she's poking at it for her own ends. This is where she finally asks him why he was sent home from school (having not asked the headmaster and just imagined he has a "corruptive" influence). He seems to really try to answer honestly and become more of a little boy, but she's listening to him like an eager animal waiting to spring on her prey. He says, "Because I'm different...I said things...Sometimes I heard things. Sometimes at night. Everything was dark. They screamed. The masters heard about it. They said I frightened the other boys."
It seems like there's something really troubling there, but what is it? She only replies by asking him where he "first heard of such things" as if she knows what he said, and then brings it back to Quint again in an openly accusing tone.
To my mind, this connects directly to their inability to see other people as other people, as people in their own right, as people external to themselves and their own fantasies.
I agree-and also that Book!Jack shows some of these same tendencies. It's neat, the more I think about it, how this seems to be at the heart of the "haunted house," where the house is a bad place in itself, like a twisted mind. There always seems to be this idea that the house is giving its inhabitants what they want and projecting their inner desires onto itself. Maybe all the best haunted house stories are love stories!
Actually, that gives me an idea of something I might write about next, though it's an out-of-print book so I don't know if many people have read it! I've been re-reading it again recently and damn if it doesn't come back to a lot of these themes in its own way, so I'll probably write about it anyway with spoiler warnings. It's a book called Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop.