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!
Jack in The Shining certainly does seem to fall in love with the hotel! His eventual acceptance of his role as its "caretaker" has romantic overtones. I'm also now thinking about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, a novel which is far less harsh to its protagonist, and far less purely a haunted house story, but which still shares quite a few of these fictional elements. The nameless narrator has led a constrained existence from which Manderley represents both an escape and a liberation, but the fantasy of "truly belonging" to her new husband's estate - the fantasy of being Mistress of Manderley - ends up turning into a nightmare. And Rebecca is definitely - even explicitly - a love story in which the house itself plays the part of the beloved.
Haunted house stories with male protagonists seem to play far more heavily on economic concerns, while those with female protagonists seem more deeply rooted in romance. To Jack, the haunted hotel represents his one last chance to be a good provider to his family; to Eleanor, it's her one last chance to break free from her solitude and establish interpersonal relationships. But there's overlap between the two, I think. The collapse of Jack and Wendy's marriage is definitely a part of the horror of The Shining, and Rebecca's unnamed protagonist's concerns largely revolve around issues of money, status, and class. And I suppose that The Turn of the Screw's narrator's implied attraction to her employer can also be viewed in historical context as a "one last chance" for money and social status, as well as for romance.
I've never read Robinsheugh, but now I'm tempted to hunt it down!
Re: Part II cont.
Jack in The Shining certainly does seem to fall in love with the hotel! His eventual acceptance of his role as its "caretaker" has romantic overtones. I'm also now thinking about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, a novel which is far less harsh to its protagonist, and far less purely a haunted house story, but which still shares quite a few of these fictional elements. The nameless narrator has led a constrained existence from which Manderley represents both an escape and a liberation, but the fantasy of "truly belonging" to her new husband's estate - the fantasy of being Mistress of Manderley - ends up turning into a nightmare. And Rebecca is definitely - even explicitly - a love story in which the house itself plays the part of the beloved.
Haunted house stories with male protagonists seem to play far more heavily on economic concerns, while those with female protagonists seem more deeply rooted in romance. To Jack, the haunted hotel represents his one last chance to be a good provider to his family; to Eleanor, it's her one last chance to break free from her solitude and establish interpersonal relationships. But there's overlap between the two, I think. The collapse of Jack and Wendy's marriage is definitely a part of the horror of The Shining, and Rebecca's unnamed protagonist's concerns largely revolve around issues of money, status, and class. And I suppose that The Turn of the Screw's narrator's implied attraction to her employer can also be viewed in historical context as a "one last chance" for money and social status, as well as for romance.
I've never read Robinsheugh, but now I'm tempted to hunt it down!