Female Gothic and Domestic Horror in The Haunting of Hill House: A Comparative Analysis of the Original Novel and Its 2018 Netflix Adaptation

This paper compares and contrasts the ways in which Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and Mike Flanagan’s Netflix miniseries adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House (2018), utilise the key motif of the female gothic genre. In particular, this paper examines the ways in which the original novel and its adaptation portray the horror of the haunted house as an all-consuming and devouring mother, a central theme in female gothic literature. The analysis demonstrates that while the original novel employs the haunted house and the mother as symbols of the repressive gender roles prevalent in 1950s post-war America, the adaptation reinterprets these elements as representing a protective and controlling motherhood that consumes and entraps the child, unable to accept the child’s growth and independence. The paper posits that this shift in the adaptation replaces the social critique of the original novel, realised through the female gothic trope, with an ahistorical and reductive family dynamic centred on pre-Oedipal bonds and the conflict