Fear and Insanity Gothic Literature: Why 'The Haunting of Hill House' and 'The Little Stranger" Are Not Your Typical Scary Stories Anonymous 11th Grade

Over the past three decades, films in the genre of horror and suspense have been among the top grossing movies with relation to volume of tickets and amount of movies made. According to a 2004 paper in the Journal of Media Psychology by Dr. Glenn Walters, the three primary factors that make horror films alluring to society are tension, relevance, and unrealism. This alluring effect is also translated in both modern and historic literature through the gothic genre. This genre combines fiction and horror, death, or romance, creating eerie tension and ambiguity for those reading. Shirley Jackson and Sarah Waters are two prominent authors whose works exudes this gothic nature with regards to the plot and characters. The idea of fear vs. insanity is present within both books at all major, comparable points. Although they are contrasted by different story lines, there are a plethora of instances, which expose the similarities within and can be categorized by either fear or insanity.

The colors in both The Haunting of Hill House and The Little Stranger are typically dark and caliginous, and this adds to the gothic effect for the readers. In The Haunting of Hill House, the darkness of the house goes past colors; darkness is in the...