something about the haunting of hill house and next to normal. visualizations of grief as horror and the past literally coming back to haunt you over and over again and trying to kill you. but it's not just the past, it's also you. you have gone through so much grief and mental difficulties that everyone around you is brushing you off or just trying to make you better because it's easier for everyone around you if you're better. and it doesn't work because there has been so much in your life that everyone needs to address, and they act like you're the crazy one for wanting to understand what's happening. they're patient with you until you get to be too much. how unrecognized mental illness and depression and grief will kill you and that families need to deal with grief collectively rather than separately. and how that the senseless violence of the world will make you go insane, but not recognizing that is even worse.
this got long, so i'm putting under a read more. i'm sorry to anyone who actually reads this whole thing. i lost my mind.
tw suicide, substance abuse, and general talk of grief and mental illness and child death
nell gets to dance with her husband one last time with all her family. her family that's whole and all together in their home. they apologize. they recognize what she's going through instead of brushing it off as nell. she dreams a dance, and then tries to kill herself. or olivia tries to kill her. and at the end, she ends up haunting herself so that she'll always come back. or maybe even to try to warn herself that we can make it different. but by doing that, she just keeps continuing the cycle. she is constantly haunted by her own depression and her own mental illness and it finally kills her. but it is exacerbated by the house. by olivia. by poppy. by the violence that came before and might have come after.
she dreams a dance, and then tries to kill herself. or gabe tries to kill her. the hallucination of a baby long dead and yourself dying is different, but olivia and gabe don't serve the same purpose, at least not for everyone. but they also kind of do because they perpetuate this same self inflicted violence on people. they are the cause of it. for nell, it's more literal, and connected to the house. for hugh, it's different. hugh sees olivia much like diana sees gabe, a manifestation of guilt and grief and unresolved trauma ("That wasn't me, that was just you.") , while talking to him in a more constructive way but the rest of them don't see olivia like that. it's glimpses of her that haunt them. shirley with her and the cats. luke with her becoming the hat guy (mr. hill).
nell's ghost is actually haunting her. i prefer the interpretation olivia causes nell to kill herself, much like gabe does, but it is different in that one seemed forced, and one was out of wanting a different world, and willing to go to the lengths of it.
obligatory paragraph about nell's suicide because it's so complicated. on one hand, she was obviously hallucinating and dealing with depression and anxiety and her support system had completely fallen apart. but on the other, she didn't want to die. olivia handed her the noose. the necklace. but it's because of her own mind she saw it as a necklace, and that by the time she realized it was a noose, it was too late. just like how the craines saw hill house as something that would make them rich, a precious jewel, but it ended up making them lose their minds instead.
nell seeing herself her whole life. it was always inevitable. it was always going to end like this. and it had to end like this to make the others see that they had to be different. that they could no longer go on with their lives with drugs, or avoidance, or control freakness, or being closed off. because they got a second chance after nell died.
back to olivia, olivia thought death was the only way they could keep their family together, and perhaps somewhat a reflection of nell's own ideations, but i do not think that nell went to the house to kill herself. i think she went because there was nothing else that was helping her. i think her hallucinations are their own, but her exisitng mental illness is made worse by the house, hence the hallucinations.
nell obviously suffers from mental illness, likely not at the level that diana does. so does olivia. i think i read on reddit that the house already feeds on that and makes it worse and worse. nell's ghost haunting herself is maybe trying to warn herself to not go back, to stay away, but it ends up having the same result because it just made her go back more. or maybe that's the house's way of getting nell back over and over again because she should have died with abigail. or that it knew that getting nell here would get the rest of them. or maybe it would just try with any of them. possibly that nell haunting herself was even a form of OCD. an obsession with her death and the house. because what is OCD if not haunting yourself over and over again. olivia was haunting luke, shirley, and theo had her own problems and memories. the idea of escape is not allowed from the house. much like gabe doesn't want diana to forget him, to leave him. so he tells them there's a world, much like poppy tells diana there's a way to keep them young forever.
"our family is like an unfinished meal to that house."
"'cause i'm holding on. and i won't let go. let me go."
onto diana. so diana is suffering from bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and much like nell has been on meds for a long time (longer than her, i think). she also has full on hallucinations much like nell. however, what's interesting is that her suicide attempt, while i believe does more so come from her, does not seem to be mentioned explicitly once throughout the rest of the musical (at least in the songs, i listened to it too late to watch it for free on pbs). it's not brushed over per say, but it's about fixing it- what can make it better. even if it's at the cost of forgetting gabe. so here's where the stories diverge because obviously nell dies, and the rest of the show is the fallout of her suicide. but diana's suicide, while prompted by gabe, is different because gabe is completely from herself. so while nell put the necklace on, olivia gave her that final push. gabe tempted her with a world he knows that is good and happy. i don't think gabe is a spirit though, i think he is a manifestation of diana's and dan's grief. he lead her to commit suicide, much like he died because diana feels alone in her own family. so she wants to be together with him again and stop feeling this grief, and going back to feeling something real (i miss the mountains). her life has become too difficult that her escape (the hallucination of her son) has made death seem so enticing that she tries to kill herself.
the difference is that gabe is at the end of the day, a projection of diana. it's what she's thinking, what she wants. even if that is in the form of her son. in "I Am the One" Gabe and Dan are seemingly arguing about who is actually the one for her, and it's Dan speaking to her, but her (and dan, more on that later) hallucinating him (and her own mental illness and grief) as what is keeping her safe. because even though she's been dealing with it for so long and it's hard, there comes a certain comfort from your own mental dealings. the pain and the difficulties are there, but sometimes it's scarier to not know what being "normal" feels like, and that being "normal" it's what not right. there is safety in uncertainty because when you are familiar with uncertainty, certainty feels dangerous.
mental illness traps you in a place you think is safe, but it poisons you from the inside, and makes you think it's dangerous to get better. obviously, in diana's case, it's different. because her trying to get better has been causing her a lot of grief. the history of medication and later the ECT has not always been positive for her, and she has had these difficulties where maybe it's just safer and better and more interesting to just be. this is especially said in i miss the mountains.
we could compare "i miss the mountains" to nell also throwing out her meds. but rather than wanting to be free and be done, nell wants to know what is real and what's not because the bent neck lady is back again. diana is tired. so is nell to an extent, but it's more wanting to know the truth. what is real. what is happening to her and why. the house. diana seems to be okay with living in delusion. rather, she prefers it at some point. even if it's dangerous, it's what she knows.
however, here is where dan comes into it (don't worry, i'll get to natalie). i 100% believe that dan is seeing gabe the entire musical and just ignores him. he ignores him. in the prelude he says he heard "voices" plural. and then in i am the one (reprise) he said, "can't you just leave me alone? why didn't you go with her?" (Next to Normal, I am the One (reprise)). (idk how to cite musicals). he has been hearing gabe and seeing him along with diana, but rather than interacting with it, he acts oppositely. it's a weird twisted folie a deux kind of thing, a shared delusion between these two spouses, but they react completely differently. dan thought he would go away with diana, but he is still staying because dan refuses to even then unpack all his grief since his son died. he has been projecting his grief onto taking care of diana no matter what, and not even thinking about if it was healthy or not. he wanted things to go back to the way they were, but things were never really good with that family as we see later. ever since gabe died, he's been chasing how to get to how it was before, but that time existed for so little, it barely did. he clings onto the past and tries to make logical sense of it by telling diana to go on the meds, to go to ECT, to do all these things to try and get their family back together. to try and make it good, even though as we see by the end of the musical, things will never go back to normal because things never really were normal.
dan also wants to fix things. he built their house. literally. his family is falling apart, his marriage is falling apart. he doesn't know how to fix it, and never considers that perhaps it can't be. he would rather diana forget everything than remember the bad. he wants everything to be good because that's his role as a husband, a father. but he just can't. he can't fix it.
he is like steven and like hugh. he literally fixes thing like hugh (houses). he wants it all to go away. he wants everything to just have a simple answer, but none of it does. he thinks with enough medication or whatever, everything will be fine. but at the end of the day, he refuses to address the root problem. hugh learns from his mistakes, too late, but he ends up admitting that all their problems are because of the house and because they were the only ones to escape. dan ends up learning what he learns at the end, as well. that you can't just put it all away. you can't repress it. you can't ignore it. steven literally grew up with ghosts but he doesn't know it, he's been so caught up in making everything okay, that it blinds him to everything else.
and this is partially hugh's fault on steven's part. because steven has been rather parentified a lot of his life, and i know some people don't like him, but i think he's complicated. i think both he and dan wanted their families to be okay, especially steven because he saw what their dad and their mother became, and i think the books started as wanting to make sense of what happened. but it warped into something else, and then he overlooked his family, and nell, and what stories that he took. he tried so hard to make sense of what happened to him that it flipped and he never cared about it until it was too late.
natalie is completely overshadowed by gabe, to the extent that the only reason she was born was because of his death. she is stolen memories and the idealization of a perfect daughter that doesn't exist. and even if she did, diana wouldn't want her. while i don't think natalie sees gabe, i think she feels him the whole time, and that she is suffocating under the weight of him between her parents. she too is falling, like diana, but no one hears her. they brush her off, and don't take her seriously because there are more important things (ie diana) to be worried about. even when she starts to do drugs, dan doesn't seem to notice or care. diana notices, but it is once again not touched upon again, much like diana's suicide, but still is very present in the narrative physically. natalie cracks under the pressure, and no one even sees her or really cares that that happened. there was no one at the recital, and she just continues to live in her dead older brother's shadow and he is an antagonist towards her, and the rest of the family. as long as diana keeps seeing him and losing herself in her grief, and dan represses his own grief, natalie will never have space to grow or breathe because no one ever sees her. it's a tragedy, and she is haunted by something that shouldn't even exist, and her own parents grief that she is not allowed to have her own. all she wants to do is leave, but she is trapped by the narrative, trapped by gabe. and it leads her to substance abuse because she can't deal with it anymore once her life starts falling apart just as much outside as it has been internally. she grieves how her family could have been, but knows that it also never could have been like that.
natalie also just wants to be seen. at the end of it, all she wants is to be seen. she doesn't want to be an afterthought, she wants go somewhere where she means something to people. even if that in it of itself scares her. because she is not used to it. much like diana, she found comfort in the dangerous, and is scared to go outside of that because even though it's hard, it's what she knows. it's what she's used to. it's not always easy to just break out of old cycles even if you know they're bad for you.
her struggle reminds me of luke's. they both struggle with addiction, but they also struggle with having seen things. luke and nell literally watched their mother kill abigail. they saw abigail die in front of them when they were young, and then come back. they lived through their mother trying to kill them. they didn't understand. much like natalie, luke is trapped by his memories of the house (they all are) and he can't get away with it. but instead of becoming like steven, or shirley or theo, he turned to drugs to cope. the memories were too much, but he was also villainized because of this. rather than his family looking at him with understanding, they grew wary of him. there is more support in next to normal and the haunting of hill house which makes a big difference. because the support might be too much in next to normal, but it is there and even if it's there for the wrong people. the support in the haunting of hill house only comes after one of their deaths. nell's death makes them think about what happened and forces them to face their past once and for all.
i'd like to bring in steven and nell here, because steven literally saw ghosts all his life and didn't realize it/denied it his whole life, while nell never denied it. she always knew something was haunting her, it was just herself. there's something rather poetic about that. that steven saw actual ghosts all his life and never realized, and nell was just haunted by herself. yet, their fate could have been the same. but nell was the one that made everyone realize they had to confront what happened in their past, that steven had to realize what happened and how that caused what happened now. and that it was never just nell going through phases, it was her trying to deal with her constant anxiety, depression, and maybe OCD her whole life that had been exacerbated by the house and seeing abigail die, her mother try to kill her, her twin going through a drug addiction, her brother selling her out for a book, her sisters ganging up against her (it seemed like she was feeling like this). the ghost was her. she was haunted by herself the whole time and no one ever helped her because they were all so preoccupied with the other ghosts of the past.
"ghosts are guilt. ghosts are secrets. ghosts are regrets and failings. but most times, most times a ghost is a wish." -Steven, "The Red Room"
nell, unlike diana, always had to die because it was her death that brought them back together. diana's suicide made them take more drastic measures, but had the same purpose. both of these tragic events lead to the others realizing they have been repressing their grief, guilt, and memories, and confronting what's actually been happening. except for natalie. natalie goes further into the drugs, and the trying to pretend it's not happening, but it still eventually brigns her back to her mother., because diana breaking is what leads them to sing together finally. because next to normal isn't about gabe, it's about diana and natalie and dan. all trying to be a family with this constant shadow on them. had diana died, natalie would've gone further into substance abuse and down a dark path we saw her going, dan would have repressed his grief even more and would have kept seeing gabe, and there would be no light. it would just be more grief. nell dying unfortunately works for the haunting of hill house narrative because only a death would bring these siblings in the same room. had nell just tried to kill ehreslf, it wouldn't have been enough because they would have brushed her off like they had been doing with luke. and luke would not have even been there. nell dyign made them confront their pasts and what they've been overlooking for years, and made them realize how nell and luke couldn't. and it didn't make them weak, it didn't make them less than them. it made them victims because they were so suspectible to the violence of the house, and it caught onto them more visibly than it did to the others.
when diana leaves, it serves a similar purpose to nell dying. it brings the family back together (dan and natalie) and makes them realize that they need to go back to what happened. they can't just brush over it and expect the others to get along as well. luke finds support after nell's death, and they all start to open up to other people (especially luke and shirley) about what they really want and how they want to make things right. diana leaving is the breaking point for the goodmans, but it's only through finally breaking can they be put back together. diana is figuring herself and her mental illness on her own, and dan and natalie have each other now. gabe is slowly becoming but a memory.
"i loved you completely, and you loved me the same. the rest is confetti" -Nell, "The Red Room" "i loved you once and though i love you still, it's time to say goodbye" - Diana, "So Anyway"
i know this was like a lot and you're like well what's the point, well the point is, rather than gabe serving as the same function as the bent neck lady (haunting yourself, your own mental illness haunting you, a warning, a paradox) or olivia (keeping the family or parts of the together even if it means taking drastic measures), or poppy (promising a better world if you just do this one thing), he is all of those things, because the House and Gabe function as the same representation of grief, senseless violence, and mental illness (and how that is dealt with or lack there of). let's take a look at some lyrics from "I'm Alive" and some lines and descriptions of scenes from The Haunting of Hill House.
"I'm alive, I'm alive, I am so alive. And I feed on the fear that's behind your eyes." "You try and try and keep them safe. All you can do, really, but it's hard, isn't it? And you can't keep them safe forever, can you? Losing a child. Do you think there's a thing worse than that?"
the House feeds on the fear and exacerbates the mental illness and already existing paranoia of those who live inside of it. see with olivia and poppy, poppy feeds on the fear of olivia losing her children, particularly the twins because they are so young. she talks to her more and more, and even has olivia waking up trying to kill hugh just to keep her family in place. the House was responsible for the bent neck lady at the end of the day. because nell was in that place, she haunted herself, it made everything worse. if she hadn't lived there, she would have still dealt with anxiety and depression, but it wouldn't have been to that extent. and we know this because she didn't actually kill herself. the house did. olivia did.
much like gabe, he exacerbates everything for the family. on a genius' annotation, it says, "gabe manifests himself as each family member's worst fear." this sums up exactly what the House did for each member of the Crain family. steven and his siblings and parents falling apart, while also not quite seeing what made that happening. and also being far too relied upon when he was young. shirley and her brush with death in a way that messes her up forever, and her wanting to help the kittens due to the "hounds" outside that don't exist. theo and her heightened sensitivity to touch and sensing all of the death and fear that lurks in that house, luke and mr. hill and also the burnt body coming for him. it lead him to drug abuse. nell and the bent neck lady. everything is made worse by the House, even though it was for such a short time.
"i am flame and i am fire, i am destruction, decay, and desire. i'll hurt you. i'll heal you."
Luke trying to burn the house down. the house being a "carcass." the decay of the bodies and the souls that lived in there before. poppy. hazel. jacob. the children. mr. hill decaying behind the walls of the house. and desire. the red room acted as a room of requirement type of thing for all the children. it also brings them all back together at the end of the day, despite the fact they escaped.
in gabe's case, he is literally the fire that's burning through their family. he is destructing diana's own mental health, and also is leading to the decay of her own mental state. but also the rest of their family because an ignored rot will still rot. desire in diana's case because all she wants for gabe is to be alive. the reason i'm not elaborating much here is because it is so obvious. just look at it. like it's the same picture!!!!!!!! THE HOUSE AND GABE ARE BOTH DESSTRUCTION OF FAMILIES, DECAY OF FAMILIES AND MENTAL HEALTH, AND DESIRE OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN!!!!! THE HALLUCINATIONS NELL SEES BEFORE SHE DIES IN THE HOUSE WHICH ARE EXACERBATED OF THE HOUSE IS EVERYONE APOLOGIZING TO HER AND ARTHUR BEING ALIVE!!! ALL SHE WANTED WAS TO BE SEEN!!!!!!!! sorry, i'm nell crain's #1 support always
but also the destruction and decay and burning of his life. i think i read on a tumblr post something about how gabe's death is so tragic because it was just random. it shouldn't have happened, but it did. it was a violent thing that happened to a family that they never quite got over because they could never move on. just like the family could never move on from the violence that came from the house and how olivia killed herself because of it. not to mention everything else the kids dealt with. violence begets violence, and it was a neverending cycle until dan and the remaining crains took the steps to get better. they recognized they were hurting.
the house hurt them in so many ways, but it also stands because it works as a weird healing way to keep families together. the dudleys. the crains that died. it hurts you because it kills you and doesn't let you leave, even though the crains escaped they could never truly escape, it did heal them. because only when they went back to the house did they face their demons. when nell died and it made them go back, it made everyone realize what they'd been avoiding for years. steven and his whole thing with olivia, shirley and her affair, theo and her closed off-ness, luke and getting better. it hurt them. it healed them.
gabe hurt the family, but also WHEN DAN FINALLY SAW HIM IT HEALED HIM! A LITTLE! IT MADE HIM TAKE THE STEP. HE FINALLY RECOGNIZED THAT HE ALSO NEEDED HELP AND THAT HE WAS SEEING GHOSTS JUST LIKE STEVEN! altho, more of just acknowledging a shared delusion. idk, i might be delusional with that take, but. i just think it makes a lot of sense!!!!! and same with natalie, he hurt her even though she never saw him. and her dad seeing him healed them or started that. agh. death is violent, and seeing gabe's death as a baby has haunted dan forever.
"i'm the perfect stranger who knows you too well"
look, i know this post started as talking about just nell and the house, but it really does apply to all of the crain children. it's just really apparent in nell and also olivia. the House makes these perfect strangers. quite literally with some of them. poppy for olivia, and nell for herself. and like gabe, it's an extension of diana. it's just a lot more explicit with nell and herself. but gabe also works as a parallel for poppy because he exacerbates that fear. the House leads two members of the family to suicide by literally causing it/killing them. it knows exactly what to do and where to place them and when to give that one last push. and so does gabe with diana, by promising her "a world where the sun shines each day."
"you say forget, but i'll remind you/ you can try to hide, you know that i will find you"
once again, steven and dan being paralleled (by me). both have tried to forget, to hide from what happened before. but as we've spoken about AT LENGTH. they cannot fully escape their past without confronting it. steven has to go back. dan has to see gabe. the story can't end without that happening because there is no end to a story without it.
ok, so to restate: the house and gabe are both representations of grief, senseless violence, and mental health. everything that we discussed before (olivia, poppy, the bent neck lady herself) came from the house and because of the house. much like how diana's attempt is because of gabe. the house has taken countless lives and each life taken begets another life. poppy to olivia. olivia to nell. olivia to hugh. only with nell does it stop. steven ignores it, and turns it into a story, claiming it's all mental illness without acknowleding the role the House does play, simultaneously downplaying others around him in different ways. shirley and theo ignore it, luke can't cope and develops an addiction because of it. i'm also convinced it's not just because of what happened, but also what's not making sense. he was so young. all he knows is that there was a man with a hat who hated him and wanted him dead. his mother also wanted him dead and his mother killed his best friend. but then the friend just reappeared like nothing happened. so what was real, and what wasn't real? what really happened. olivia and nell both dead because of how their mental illness was ignored by the people around them, leaving them with the only things that did see them. olivia saw poppy and poppy understood her. in a twisted way, she understood her. nell tried steven, tried shirley, tried theo, tried luke, but it didn't work. no one helped. no one realized until it was too late. so she had to die.
gabe has taken the family hostage by his memory. grief is obvious, he is the manifestation of diana's grief that she has been feeding for 17 years because it just won't go away. how is it supposed to? it doens't help that she has bipolar disorder and that gabe encourages both the manic and depressive phases. i'm alive is manic, while there's a world is depressive. but he also symbolizes dan's repressed grief. i personally think that dan sees him the whole time, but chooses to ignore him. chooses to push it down further. and gabe's death was random. it wasn't supposed to happen. it was just an accident. senseless. because why would it happen. natalie doesn't fully understand what is going on and doesn't have all the pieces like luke, leading both of them to substance abuse and worrying about continuing the cycle. nell sees herself-- and by extention the house-- and is haunted by it for the rest of her life. it leads her to suicide with olivia just like gabe tries to lead diana to suicide. there is someone there to give them the extra push, that grief that they have, the unresolved feelings that remain unresolved not because of any amount of therapy they'll go to or meds they take but because of the direct refusal from their own family. nell's siblings brush her off and don't help her. hugh wants everything to be okay and tries to convince olivia that everything is fine and that she just needs to go away for a while but does not see that olivia is actually suffering and it is all being exacerbated by the house and poppy. dan represses gabe the whole time and all he wants is for diana to get better but he never thinks that he needs to deal with his own grief. he pushes away natalie, saying not everything is about her comfort and that it's about her mother.
at the end of it all, is grieving families just wanting the rest of their family to be okay and to be normal, and to deal with it in their own ways. there's a point where you can't support someone anymore, and that you need to deal with your own grief and your own problems before they do it with them. unfortauntely, in nell's case, it turned out to be her downfall. but the love was still there. the rest was just confetti.
for dan and diana, it was imperative that they split up at the end. they never had a chance to heal on their own, they never were able to split from the senseless violence that had plagued their entire marriage and informed every decision they made. that shaped their grief and how they responded to everything in their life. the support was breaking down and it wasn't working. there was a light, and they can follow it, but they needed to split up.
the point is that unrecognized mental illness and unsupported grief will kill you and will eventually catch up to you. you can pretend it's not there all you want, but it haunts you. you have to let go of the past at some point, but not before exorcising it. or else it will grow and then rot and then decay. you have to be the change you want to see or you will die. maybe that means you have to lean on people more, but it means that everyone needs to work together.
sometimes, you let the rot and decay win, because it has so many years over you. but there's always a chance for something new to start. and somethings will always hold darkness, and be ill, and be not right, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world has to follow in its footsteps. oftentimes, it means that healing must confront the darkness before moving into the light. because without understanding it, you cannot learn from it. the decay and rot serve a purpose, they give more room to grow. and sometimes the rot and decay are what feel safe, but it's like mold. but you can't raze it to the ground and expect to work on fertile soil without understanding what lies beneath. without properly dealing with it instead of expecting it to go away.
"Love is the relinquishment of logic...the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it, or we fight it. But we cannot meet it halfway. Without it, we cannot continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Hill House, not sane, stands against its hills, holding darkness within" - Silence Lay Steadily "I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. The rest is confetti" - Silence Lay Steadily "But some hurts never heal. Some ghosts are never gone. But we go on. Still we go on" - Light "Knowing that the darkest skies will someday see the sun" - Light
there's hope at the end of both these stories. they both end on a note of hope. next to normal and the haunting of hill house, no matter how depressing and how much loss and pain these characters go through, are emerging stronger because of it. or perhaps in spite of it. hill house and its darkness will always stand. gabe will never actually fade out of memory. but there is hope beyond these things. there is more to life than ghosts. there is more to life than suffering. and even if the suffering is more than the happiness, the happiness is still there and can grow just like the suffering if nurtured correctly. if understood. nell's death was a tragedy, much like gabe's, and they can live in memory without being the source of haunting, of festering grief.
it's about the past, and how you deal with it. because you can't really just ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist. but also you can't drown yourself in it. you have to understand it. come to peace with it. yield to it, and then move into the light. out of the decay. and step into lives they think they are too late for, but what has really been waiting for them the entire time.
