Faculty of Design

Illustration

Greta-Jane Belferman

Eleanor

8 x 10 inches, Mixed media and digital collage on paper

“This illustration is inspired by Shirley Jackon’s famous novella “The Haunting of Hill House”. Here is the tragic Eleanor, who, in her loneliness, becomes inseparable from the house. The fusion of her face with the building reflects the novel’s central idea that Hill House does not merely haunt its inhabitants; it absorbs them. Eleanor’s already fragile sense of identity erodes as the invisible boundaries between herself and the house collapse.Eleanor’s interior life, her thoughts, emotions, memory, have been replaced by the corridors, windows, and empty rooms of Hill House. Her self has been corroded by an external and oppressive force.Hill House is not just a location but a condition of mind. It suggests that the true haunting is the loss of self, where longing, isolation, and desire for belonging become the very mechanisms through which the house takes hold.The question that remains now is whether Hill House is an external force acting upon Eleanor or amplifying something already present within her.”