Over the past three decades, films in the horror and suspense genre have been among the most profitable films in relation to the volume of tickets and the number of films made. According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Media Psychology by Dr. Glenn Walters, the three main factors that make horror films appealing to society are tension, relevance, and unrealism. This seductive effect is also reflected in modern and historical literature through the Gothic genre. This genre combines fiction and horror, death or romance, creating a strange tension and ambiguity for those who read. Shirley Jackson and Sarah Waters are two prominent authors whose works exude this gothic nature when it comes to plot and characters. The idea of ​​fear versus madness is present in both books at every major and comparable point. Although they are contrasted by different scenarios, there are a plethora of examples that expose the internal similarities and can be categorized according to fear or madness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The colors of The Haunting of Hill House and The Little Stranger are generally dark and caliginous, which adds to the gothic effect for the readers. . In The Haunting of Hill House, the darkness of the house overwhelms the colors; darkness is in the whole aesthetic. (disproportionate house quote and analysis) Additionally, the rooms in Hill House have a significant correlation with aesthetics. Each room the characters stay in is associated with a different color. The room, walls and furniture are all the same color. These colors, while not necessarily dark, prove to play a detrimental role in the characters as the conformity of the rooms leads to Eleanor's subjugation in the house at the end of the story. In the last pages of the book, Eleanor, at night, while in her room, wakes up to find that she is no longer afraid of the house and boldly declares: "I am disappearing little by little in this house, I collapse a little at one point because all this noise is breaking me; why are others afraid? (Jackson 183). The color conformity of his room and the aesthetics of the house play an important role not only in the gothic effect that readers perceive, but go beyond and play a role in his ultimate demise. In The Little Stranger, the story begins when Dr. Faraday describes Hall of Hundreds; the “haunted house” of the story. He describes it in a frightening and in-depth way that allows the reader to understand the house from the beginning of the story. In the opening words of the novel, Dr. Faraday states: “I remember very clearly the house itself, which seemed to me to be a real mansion. I remember its lovely, aging details: the worn red brick, the cracked windows and the weathering. sandstone borders. They made it look fuzzy and slightly uncertain - like ice cream, I thought, just beginning to melt in the sun... the thrill of the house itself, coming to me from every surface - from the polishing of the floor, the patina of wooden chairs and cabinets, the bevel of a mirror, the scroll of a picture frame." This description of the house is an effective way of giving the reader a deeper understanding of the setting in which the story will take place In the quote, Dr. Faraday remembers the house he saw as a child. Growing up, his mother was a servant at Hundreds Hall, so he spent a lot of time admiring the glory of the house.Striking details included in his description, especially the simile of the ice-like border, create the image of a magnificent mansion in the reader's mind. This becomes significant when Dr. Faraday sees the house again in the present day and is shocked by how the beauty of the house has been replaced by a dull, black skeleton of its previous depiction. The new darkness of the house affects the reader and makes the novel's gothic tendencies even more prominent as new supernatural events and themes begin to unfold. The role of the aesthetics of the houses in these stories mainly correlates with the feeling of fear. within the characters. The Little Stranger begins with descriptions of the fall of Hundreds Hall. British literary critic Joy Lo Dico writes about the book's protagonist describing: "He remembers his first visit to Hundreds Hall, when he was a child, the house was full of Edwardian style and his mother was in the army in service. » For Dr. Faraday, the shift from his idea of ​​this prestigious and magnificent house to the drab and dilapidated state it has fallen into creates feelings of unease and fear as he now visits a a place so different from his memories. For the rest of the characters living there, the neglected state and dark aesthetic that matches it also correlates with fear as more and more supernatural events begin to unfold, but never cause a psychological demise in the main characters. In The Haunting of Hill House, the aesthetic of the house also uniquely provokes fear in almost all of the main characters. The doctor specifically chose the house because of its dilapidated and "haunted" condition, so that he could measure its effects, and the other characters soon come to recognize this as well. Eleanor, however, relates more to the madness of this as she feels that she actually becomes the house as she recognizes the aesthetic aspects of it, such as its blue room and its disproportionate architecture. She slowly succumbs to the house itself as her sanity declines and the starting point of this demise is being surrounded by the haunted aesthetic. Thematically, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger have a lot of overlap. The theme of family is present in both stories. In The Haunting of Hill House, family is explored from the first pages as the reader is introduced to the protagonist, Eleanor, who has just lost her mother. She is not devastated by this loss, however, as she came to resent her increasingly needy mother as she grew up. It is later alluded to that she may have chosen to let her mother die after ignoring her request for medication in the middle of the night. Eleanor also has a sister with whom she does not get along, and the only mention of her is early in the story when she condescendingly demands that Eleanor leave their shared car. After arriving at Hill House, she befriends Theo and they become good friends. Eleanor, Theo, along with the other two guests, Luke and Dr. Montague, create their own type of family after becoming friends through the paranormal activities they must witness and survive together. When we look deeper into this dynamic and the history of the house, the theme of family in the story is not comforting, but a source of confinement for the four guests of Hill House. Locked together in the house, they forget the world around them and struggle to break the cycle of confinement that ultimately leads to their demisepsychological. The only figure mentioned who managed to break this cycle of confinement was Hugh Crain, the original owner of the house whose death generated gossip and rumors. Eleanor's new family is what causes her to crash land on a property bordering the estate in the final chapters of the book, thus taking her life and painfully confining her to Hill House forever. The family dynamics in The Little Stranger can be explored most meaningfully in two of the main characters: Dr. Faraday and Caroline. Unlike the "family" formed by the characters in Hill House, Mrs. Ayres and her children live in their "haunted" house, with Dr. Faraday as their visiting doctor and friend. Dr Faraday grew up around Hundreds Hall house as a child, his mother being a servant. He very clearly remembers the wonder and awe he felt while he was there, but that feeling faded as he grew older and revisited the house. Without his mother, Dr. Faraday struggles throughout the story to fit in with the rest of the family group. Unlike Eleanor who is the outsider character in Hill House, he is unsure of his place in the world. Eleanor finds her place after being with the others at Hill House, but Dr. Faraday constantly struggles with this problem. Caroline is another character in The Little Stranger who plays a central role in the story's family theme. Although she is part of the family and the house, she feels that the house has walled off her childhood and subtly but increasingly resents her family. Despite her spirit, she is always excluded from the attention of her mother or brother. Ultimately, she commits suicide by jumping from the balcony of the house to her death with no clear reason as to why she jumped. This theme of family is a key aspect of both stories, especially when examined through the lens of fear and madness. The theme of family parallels a feeling of both fear and madness in the case of different characters. In The Haunting of Hill House and The Little Stranger, this affects Eleanor and Dr. Faraday more significantly. These two characters sometimes feel excluded in their stories. In Eleanor's case, she has no real family, and her friends at Hill House, while initially acting as a positive surrogate family, ultimately contribute to her madness at the end of the story. Since the house targets her from her first days there, the others band together to try to protect her, but this ends up making her feel attacked. At the end of the story, this “family” aspect leads to pure madness as she wants to go through the house at night to wake them up to scare them. She discovers a new sense of family with the spirits of the house, and her disappearance is the result of the familial actions of others. In The Little Stranger, Dr. Faraday feels the same feeling of marginalization. As a child, he felt like he belonged at Hundred's Hall and visited his mother. Today, he visits another family and still struggles to really find his place. In this sense, the family is driving him to madness as he struggles throughout the book to interact with the family. Caroline is another example of madness running through the family. When Roderick, her brother, begins to have delusions and severe post-traumatic stress disorder because of the war, she fears for both him and him. This preoccupation proves detrimental, however, particularly in her interactions with Dr. Faraday, as she begins to decline throughout the story as she continues to interact with Dr. Faraday and his family and ultimately commits suicide. Little Stranger has sudden, shocking and ambiguous endingswhich leave readers perplexed and interpreting the actions of the characters. Both end with the main characters committing suicide, with their homes seemingly to blame. Ambiguity in conclusions is not an uncommon trait in Gothic stories. The death present in the endings is both the result of a comparable psychological disappearance, but the disappearance itself is caused by antithic forces. Eleanor struggles throughout the story to fit in with her new group of friends, especially as the house increasingly seems to "choose" her. Early in her stay at Hill House, magical realism begins to haunt and torture all of the new residents, but especially Eleanor. From the beginning, the doctor becomes concerned and warns his guests, saying, “Definitely promise me that you will leave, as quickly as possible, if you begin to feel the house catching up with you” (Jackson 46). The magical realisms start soon after, but no one wants to leave. After their first night there, Luke asks them all to accompany him down the hall. There they find an inscription on the wall that says "Help Eleanor get home." Eleanor is at first anxious and furious at the house for drawing attention to her. She is continually tormented by this same message at various times throughout the book. Certainly, but slowly, it is starting to change. Her changes are subtle at first, but gain intensity as she begins to form a sort of exclusive bond with Hill House. When Luke grimly responds, “We are on a desert island,” Eleanor’s response is, “I can’t imagine any other world than Hill House” (Jackson 73). She begins to become more and more connected to the home. , and since things frightening to others happen at night, she is not frightened, but annoyed and disturbed by the house. After spending about a week at Hill House, her psyche is completely damaged and she reaches the psychotic breaking point. While walking towards a stream with Theo and Luke, she hears her name being called and runs away to a clearing. However, the call of her name no longer frightens her, as the narrator writes: “[She] was tight and. safe. It's not cold at all; she thought, “It’s not cold.” It's not cold at all. » She closed her eyes and leaned against the bank and thought: "Don't let me go, then stay" (Jackson). 204). In this scene from the story, Eleanor stops being frightened by supernatural forces and finds comfort in them. She doesn't want them to stop being with her and is upset when she realizes that Luke and Theo are not with her. After this incident, in the middle of the night, she plays the role of scaring people when she leaves her room and starts running around the house, knocking on her "family" doors and screaming throughout the mansion. At the start of their stay they complained of some freezing spots throughout the house, but after leaving her door Eleanor describes them as "sleepy and luxuriously warm". Within minutes, her fall deepens when she believes her dead mother is in the house and hears a voice calling her name. After following this voice, she begins knocking on doors desperately to find the source, before the narrator writes "Poor house, thought Eleanor, I had forgotten Eleanor, now they will have to open their doors" (Jackson 219 ). this quote reveals the extent of his damaged psyche. She no longer even realizes who she is and who she is with and begins to run around the house, like a child, in an attempt to escape the others who are capturing her. In The Little Stranger, the ending is just as ambiguous. Throughout history, Caroline has been constantly.