The long-awaited follow-up season to The Haunting of Hill House has finally arrived to overwhelmingly positive reviews. The Haunting of Bly Manor, although similar to its predecessor on the surface, is actually a far cry from Hill House. A young American woman named Dani (Victoria Pedretti) takes on the position of an au pair for two young orphaned children at a rural English manor. She is hired by their Uncle Henry (Henry Thomas) who reveals to Dani that the position had proven troublesome to fill because the previous au pair, Miss Jessel (Tahirah Sharif), died by suicide while on the job. When Dani arrives at the estate, she finds there was far more to the original story of Miss Jessel than she was led to believe. Her fascination with her predecessor’s life causes Dani to reflect upon her own recent loss. At Bly Manor, the ghosts of the house are not necessarily the spirits themselves; they are the individuals, both living and dead, and the relationships that consume them. The Haunting of Bly Manor explores the ways in which possessive relationships act as the catalyst for characters becoming possessed through supernatural means.
Dani’s Lifelong Relationship
The first time we see the Yellow Spectacled Spectre
The appearance of a ghost is always a powerful moment in horror pieces, and the creators of Hill House and Bly Manor leverage their symbolism for maximum emotional impact. We are shown our very first ghost of the series before Dani even makes it to the manor. The Yellow Spectacled Spectre appears in the mirror behind Dani in her room–a young man with large yellow glowing eyes. Judging by her reaction, and the fact that she had all the mirrors in the room covered, it is safe to assume that she has seen this ghost lurking in the reflection behind her before. Whoever he was when living, he clearly was an integral part of Dani’s life, so much so that whenever she sees herself, she also sees him. The pieces fit into place when we discover in episode 4 who he was: Eddie, her childhood sweetheart, whom she was due to marry before his untimely death. “I thought I was being selfish,” Dani tells him when she breaks up with him. “That I could just stick it out and, eventually, I would feel how I was supposed to.” (We later learn the implication of sexual repression between Dani and Eddie when Dani’s quiet lesbian relationship with the gardener, Jamie [Amelia Eve], unfolds at the manor, exposing more themes of sexual autonomy and exploration, but that is another complex narrative on its own.) Moments after Dani ends the engagement, Eddie is hit by a truck and killed. Although Eddie is portrayed as a good-natured, all- around decent guy, he never asks Dani to elaborate on her feelings. He simply responds in anger to her dissolving the relationship. Dani clearly harbors guilt over her decision to embrace her autonomy at the expense of her heteronormative relationship, and it is that emotional response that fuels her haunting. She is stalked by the Yellow Spectacled Spectre to the point of claustrophobia–a triggered response that echoes her emotional state while engaged to Eddie. Death did not free Dani – it simply made her a captive in another way.
The Identity of the Dolls
Flora’s doll modeled after Dani – with Miss Jessel in the background
Once at the estate, we are introduced to the orphaned children, Flora and Miles (Amelia Bea Smith and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). Flora spends a significant amount of time playing with her dolls in the dollhouse that resembles Bly Manor. Not only is the dollhouse creepy, seeming to have a mind of its own, but it serves as another powerful symbol. On Dani’s first night, she asks Flora, “Is that me?” referencing the doll that resembles the au pair. Flora responds with, “No, silly, you’re you.” When I first watched this moment, I was briefly confused. Flora has a doll for everyone that lives (and died) in the house, but instead of just affirmatively answering Dani’s question, she responds with an incredibly obvious statement. So there has to be a hidden meaning, right? Of course. The show’s creator, Mike Flanagan, said in an interview to Vanity Fair, “Ownership, claiming someone, ceasing to look at them as a human, and instead, looking at them as an object, as a doll — we can draw lines to all sorts of toxic romantic relationships that way.”[1] In other words, we can make an argument that the dollhouse is the symbolic centerpiece, and it’s handed to us in the very first episode. In her research on possessive behavior, Lita Firby notes that “the control of objects becomes an important aspect of dominance and power relations in early childhood.”[2] For Flora, who is still coming to terms with the deaths of her parents, playing with dolls offers her an opportunity to create a world in which she is control of her relationships. Her struggles in the series arise from her growing awareness that this power is an illusion. It is also worth noting that the children seem to have a firmer grasp on what autonomy means than many of the adults. When Miles is at school, he asks his teacher about the Gospels, about how spirits needed permission to enter the body of the swine before they were drowned in the lake. It is this idea of possession by consent that foreshadows how the series will grapple with the destructive undercurrents of a possessive relationship in which both parties are willing participants.
Love and Possession
Rebecca discovers Peter has died and that his spirit lingers at Bly Manor
The toxic relationship between Rebecca Jessel and Peter Quint, Uncle Henry’s valet (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), is frequently commented on throughout the series. The supposed reason that Rebecca killed herself was because Peter stole money from their employers and ran away without her. Jamie tells Dani, “I saw how he twisted himself into her. I know why people mix up love and possession, but guess what that means? He didn’t just trap her, he trapped himself.” The subtext and foreshadowing delivered in these simple lines is especially poignant as we learn more about the pair’s relationship. On the surface level, Jamie is talking about their co-dependency, a cornerstone of many unhealthy relationships. What the audience doesn’t yet know is that we, along with the characters, have been misled concerning Peter’s whereabouts.
The audience knows nothing of the soon-to-be-revealed storyline: Peter’s murder by the original vengeful spirit of the house and his subsequent realization that he cannot leave the grounds of Bly Manor. He believes that possessing a body will allow him to make it beyond the gate. His first attempt is with Rebecca herself. When she discovers that Peter is dead, she is willing to let Peter take her over if it means that they can leave Bly Manor and be together forever. The fact that she volunteered is key and references the aforementioned discussion on how permission is always needed to make two people one. Rebecca is allowing him to take control, acknowledging that she will be surrendering autonomy and authority over her own body, blurring the lines between herself and Peter. When they discover that this plan does not work, he convinces Rebecca that she must kill herself if she wants them to truly be together. She drowns herself in the lake, and finds herself trapped with Peter at Bly Manor. But Rebecca’s story is far from a happy one. She is not reunited with her lover in the afterlife so much as she is trapped by him. Her growing awareness of this distinction shifts Peter from being a comforting presence toward a haunting one.
The ghostly apparitions in The Haunting of Bly Manor are not the jump scares and deathly ghouls that we grew to love in Hill House as they represent something different entirely. They are the failed relationships of great loves gone sour, haunting the residents of Bly Manor as they struggle to understand themselves as individuals. Supernatural possession is used as a conduit for the real possession that occurs in all-consuming relationships, and the creators of the show make that plain. The mantra that has to be chanted prior to possession: “It’s you, it’s me, it’s us.”
Notes:
[1] Breznican, Anthony. “Beware: Here’s Your First Look at The Haunting of Bly Manor.” Vanity Fair, August 24, 2020.
[2] Furby, Lita. “The origins and early development of possessive behavior.” Political Psychology (1980): 30-42.
Related: Mariel Caputo on mirroring in Robert Wise’s The Haunting. Dawn Keetley on Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and its film adaptation.
Alia Chaudhry is a graduate from the University of Virginia, and an avid horror film fan. Although she is currently pursuing a master’s degree and has plans to have a career in medicine, she has always had an interest in creative writing and filmmaking. Her favorite horror movies include Insidious, The Conjuring, and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. She is new to freelance writing, and is excited for any future endeavors. This post is followed by another post on repressed sexuality and guilt in The Haunting of Bly Manor.
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