The September House

By the conclusion of the novel, it is clear that Orlando intends her tale to be read in two different ways simultaneously: as a possible ghost story and as a study of the ruinous impact of trauma and domestic abuse. To this end, Margaret and Hal’s critical discussion of The Exorcist becomes a primer for how to interpret the supernatural events of the novel.  Hal is horrified by the film, and his response is focused on his own experience of discomfort. However, Margaret provides a far more nuanced interpretation when she argues that horror is designed to reveal its audience’s deepest fears. As she explains to Hal, “These movies are so memorable because they play off things that we as a society find terrifying” (43). By way of example, she cites the film’s interest in children, as well as children’s place within their parents’ broader fears about health, security, and safety. Hal scoffs at much of Margaret’s analysis, but because Orlando often relates the novel’s events from Margaret’s unique view of the world, the protagonist’s “reading” of The Exorcist and her words of wisdom on horror hold far more analytical weight than Hal’s dismissive response.

This scene therefore becomes a lens through which the entire novel can be analyzed, for every one of the narrative’s supernatural elements functions symbolically and hints at Margaret’s experience of domestic abuse and repression of trauma. Master Vale is one of the novel’s key uses of horror as a reflection of Margaret’s deepest fears and traumas. He is eventually revealed to be Theodore Vale, the abused son of George Vale, who was a local captain of industry and one of the house’s former owners. Margaret and Hal discover the paddle that George once used to beat his children; that object becomes symbolic of the cycle of abuse when the narrative reveals that Master (Theodore) Vale also became an abuser himself. On a practical, mundane level, he is discovered to be the culprit behind the series of missing children whose whereabouts were never ascertained, and his torture chamber is eventually discovered in the basement. However, these physical details of his life take on a new and even more sinister meaning as his crimes and violent tendencies are implicitly linked with Hal’s. Throughout the entire course of the novel, the “pranksters,” Master Vale’s child-victims, repeat their chorus of “He’s down there!” to Margaret, and Orlando eventually reveals that the basement is also the final resting place of the murdered Hal. At this point, the narrative indicates that Margaret has been using Master Vale to sublimate her own traumatic memories of killing her husband. In this way, Orlando blurs the boundaries between both families to emphasize the distinctive cycle of abuse that repeats across time and cultural contexts.

However, Master Vale stands in for Hal in other ways as well. Given that he—like the deceased Hal—is confined to the basement for the majority of the narrative, the basement and all its gruesome secrets represent the deepest recesses of Margaret’s psyche: the realities that she constantly strives to hide from both herself and from the rest of the world. In this light, the various “pranksters” represent the idea that even heavily suppressed traumas will find a way to surface, and unless they are directly addressed and processed, they will wreak havoc on a person’s everyday life—just as the pranksters manifest in the upper regions of Margaret’s house and upend her routine and relationships.

On yet another level, Margaret’s efforts to keep Master Vale in the basement also recall the lengths she once went to in order to keep Katherine safe from Hal’s physical violence. Master Vale, like Hal in the depths of Margaret’s fears, threatens children. The novel’s ending is therefore left ambiguous to redirect attention back to Margaret’s initial statement about the nature of horror itself: as a symbolic manifestation of very real fears. The author has therefore created a novel that engages with highlights the problems with repressing trauma, including addiction and domestic violence, via a landscape of psychological horror.