In her novel Hangsaman, Jackson repeats door scenes to evoke in readers a sense of the inbetween. Some writers are well-known for their ability to evoke a sense of the uncanny in readers. The home is (hopefully) where we experience peaceful pleasure and security.
The word ‘unheimlich’ is the opposite of ‘heimlich’, which has various definitions, all related to ‘the home’ e.g. Through repression or burying, the uncanny is never able to be fully comprehended - it can, however, be sensed or felt. Though we may get a sense of the familiarity, its true connection to the past is never quite in our reach. The uncanny represents the liminal space between what is capable of being understood as outward in the world and what is hidden.
Freud and the uncanny, or unheimlich.įreud described the uncanny as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar”.
Though the graphic art below focuses on peepholes - from literal holes in walls to views through trees in a forest - in literature there are established terms for describing the unsettled feeling you get when you look through something to something else. Peephole: a small hole that may be looked through, especially one in a door through which callers may be identified before the door is opened.
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