The September House

“I can’t stand that woman, Hal said to me after she left, but I found her to be pleasant enough and, over the weeks of her dropping by, grew to like her.”

This passage indicates that Hal and Margaret’s marriage is deeply problematic. Although the truth of Hal’s abuse will be revealed only later, this early description indicates that Hal exerts an undue degree of control over his wife’s external interactions, making unreasonable pronouncements that limit the scope of her life. His behavior is designed to mirror observations of real-life domestic abuse.

“What I think is so neat about horror movies is that they shine a light on what we think is scary. Not just ghosts and demons, but what we find really scary.”

Margaret’s assertion in this scene represents the core of the novel’s thematic focus on the uses of psychological horror as a genre, for the narrative as a whole is ultimately a meditation on addiction, abuse, trauma, and family discord. What is “scary” in this family is the impact that Hal’s violence has on his wife and daughter. Rather than writing a straightforward novel about domestic abuse, the author chooses to use psychological horror to explore these issues indirectly.

“I flung my arms around her. With that touch, I was again sent howling back to the day she died, to the unrecognizable dining room, the smell of the roast, the jagged shadows of the candles, the grinning man, the swinging axe.”

Margaret is a deeply empathetic character. Here, she is able to share Fredricka’s experiences just by touching her. Although this scene is part of the novel’s fantastical, horror-tinged imagery, it is also meant to illustrate Margaret’s empathy and her need for connection. Because Hal isolates her, she lacks friends, and she therefore shows the ghostly Fredricka the sympathy and concern that she desperately needs herself. 

“Hal hadn’t exactly made things easy on her, and although Katherine pretended not to be, she was always one to hold a grudge.”

This passage is part of one of the novel’s early moments of foreshadowing. The author hints at but does not fully describe the abusive nature of Hal’s relationship with both Margaret and Katherine until later in the narrative. At this point, the author raises questions about just what exactly went “wrong” in this family’s life and why Katherine has spent so many years avoiding her father.

“You’d be surprised how many upsetting things aren’t harmful in the end, if you consider the definition of harm in the strictest sense.”

This passage is a veiled reference to Margaret and Hal’s relationship and the abuse that characterized it. Although Margaret has not yet overtly discussed Hal’s abuse, it is clear that he was both verbally and physically abusive. Margaret’s reflections reveal her propensity for denying the severity of the problem, telling herself that nothing happened that she could not handle.

“Edie and I spent the remainder of the morning on the front porch, rocking and talking and laughing. It was enough to make me forget all about the chaos that reigned in the house just behind me. I was very thankful for Edie’s friendship.”

This passage reveals Edie’s characterization as well as Margaret’s. Their friendship is important to both women, and Edie is one of the few people whom Margaret is totally honest with. Edie has her reservations about the house and prefers not to come inside, but she is happy to spend time with Margaret on the porch, and she does respect Margaret’s choices about how to manage the house and its pranksters. Margaret has a much more open and respectful relationship with Edie than she does with her husband Hal.

“I’m afraid my husband used to have a problem with drinking.”

Hal and Margaret’s real troubles are not the haunted house, but Hal’s addiction and the toll that it has taken on the family over the years. Here, Margaret speaks to the police, and although she does admit that Hal has a history of addiction, she does not share that he has begun to drink again. Denial is one of Margaret’s key coping mechanisms, and she is not ready to admit the truth to herself yet.

“‘You always were a shitty liar.’ ‘I had a bad dream and plumb fell out of bed. I bumped into the counter and it must have bruised my arm. I stepped on a rake and the handle hit me in the face.’”

Suspense works on multiple levels in this novel. As the narrative progresses, the author slowly reveals more about the house and the nature of its hauntings. However, Orlando also reveals the fraught family dynamics and abuse that are at the core of the family’s relationships. Here, Katherine alludes to but does not directly mention that Hal was, in fact, abusive. This is the first time that any direct mention is made of his abuse.

“Eventually, Hal putting his hands on me became commonplace.”

This passage indicates that Margaret eventually became inured to Hal’s abuse and to the wedge it drove between her and her daughter. Katherine never got used to her father’s violence, and she blamed her mother for enabling it. The contrast between the two women reveals the generational differences that occur within abusive family dynamics, as the children are sometimes more willing to acknowledge the dysfunction that occurred.

“The screaming was equal in volume throughout the house which seemed to indicate that it wasn’t coming from one place in particular but rather was emanating from the house itself.”

The house itself, with all of its violence and hauntings, symbolizes the family’s fraught relationship and troubled history. That the screaming is diffuse and comes from the house itself indicates that both Margaret’s and Katherine’s emotional struggles are the result of Hal’s abuse.

“It was when I reached the first floor and turned towards the kitchen that I saw him. The basement door was open and standing in front of it was what looked like a man, but not quite right. He was impossibly skinny and tall, too tall.”

This passage, the novel’s first description of Master Vale, eerie echoes its physical description of Hal. It is one of the first indications that Master Vale serves as a stand-in for Hal and that his acts of violence are supernatural manifestations of Hal’s abuse and the harm that he poses to Margaret and Katherine.

“He’s down there.”

This is the refrain that Margaret hears over and over from the various prankster ghost children. They are speaking of Master Vale, the malevolent ghost, in the basement. This is also what Margaret hears from several hotel employees. Her certainty that perfect strangers are repeating something she often hears from ghosts indicates her deep emotional distress and helps to build suspense within the narrative.

“Hal didn’t share my desire to learn more about the house. He had never really been the type to delve deeper into a situation, to really grasp its underpinnings.”

This passage speaks to Hal’s characterization as well as the deep differences between Hal and Margaret. Margaret is contemplative and analytical, and Hal does not care to interpret. This difference is on display in their opposing reactions to the film The Exorcist, but it also crops up throughout the narrative, further characterizing their partnership as ill-fitting.

“Claire always told me I shouldn’t feel guilty, Katherine said. She told me I couldn’t have done anything to protect you, not really anyway. She told me that standing up to him would have been dangerous. I was just a kid.”

The abuse that Katherine endures and witnesses as a child impacts her throughout her life, even after she grows up and leave the home. She does feel guilt because she did not protect her mother and anger towards her father, but she also sees herself through the framework of resilience rather than victimhood.

“There are rules to these things. Everything is survivable. Once I figured out what kind of life Hal and I would be living together, what with his anger and his hands, I knew I needed to figure out some solutions.”

Survival and resilience are powerful forces for Margaret, who finds ways to empower herself through the very fact that she has prevailed despite the ravages of her deeply problematic marriage. Although she employs denial in her recollections of her past with Hal, she also sees herself as a survivor.

“I had no intention of leaving Hal back then, and I certainly had no intention of leaving the house now.”

In many ways, the house symbolizes Margaret’s abusive relationship with Hal. Just as she was unwilling to leave Hal, she is now unwilling to leave the house, and her reticence also demonstrates the long-term impact of his efforts to isolate her. The house represents both trauma and stability for Margaret, for although the house and her marriage are the sources of all of the anguish and difficulty in her life, they are also, in their own way, her home.

“The Vales aren’t buried in the woods like Elias’ mother. They’re buried in that big cemetery in town. You know, the one by St. Dymphna’s?”

The burial site of the Vale family is noteworthy for its location: St. Dymphna’s is a local church. In the Catholic tradition, St. Dymphna is the patron saint of mental health conditions. The author’s choice of St. Dymphna’s as a name has symbolic meaning and emphasizes the presence of mental health crises within the narrative.

“I knew how difficult running away could be.”

Margaret, like many women in her position, struggles to leave her abusive relationship. Hal has effectively cut her off from the rest of the world and convinced her that there is little for her outside of the home. She does remain a resilient character in spite of Hal’s desire to victimize her, and ultimately, she is able to break free, if only on her own terms and not by leaving Hal.

“The pranksters were fickle, it would seem, in who could see them and who couldn’t, but my muddled brain was having trouble making heads or tails of that at the moment.”

The novel ultimately treats its supernatural elements with ambiguity, raising questions about the nature of both horror and reality. Here, Margaret’s understanding of the division between reality and the supernatural has begun to unravel, and she is unsure which aspects of the house and its hauntings are fabricated.

“We’ve got family history, you know. Her father, he spent half his life in hospitals.”

In this passage, the author does not suggest that Margaret or her father are to blame for their mental health conditions. Instead, she continues to engage with the inherited nature of mental health conditions and addresses the ways in which these conditions can impact multiple generations of the same family.

“It was a rare line in the sand for me, perhaps the first one I had ever drawn. I hardly ever outright disagreed with Hal, that was the rule.”

Margaret’s “rules” are part of her emotional response to trauma and are a key aspect of her characterization. By reframing her marriage as something “survivable” and Hal’s abuse as “manageable,” she creates the complex list of rules to avoid provoking Hal’s wrath, and these details are just part of how she manages to survive Hal’s abuse.

“I’m not sick, and I’m not leaving this house.”

Margaret’s unwillingness to leave the house indicates the complex and damaging nature of long-term abuse. Margaret, although unhappy, believes that life in the house (and in her marriage) is survivable and does not want to leave because she cannot conceive of a life away from Hal.

“The last night anyone saw him, he came back to this house.”

At this point in the narrative, Margaret’s oft-repeated refrain of “He’s down there!” takes on a sinister new significance. It will soon become evident that Margaret killed Hal and that much of what she has been seeing and hearing are part of her subconscious attempt to bury the truth of what happened. Although the ending of the novel reverts to horror, the psychological plotline is important both within the narrative and thematically, and this moment of revelation is one of the most important of the novel’s realistic elements.