Friedan points out that, though feminists of the first forty years of the century had made tremendous gains politically for women, the fifties found the middle-class white woman back in the home. Many of these women found the return to domesticity less than satisfying. Women, as Friedan notes, wanted to find fulfillment in the mythic image of the happy housewife, but instead many of them felt useless and dissatisfied. Their roles within the home seemed connected only to caregiving, often at the expense of their own identities. Its domestic space is insane and malevolent.
Every cornice exudes an atmosphere of patriarchal order stifling in every respect.
When the house was first finished, Mrs. Crain died on its doorstep. Other women over the years also die in the house. Its evil seems to be strangely directed toward women, particularly Eleanor, one of the people Dr. Montague has invited to the house. Hugh Crain, its original owner and architect, has designed Hill House without any square corners. Nothing is what it seems.