Will The Haunting of Bly Manor follow the same themes as Hill House?

For its sophomore season, The Haunting of Hill House will have a new story titled The Haunting of Bly Manor.

The Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House has been renewed for a second season and has officially become an anthology series. Although many assumed the series had already been renewed for a Season 2 it was only just confirmed on February 21 to be true. The renewal came with a multi-year contract so we can expect to see many more haunted houses in the future.

The first season was loosely based on the book of the same name by Shirley Jackson, it followed the Crain family as they dealt with the damage done to their family after staying in Hill House for one summer. The series was more than just a supernatural thriller that brought more tears than scares. Using the themes included with a typical haunting, the series explored mental illness, addiction, emotional trauma, and need to cope with grief.

The five Crain children represented the five stages of grief as they came to terms with the horrors they experienced in their youth.

The original novel had similar themes, with an ambiguous ending asking the question, “was it a haunting or a hallucination?” The series ended on a similar note with fans torn between taking the final scene evidently and believing it’s a delusion. Most likely the second season will follow a similar pattern and themes but go in an even darker direction.

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Set to debut in 2020, The Haunting of Bly Manor will be based the on the novella, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James.

The Turn of the Screw

Possible spoilers ahead!

Published in 1898, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James is a gothic horror novella about two children and their governess living in Bly Manor, a remote estate that may or may not be haunted. It’s creepy, sinister and if you let yourself think about it, as confusing as Memento. A tale about a physical haunted location that’s conveyed through the humans within the story. The strangeness occurs through individuals, as the ghosts are portrayed as extensions of normal reality.

Told from the perspective of an unnamed governess for two distantly strange children, Miles and Flora. The oddly silent and charming children are well-mannered but ultimately unnatural.

Miles gets expelled from school for an unknown reason, and often implies he has the capability to do bad things. Flora is a sweet little girl described as angelic but behaves in a disquieting manner. At one point the governess stares at Flora and suddenly sees the ugly underneath, though it’s primarily in her mind and created from her own distrust of Flora.

The governess comes to believe that the children are not only aware of the ghosts living in the house but accuses Miles and Flora of sharing secrets with them.

What to expect

One of the major takeaways from the story was the doubt it raised. Very similar to Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” which ended with a large question mark, the “Turn of the Screw” ends just as mysteriously. Some wonder if the event is a delusion in the governess’s mind or a real haunting.

There are several moments that suggest the governess is going insane, but there are also several moments that suggests she isn’t. The first season of The Haunting heavily diverted from the source material in order to focus more on Jackson’s themes of mental illness and fear-controlled trauma rather than just copying what happened in the book. There’s a chance something similar could happen for Bly Manor.

A lot of James’s novella revolved around moral corruption, the ruining of innocence. The story gives off a strong sensual vibe, the feeling of something forbidden lingering in the shadows. It feels similar to how parents try to preserve their children’s sexual ignorance by working around it until puberty hits them like a freight train.

The two ghosts, when their identities are revealed, were two people in an inappropriate affair that tainted their everlasting souls. The governess works to keep the ghosts from “corrupting” the children but ultimately fails. Whether this corruption is the knowledge of sex is never confirmed but it’s heavily implied.

The double-standard expectations put on women is another theme. The governess is given the duty of caring for the children while running the house at the same time, but she falls flat from a supposed breakdown. The only help available is the housekeeper, Mrs. Goose, who often doubts everything the governess says.

This is also shown through the children and the “boys will be boys” excuse. Miles is forgiven repeatedly while Flora is constantly under suspicion for doing even less than her brother.

Knowing all this, I’d say it’s a good guess that Bly Manor will focus on isolation, social expectations, insanity, and creepy children. Season 2 should also have a much smaller cast than Season 1, with only four main characters and two ghosts. Hill House felt crowded, not just the house, but the chaos consuming the characters. If Bly Manor follows James’s story it’ll be the exact opposite.

The Haunting of Bly Manor will debut on Netflix in 2020.