The Dreams in the Witch House

I understand why Walter Gilman spent so much time in bed in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”. The poor lad was bored to the point of distraction! Personally, I almost fell asleep halfway through my reading of this piece, and after I was done I needed a nap before I felt prepared to pen this entry about the work. (This after about a pot of coffee, no less.)

Fresh from my siesta, I perused this story a second time and found it no more appealing. Having said that, here’s what I think is going on in this story: You’ve got Gilman, a youth who likely was never tightly wrapped in the first place, living with a couple of similar nut jobs in some sort of macabre fraternity house with a horrific history. He’s attending college in Arkham, studying mathematics and otherwise trying to tinker with the “space time continuum”, and he’s getting a tad burned out. He feels ill and starts having hallucinations and dreams about shapes. (Geometry, anyone?) So he does what quite a lot of overtired, stressed out people do when they’re confronted with more than they’re physically or mentally capable of handling: he snaps. Yes, he snaps, but not before spending an extended period descending into madness, sleepwalking and having sensory delusions. What does he do both during and after this decline into lunacy? He kills people, most notably small children, in a state of seeming unconsciousness, and ultimately he kills himself.

Or, at least, I hope that’s what happening in this story, otherwise I’m going back to sleep. If there’s no deeper meaning to this than the flimsy story Lovecraft gives us? I find it without redeem. The characters were one dimensional. The setting was bland, which was a first for Mr. Lovecraft, at least in the stories of his we’ve read so far in this course. The action was nearly nonexistent.

I liked that the hauntings, so to speak, Gilman experienced involved a woman accused of being a witch. Had Lovecraft followed this angle more closely and given me more about the history of the witch house (and, subsequently, the witch), I think I would have liked this story more. As it was, it seemed like a topic introduced then skimmed over too quickly to be consequential.

I did notice in this work - more than in others of his - Lovecraft’s seeming racism and misogyny. It’s pretty telling that the only female in this work is the wizened Keziah and the only person of color is the uber threatening evil black man. Of course, it’s likely indicative of the time in which he was writing and not terribly misplaced for that era.

I said at the beginning of this course when we read “Pickman’s Model” that I’d reserve judgment on whether or not I liked H.P. Lovecraft’s work until we’d read more of it. After this the fifth story we’ve read, I have to say I don’t see myself actively seeking out other works of his after this course.