Real Estate Agency: Hundreds’ Sentience in Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger (2018) 

[page 35] Abstract: This article examines the sentience of Hundreds Hall in Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger (2018), and its not entirely unhuman relationship with the film’s protagonist, Dr. Faraday. Building on theories of sentient/anthropomorphic houses, this analysis situates the film as a unique contribution to narratives of this kind. Through a close visual analysis of the complexity and subtlety of the relationship between Hundreds and Faraday, the author argues that without keen focus on the use of visual refrains, especially with the oculus and staircase, this key element of the narrative may escape notice. It is this aspect of the film, ultimately, that makes it so unique: The Little Stranger coaxes viewers into accepting that its primary significance manifests in the depiction of the romance between Faraday and Hundreds amidst a backdrop of significant societal and cultural shifts in post-World War II England. 

Keywords: anthropomorphic houses, haunted houses, house human romance, Lenny Abrahamson, Sarah Waters, sentient houses 

Abusive Relationships and Dream Domiciles: A Brief Autoethnography 

I love my house, but I do not believe that love is reciprocated. In fact, I have loved many homes in my nearly half-century of life and never once, much to my dismay, did I sense that my passion was even remotely requited. In fact, based on the way it treats me (e. g. repairs, replacements, expenses), I can only imagine that if my house had feelings they would not be remotely flattering where I am concerned. Not that its indifference matters much: I endure the abuse because I love it wholeheartedly. 

In truth, I have always been house-besotted. I definitely have a “type”: large, old, moody, and mysterious. I grew up in an 1897 Folk Victorian that helped set these standards, although movies and other media influenced me, too. In my [page 36] family, especially but not exclusively, the women obsessed over houses in life, fiction, and film. They especially adored houses that were beautiful, bewitching, and, almost always, somehow haunted or haunting. I say “somehow” because the hauntings were not always literal or at least not overt. They might just be eerie or offbeat; they seemed to have “personality.” Films like The Uninvited (1944), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Christmas in Connecticut (1945), and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) were all family favorites on perpetual replay. 

In fact, it was not at all unusual for us to seek out films and television programs only because of the houses they featured. We all had a knack for projecting into the narrative, for imagining ourselves in a relationship with various domestic settings that appealed to us—even if the story did not. As an admittedly peculiar child, I could spend hours watching programs that I did not particularly like—The Big Valley and The Beverly Hillbillies leap to mind—because I wanted those houses. I wanted to possess them as they possessed me. I wanted their furnishings and sense of flair. I wanted the kind of life I imagined I could only live there. My sense of place—and belonging to a place—has always been acute, and visual media helped me to connect more fully with house-bound narratives of personal success and fulfillment. I found those houses irresistible in some profound way that has only been matched in meaning by marriage. To this day, I can still easily conjure Granny Clampett’s brocade portiѐres or Victoria Barkley’s banquet oil lamp with its large glass ball shade and remember how entranced those settings made me feel. I cannot fully explain it, but it is a form of object attachment that has characterized and influenced a great deal of my lived experience. 

While I am grateful (as is my mother) that I eventually moved past my passion for those shows and their admittedly gaudy décor, I still marvel at my family’s propensity for focusing on houses as love objects even as they, mostly or even [page 37] completely, ignore—in the realms of the fictive anyway—their human inhabitants and relationships to those spaces. Ours is an energetic, enthusiastic, admittedly odd, zeal for a life that we believe we might live better were we in a relationship with this or that house. We also keep track of the mistakes those often irrelevant (to us anyway) characters make with their dream domicile and reproach them for their lack of respect and reverence. Somehow, we have come to believe that only we, it inexplicably seems, really understand how to treat a house. And yes, I am utterly aware of the peculiarity of that claim; acknowledging its oddness does not make it any less accurate. In general, though, I have typically kept that sensibility to myself for fear of provoking unwanted reactions—or interventionary actions. It was not until I encountered Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger (2009), and especially its film adaptation (2018; dir. Lenny Abrahamson; hereafter distinguished from the novel as Stranger) that I began to sense something of a fellow traveler—and the feeling was deeply uncomfortable because the representation was so uncannily creepy. It was also uncomfortably close to home, somehow. In the years since it premiered, I have taught the film a number of times because it haunts me, and even though I felt I understood it intuitively, I could not quite articulate its importance until recently. 

At Home

On its surface, Stranger is, in part, the story of Dr. Faraday, a working-class kid who manages to enter the professional classes even as the landed gentry for whom his mother labored is in serious decline. Peter Bradshaw’s film review offers an excellent primer on the character: 

Domhnall Gleeson plays Faraday, a young Warwickshire country doctor: first name unmentioned, second name perhaps an allusion to the famous scientist, given his belief in electric-current massage for pain-relief and his non-belief in ghosts. He has a [page 38] ramrod-straight bearing, a clipped moustache and equally clipped manner of speaking, very different from the relaxed, worldly manner of his fellow medics. Gleeson’s performance suggests he’s affecting a severe professionalism to cover up his lowly origins. 

Faraday’s reacquaintance with Hundreds Hall, the site of his mother’s former employment and the object of his obsession, sets off a series of strange, seemingly supernatural, events that leaves viewers flummoxed by Faraday’s unflappable obsessive love for Hundreds rather than its inhabitants, the Ayres family. Indeed, by the film’s end, we are left with the distinct impression that he and Hundreds have both committed all manner of crimes, including several murders, to keep their love alive—especially since they are the only two left standing save Roderick Ayres (Will Poulter), whom Faraday has had committed. 

Due to the dearth of criticism focused on the film adaptation, I will occasionally turn herein to analyses of the novel, as well as observations from its author, when relevant, to deliver an analysis of Abrahamson’s work. One clue offered by Waters helps to set the stage for my argument: 

It’s a haunted house novel. There’s something haunting Hundreds Hall . . . , but for me it’s something a bit stranger than a ghost . . . and the book tries to decide what it is. . . . As readers, we’re encouraged to read beyond his [Dr. Faraday’s] . . . take on things. (“Hay”) 

The film, too, “tries to decide” what’s haunting Hundreds. Indeed, I would argue that Lucinda Coxon’s screenplay may take Waters’s assertion as a foundational premise for framing the narratives at work on the screen in The Little Stranger, as we see virtually no depictions of major events (always tragedies) even as they transpire. However, the repetition of visual cues, particularly related to Hundreds’ oculus, helps us to understand agency and relational power dynamics far more [page 39] clearly than any dialogue or reliance upon analysis of specific plot points. 

Sam Jordison, in an online review of the novel for The Guardian, summarizes The Little Stranger best: 

Daphne du Maurier was the first comparable writer who sprang to mind as I read Waters’ story of an old family on its last legs, rattling around in an old mansion (the Hundreds Hall) in which they go steadily more potty. In fact, there are many events that the rarely restrained Du Maurier might consider over the top. As well as dwindling fortunes, madness and tragedy, the Ayres family seem beset by all manner of things that go bump in the night. Furniture appears to move of its own volition and very much against the wishes of the householders. An apparent malicious presence taunts a dog into biting a little girl’s face during a fantastically awkward social occasion. Spooky writing manifests beneath the paintwork. Servants start to worry that there’s something “bad” hanging around the house. The house itself takes on a macabre life of its own (in one memorable passage, the narrator says the eldest Ayres daughter, Caroline, “went into the house as if stepping into a rip in the night”). People die in extravagantly suspicious circumstances. 

Before turning to the curious way that Stranger focuses upon the relationship between Hundreds and Faraday with all other elements, including its occupants, mattering somehow less, we must reacquaint ourselves with the concept of the “sentient house.” 

One excellent definition formulated by David Coss in “Sutpen’s Sentient House” works well when considering Stranger: 

For generations now, the haunted house has been a staple for Gothic fiction and the cinema alike. An elaboration on the haunted house has been the “sentient” house, which is a haunted house with a [page 40] presiding intelligence and purpose to the paranormal phenomena. In some Gothic fiction, the “sentient” house is the embodiment of the evil proprietor himself or a similar entity. But the most important ingredient is that the house assumes its own life. (101) 

In addition, we must also consider Gaston Bachelard’s now-classic claims about the primacy of childhood houses to our psychological landscapes. Suzette Mayr condenses his thoughts nicely in her analysis of Andrew Pyper’s The Guardians: “In Poetics of Space ([1958] 1969), Gaston Bachelard proposes that ‘The house is a ‘psychic state,’ and focuses on the childhood house—specifically ‘the house we were born in’—because he believes that with this ‘first’ house one establishes a ‘passionate liaison’” (97). I argue that, despite not having been born, literally, at Hundreds, Faraday’s initial encounter represents a kind of birth and awakening for himself and the house, the psychic energy of which overpowers any of the earlier biographical and biological details of his childhood. 

In addition, Cristiana Pugliese, in “What Does a House Want? Exploring Sentient Houses in Supernatural Literature,” poses several provocative questions worth considering in the context of Stranger: “But what if the house itself is haunting its inhabitants? What if the house itself is a supernatural entity, a so-called sentient house?” (299). She then asserts, “Anthropomorphism provides a sense of understanding of a nonhuman agent, and therefore the simplest way to describe a nonhuman agent is to make it as similar as possible to a human being” (304). Her analysis in this regard focuses on juvenile literature as she claims, 

Anthropomorphic houses do not feature in adult literature perhaps because an adult readership would find them too far-fetched, difficult to engage with, and possibly even funny rather than uncanny. A sentient house that has nothing human about it and nothing human in it (like ghosts or energies), yet is genuinely [page 41] threatening, is very difficult to portray. Only a few writers rise to this creative challenge and describe sentient houses that are not human in terms of psychology and motivation, but are still “alive” and “sentient” in the sense of showing awareness of themselves and their environment. These houses pose a deadly threat to their human inhabitants, whilst the source of their powers and their motives remain incomprehensible. (305) 

While Pugliese claims that anthropomorphic houses are almost exclusively the province of non-adult fiction, this article will demonstrate that Hundreds Hall, in some respects, seems to engage with Faraday in ways that do not seem entirely unhuman. In fact, the complexity and subtlety of the relationship between Hundreds and Faraday proves low-key enough as to escape notice altogether without keen focus on the use of visual refrains, especially with the oculus and staircase. It is this aspect of the film, arguably, that makes it so unique: The Little Stranger coaxes viewers into accepting that its primary focus is the romance between Faraday and Hundreds. 

To be clear, sentient houses are not new to me—but Hundreds’ sentience is. I am fully at home with the idea of real estate agency, but only in a unidirectional sense. Always, before Stranger, I conceptualized such depictions as the dwelling acting upon the dwellers, rather than interacting in meaningful ways as Faraday does. He frequently appears to look to Hundreds for guidance, to be connected to it psychically/psychologically, and to be willing to take almost any action to ensure the two may continue to inhabit one another, figuratively speaking. In Stranger, we witness the first full-fledged house-human romance. 

Housewarming 

About a minute into Stranger, Hundreds Hall and Dr. Faraday reunite after a nearly thirty-year separation. After opening the massive gates to the estate himself and driving through its [page 42] park to the mansion, Faraday parks and spends a meaningful moment staring at Hundreds in a manner that suggests he is encountering a much-diminished former lover (see Fig. 1). The moment is uncanny in its incongruence; Faraday’s expression is the sort typically reserved exclusively for human interaction. And yet, there is no mistaking the longing and mournfulness it telegraphs. While we do not yet know that their relationship officially began in 1919 or that the Ayres family, its occupants, has dissipated greatly since then, it is clear that circumstances are not what they once were. 

This homecoming is quickly interrupted by the appearance of Roderick Ayres, who sends Faraday inside Hundreds to complete a house call for Betty (Liv Hill), the Ayreses’ servant. Once inside, Faraday engages with the Hundreds’ grand hall in a manner that will become quite familiar for its stylized, almost ceremonial elements. He begins by gazing into the antique mirrors built into the hall’s walls, framed with ornate plasterwork featuring oak leaves and acorns. As he gazes forward, the camera shifts slyly, often refusing viewers a clear view of Faraday’s gaze. While we might presume that he uses the mirrors for the predictable self-evaluation in which most of us engage, there seems to be more afoot here. In fact, the [page 43] mirrors, whose silvering has flaked and darkened—the glass appears to have gone sick—distort and obscure his appearance, at least partially. What is more, Faraday seems to use the mirror for a pursuit akin to scrying as he searches intently for some sign of meaning and connection. 

Perhaps even more significant is the next step in the ritual, when Faraday positions himself in a specific spot at the foot of the grand staircase and then directs his gaze at the glass dome centered above it (see Figs. 2 and 3). In this moment, which repeats periodically throughout the film, Faraday behaves in two specific, meaningful ways. First, he takes on the manner isms of a supplicant at an altar. His positioning and body language suggest reverence and connection. Second, he is careful to pay homage to the space by communing with the glass dome. This skylight, or “roof window” as the English say, which also resembles and seemingly performs as a sentient, if passive, oculus, appears repeatedly to hold special significance for the Faraday and others, like Caroline (Ruth Wilson). [page 44] Clichéd as it may sound, it functions as Hundreds’ visual organ, in its witnessing capacity, and as a focal point to engage its sentience. Throughout Stranger, this oculus oversees the key events in the life of Faraday and the Ayreses. Beyond those pivotal moments, Faraday always appears to consider that space as crucial to his complex relationship with the hall, both past and present. 

We quickly learn that the rituality of this space for Faraday stems from his first encounter there. In many ways, this encounter can be read as an awakening for both Faraday and Hundreds—a moment of mutual attraction and the establishment of a lifelong commitment. The scene unfolds as Caroline ushers Faraday to the hall, encountering her mother, Mrs. Ayres, on the way. Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling) establishes Hundreds’ agency immediately: “This house works on people. Girls come here like specks of grit and ten years later, they leave as pearls.” While Mrs. Ayres focuses on how the house has worked to her benefit, Faraday is drawn into his [page 45] own history there. He rapidly establishes his own affiliation with Hundreds: “As it happens, I was thinking of my mother. She was a maid here before I was born.” Mrs. Ayres's cool response, that she hopes Mrs. Faraday enjoyed her service there, is met with silence as both parties vie to cement a genealogy of authority over, and with, the mansion. 

In a key moment shortly thereafter, Faraday elaborates his claim to Hundreds. Interestingly, this monologue repeats, almost verbatim, near the end of the film when he is finally its de facto master. He recounts, 

The first time I saw Hundreds Hall was July 19, 1919. An Empire Day fête the summer after the Great War. I had passed by its gates often enough, never imagining they would open to me, a common village boy. There was bunting and cake and all manner of games and, at the heart of it, the Ayres family, so happy and handsome back then. But it was the house itself, still in its glory, which somehow impressed me terribly. My mother had described the place often. But seeing it myself for the first time, nothing could have prepared me for the spell it cast that day. 

And the spell, we soon discover, never dissipates. However, Faraday’s frustration at the state of Hundreds is clear as he announces, “The place is a mess.” He also seems to offer his sympathies to the estate itself rather than its inhabitants when he acknowledges the “[d]ifficult times for estates like Hundreds.” Later he establishes his sympathy for the house over its inhabitants: “I saw at close-hand how utterly overwhelmed he [Rod] was with the business of running Hundreds. I couldn’t help feeling the house deserved better.” At no point does Faraday attempt, not really, to hide his deep concern and care for Hundreds, even when it comes at the Ayreses’ expense. 

On one level, perhaps most immediately, Stranger is a rumination on that problem: what happens to estates like Hundreds in the modern world? How do shifts in class boundaries and structures of dominance transpire as the [page 46] landed gentry loses its power and resources while maintaining its affectations and prejudices? The conflict here, it would seem, is clear: Stranger is a story of a working-class boy who makes good and wants to join the class that has rejected him. And yet, there is a far more complex relationship at the center of Stranger’s conflict, one which is certainly not free of significant social class concerns but that also does not focus squarely upon them. Stranger centers the once working-class doctor and a landed-gentry mansion as its protagonists, rendering the gentry itself as hindrances with which to dispense. 

This tension takes clear form as Faraday recounts a childhood crime: 

Well, perhaps you will consider this an act of restitution. A long time ago as a grubby-kneed boy I snuck up and stole something in this house. . . . One of your plaster acorns. I don’t know what came over me. I was such an obedient boy, as a rule. . . . I wasn’t intending to vandalize, I was overwhelmed by admiration, like a man stealing a lock of hair from the girl he’s fallen blindly in love with. Mother almost died of shame when she found out. 

During this exchange, Caroline admits that she and Roderick also snapped off the plaster acorns, but their motivation seems to have been childish, destructive. She suggests that the ornamentation was silly frippery deserving of such disrespect. Faraday quickly disabuses her of the notion that they shared a motive. He unabashedly professes his longing—which appears undiminished decades later—to possess the house as a lover, to worship its aesthetic appeal. Caroline, in turn, seems mystified by such a feeling response, oblivious to the class privilege that secured her an aesthetically rich environment in which to live. 

The distinction between the two sets of motives here is crucial to Stranger. As I noted earlier, Stranger operates on one level—and a quite significant one—as a study of [page 47] sociocultural statuses and the tyranny of the English class hierarchy. Through that lens, it is easy to mistake Faraday’s deep love and reverence for the Hall as a manifestation of his class envy. We could easily assert that Faraday wants to move up in the world and live in the splendor he has revered since childhood. However, his intentions appear to be far more focused on a sympathy for—and profound admiration of—its beauty. His love for the place itself elevates him; he is not attempting to improve his status using Hundreds as a vehicle. Caroline and Roderick, in turn, demonstrate through their vandalism that they cannot appreciate, let alone love, their childhood home in a manner even remotely comparable to Faraday’s. 

As a result, Caroline appears to feel something like jealousy towards Faraday for his longer-standing relationship with Hundreds. She posits, “It’s queer, isn’t it? That you were here before Rod and me.” At his first visit, Faraday met Caroline and Roderick’s older sister, Susan, who was [page 48] nicknamed “Suki.” The child died of diphtheria not long after. Faraday confesses, “I’m afraid I was horribly jealous of her, she seemed to have such a charmed existence.” His introduction to Susan, which occurs accidentally in the grand hall, serves as a key moment for Faraday. His jealousy of her, commingled with his lust for Hundreds, leaves a permanent imprint upon him. Mrs. Ayres and Caroline sorting through photographs (rescued from the Morning Room and its leaking roof, another sign of the Ayres’s neglect) catalyzes a flashback, as he scrutinizes a photo (see Fig. 4) that features Susan (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) and that incidentally captured the young Faraday (Oliver Zetterstrom) in her shadow. His shoulder, in a borrowed jacket no less, is all that appears among the busyness of the photo. 

Mrs. Ayres sets the scene: “Suki. Like sweethearts, she and I. You’re right to be touched by this scene, doctor. This was my little girl’s last happy day. By night, she was already quite ill.” Several days later, Faraday confesses his presence in the photo to Caroline: “You know I’m in it. . . . That’s the shoulder of my jacket,” he says, pointing to a figure almost entirely occluded by Susan. Caroline replies, “Ah, upstaged by Susan, just like the rest of us,” to which Faraday responds, “It was a grand day, otherwise.” At this point, Faraday guides us back into that Empire Day, 1919: 

The house itself was off bounds, of course. But as luck would have it, mother still had friends among the staff. And so, miraculously, it came to pass that I was admitted. I’m afraid I was spoiled thoroughly, given the most fantastic treats. . . . It made me feel, just for that moment, part of the life of the house. Perhaps that explains, to some degree at least, what happened next. My smart clothes that day were all borrowed or begged, but there, in that grand hall, filled with marvelous things, I could not help imagining that I belonged. A proper little gentleman. Course I was no such thing. I left behind all such ambitions that day. [page 49]

While Faraday claims—and we have no clear reason to disbelieve—to have left behind all ambitions to elevated social status that day, his desire to possess the house as a love object only appears to increase afterwards. After all, he does not hide any of the potentially embarrassing—and socially delimiting—details of that visit, including the borrowed clothes, trespassing (see Fig. 5), and stealing the acorn (see Fig. 7). He offers nothing to suggest that he belonged to Hundreds by the rules that people like the Ayreses play by. Rather, he asserts his belonging based on pure love and appreciation for the place itself. 

The flashback also finds young Faraday in the exact same pose as his elder, at the foot of the grand staircase with his rapt attention on the oculus (see Fig. 6). The similarity of this moment with the one nearly thirty years later clearly establishes a kind of protocol between Faraday and Hundreds, one seemingly situated in mutual respect and deep admiration, with little concern for the boy’s class shortcomings [page 50] in terms of who ought to own Hundreds. In fact, the adult Faraday manages to communicate quite clearly through word and action that he believes that the Ayreses are no longer fit caretakers. In so doing, he suggests that the monopoly on beauty created by the upper classes must be ceded to aesthetically-minded individuals who will take their place. In Faraday, then, Hundreds hopes to have truly met it match. 

House Calls 

Guy Lodge in his review of Stranger asserts, 

As for Hundreds Hall, it may have become critical cliché to refer to locations as characters, but given its shifting psychological impositions on the human ensemble, it’s hard not to see it as such. Production designer Simon Elliott wastes no ashy crevice or cornice of the space, distressing it to dazzling effect in spoiled, soiled shades of green and puce: You can practically see the smoke stains in the velvet upholstery, or the lush woodland murals in the [page 51] drawing room rotting into real nature. Under the steady, composed gaze of d.p. Ole Bratt Birkeland, in certain shots, even the actors’ faces appear to succumb to verdigris — no accident, one suspects, in a creepingly paced film that takes its time to show how a ruined environment weathers those living, just barely, inside it. 

In his assertions, Lodge focuses primarily upon the dissipation of Hundreds and its profound effects on the Ayreses. If we flip that focus onto Hundreds as a victim of neglect, abuse even, the events that transpire seem to make more sense. Just as Faraday appears to hold the Ayreses at least partially responsible for their change in fortunes and the subsequent damage that shift does to their house, so too does Hundreds exact revenge on them for their failures. 

This series of retributions begins with Roderick, the owner of the estate. From quite early in the film he complains about the high death duties that are apparently to blame for the [page 52] diminishment of the estate. In addition, he has incurred terrible physical damage as a soldier in WWII. As a result, he struggles to keep the estate together. He announces to Faraday, “There’s a thing in that house. . . . It hates me. It always has. . . . It wants me gone. I’m telling you.” Roderick clearly conceives of the house as having some kind of agency and will; he makes clear that it holds animosity towards him and wishes him gone. As tensions escalate, including a terrible incident with a visiting child being attacked, allegedly, by the family’s dog, Gyp, Roderick bears the brunt of Hundreds’ retaliations. 

After the dog-bite incident he lashes out at Faraday: “Oh yes, there’ll be tricks tonight. . . . You’re afraid. You can feel it. Can’t you? . . . You can feel it now. You can feel it. . . . What are you doing here? You’re not part of this family. You are no one!” His assessment is accurate, as Hundreds incinerates Roderick’s room (see Fig. 8) in retaliation and Faraday arranges for him to be institutionalized. For all intents and purposes, the house and the doctor appear to work in concert to remove its owner. Roderick insults and impedes Faraday, and Hundreds settles the score. The incident, importantly, was catalyzed by the sale of part of the estate’s park land—a [page 53] decision that Faraday decried and offered to have Roderick declared incompetent to block. In other words, the doctor and Hundreds were both outraged at Roderick’s decision to break up the estate and subsequently exacted revenge as repayment. As he leaves for the asylum, Roderick apologizes: “I’m sorry, Caroline, it’s too strong for me.” 

With Roderick removed, Caroline becomes Faraday’s focus. A conventional reading of this portion of the narrative might suggest that Faraday begins to pursue Caroline romantically in an attempt to class climb. After all, even in their current state of dishabille, they likely still possess far greater resources than a country doctor, not to mention the airs and graces afforded to them by their station. Such a reading is not implausible, but I do wonder if it misses some of the finer points of the film. 

In the first place, at no point does the relationship between Faraday and Caroline ever manage to coalesce in a way that seems utterly authentic. There appear to be moments of deep friendliness and affection, but no real frisson or deep desire. Rather, Faraday appears to see Caroline as a vehicle to capture his true love: Hundreds. One crucial moment transpires after an evening spent, presumably on a date, at a local dance. The pair are in Faraday’s car, with him driving, returning Caroline to Hundreds. She abruptly announces that she does not want to go home. She makes clear on a number of occasions that she does not enjoy her home and that she was forced to return to it to care for Roderick. All these proclamations fall on deaf ears, as Faraday seemingly cannot conceive of not caring for Hundreds. 

Faraday eventually brings the car to a halt and it appears as though the two are about to engage in some rather passionless sexual activity. Neither convincingly conveys any sense of urgency or desire. In fact, Faraday’s actions read more like those a man who knows what he is expected and joylessly attempts to go through the motions, ostensibly in an attempt to deepen his relationship with Hundreds. After sending mixed [page 54] signals, Caroline abruptly, and rather dramatically, cuts the attempt off, yelling “no, can’t, can’t” and runs off into to woods. Peter Bradshaw, in his Guardian review of the film, makes an interesting point about the dance they were returning from: 

Wilson’s Caroline is the beating heart of the film and she is superb, not least in a scene at a local dance, where she is thrilled to recognise a female friend from wartime and dances extravagantly with her—to Faraday’s chagrin—hinting at a sexual identity she has concealed from everyone, especially herself. And all the time, the sinister presence in the house grows, like mould on the walls. An elegant, sinister tale of the uncanny, with its own streak of pathos. 

Indeed, Scarlett Thomas also highlights the gender atypicality of Caroline, calling her “delightfully eccentric and masculine,” suggesting that perhaps Caroline’s sexual and/or gender identity may have encouraged Faraday to consider a marriage blanc so that he might fulfill societal expectations and maintain his faithfulness to Hundreds. This assertion is further supported by Waters’s own characterization of Caroline: “She’s not a mainstream heterosexual woman. So in an odd sort of way I think The Little Stranger is quite a queer book” (“Hay”). 

As the questionable relationship between Faraday and Caroline begins to disintegrate, Hundreds turns on Mrs. Ayres. She comes to believe that Susan is attempting to communicate with her through sounds (knocking and a voice in the servants’ talking tube) and s-shaped marks on the woodwork. To a viewer, it begins to seem plausible that the house really has turned on its owners, with its attacks becoming more overt and eerie. Mrs. Ayres, however, delights at these developments, hoping for a return to the life she lost when Susan died. It is worth noting here, too, that Susan became ill with diphtheria on the very day that Faraday met Hundreds for the first time, implying that perhaps that house always intended him to replace her. In finding the woodwork marks she attributes to Susan, she remarks, “Suki. After all [page 55] this time I didn’t assume there was much trace of her left.” Shortly thereafter, establishes for Caroline, seemingly unwittingly, the audience that Faraday, likely unintentionally, exerts great force within Hundreds, noting, “Whenever you go away, something terrible happens.” In other words, Hundreds becomes more aggressive when its favored Faraday is absent, suggesting it wishes to evicts its longtime residents in favor of someone who appreciates it. 

Alongside Mrs. Ayres’s deterioration, Faraday and Caroline’s courtship founders along, rather painfully. One exchange highlights the disconnect in their motives: 

Faraday: “She’ll [Betty] have to get used to catching us kissing. She’ll be bringing us eggs and bacon in bed in the mornings. 

Caroline: But if we’re married it won’t be here. 

Faraday: You wouldn’t rather live above the surgery. You can hardly abandon your mother. 

Caroline: You can’t think she’ll accept us living with her. In any case, what about London? 

Faraday: London? I turned down the position to stay here with you. 

Caroline: You never said you did that. 

Caroline clearly views Faraday as a means to escape Hundreds. In turn, he cannot imagine anyone willingly leaving Hundreds—he appears aghast at the suggestion. As the conversation progresses, Caroline insists that her mother will not accept them living at Hundreds. Then Betty, the servant, interrupts, claiming the bell for that room has rung despite no one having touched it. Hundreds intervenes, seemingly, to demonstrate displeasure at the possibility of Faraday marrying Caroline, as though it were a jealous lover. The house, it would seem, does not just want Faraday; it wants only him. 

Bells continue to ring, inexplicably, often with several chiming at once. Caroline blames mice, but Mrs. Ayres interprets this activity as otherworldly. In the final analysis, it appears to be Hundreds at work trying to eliminate Mrs. [page 56] Ayres. Searching for the causes of the strange noises and bell-ringing, she becomes trapped in the nursery, with locked doors violently jostling in their frames. At multiple points she appears to be drawing some pleasure, commingled with fear, from these events as she interprets them presaging the return of Susan. She is in bed, asleep, after the nursery incident when once again, Caroline declares that the house is set against them: 

Caroline: Rod was right. There is something in this house that hates us. 

Faraday: That’s nonsense, Caroline. 

Caroline: No, we’re sea-changed from even a year ago. [That is, Faraday’s return escalates events.] 

Betty: I knew this house had something bad. I told you. 

Caroline: When did you tell him? 

Betty: First time I felt it. Mrs. Ayres believes me. 

Faraday: You told Mrs. Ayres? 

Betty: She said it was a ghost and not to worry, it would do no harm. 

Faraday: No harm? Does this look like no harm to you, Betty? 

By voicing his concerns about their potential harm, Faraday signals that he is not entirely complicit with Hundreds’ retaliations against the Ayreses. In fact, he appears not to comprehend its motives and machinations as well as we might expect he would. Instead, we start to understand that he and the house are working at somewhat cross purposes, as he notes, “I can just feel that things are out of control. This business seems almost contagious.” 

For her part, Mrs. Ayres also seems to suspect that the return of her daughter may be far from auspicious: “I wanted her (Suki) so desperately, but when she came I was afraid.” Faraday, in a conversation with a medical colleague, also starts to question what is really happening: “Caroline has begun to believe that there is something supernatural involved. Some malevolent force in the house. It’s madness, I [page 57] know, but I am beginning to wonder myself.” And yet, Mrs. Ayres cannot detach from her fantasy of (and longing for) Susan’s return: 

Mrs. Ayres: I have something I want to say before Caroline gets back. You must take her away from here. 

Faraday: I shall do no such thing. 

Mrs. Ayres: Yes. Leave Susan and me alone together. 

Faraday: Susan is a memory. We’ve agreed that, haven’t we? 

Mrs. Ayres: How innocent you are. She’s with me all the time. She’s here with me now. She belongs here. You do not. 

In this short exchange, she establishes once more that Faraday is an outsider and her plan is for him to leave—even if it means taking her second daughter with him. He makes clear that he will not depart, indignant at the suggestion. Shortly thereafter, they cut the cords to the call bells and talking tubes, inhibiting Hundreds’ ability to keep tormenting Mrs. Ayres in the same way. Faraday, for his part, attempts to psychologize Mrs. Ayres’s condition as he did Roderick’s: 

Faraday: I’d like to bring in a psychiatrist. 

Caroline: First Roddy, now her. How long until it’s my turn? 

Faraday: That’s absurd. 

Caroline’s growing awareness of her family being picked off by supernatural forces collides with Faraday’s endless desire for Hundreds and his self-serving wish to find a rational cause of the destruction of the last of the Ayres family. 

Not long thereafter, Mrs. Ayres dies. While the official verdict of the inquest is suicide, we do not witness what transpires. In one shot, Mrs. Ayres is in bed, sedated after the nursery incident. The camera lingers on a silver-framed photo of Susan on her bedside table (see Fig. 9). In the next scene, Caroline and Betty attempt to enter her bedroom only to find it locked. Caroline accusatorily demands to know if Faraday [page 58] locked her in, much to his surprise. Upon entering, they find her dead, in a blood-soaked bed (See Fig 10). 

[page 59] With the matriarch and the owner of the estate now both out of the picture, it seems undeniable that some force has marshaled against the Ayreses. And yet, Faraday focuses on matrimony. He seems more intent than ever to formalize his relationship with Caroline as a means to secure his claim to Hundreds. At Mrs. Ayres’s funeral, to no one in particular among the attendees and obviously towards Faraday, Roderick, as he’s being taken back to the asylum, proclaims: “Get Caroline out. She’ll be next.” Instead, on that same day, Faraday presses Caroline to set a wedding date under the pretense that he wants to take care of her now that she’s the last Ayres at Hundreds. She concedes to his proposal, without feeling. 

As he leaves Caroline to rest, he seeks validation from Betty about this progress towards having Hundreds: 

Faraday: [Eating at the kitchen table] The last time I sat down to eat at this table, Betty, I was eight years old. My mother was with me, standing just over there. 

Betty: That’s a funny thought [She seems skeptical of Faraday, like she’s on to him. Her expressions suggest annoyance.] 

Faraday: Never guessed I’d be back here like this. Wish she’d lived to see it. My father, too. 

Rather than mourning Mrs. Ayres on the day of her funeral, Faraday seems to celebrate, feeling that he’s arrived and nearly taken his prize. His pride regarding the house, and his wish to share that with his parents, mirrors the usual feelings connected to one’s future spouse. Notably, he makes no mention of wishing he could introduce Caroline to his parents. Not long afterwards, Caroline ends the engagement: “Sorry, I can’t do this. . . . I can’t do any of it. I can’t marry you.” She also reveals, abruptly, that she had assumed power of attorney over Hundreds when Roderick was committed and subsequently put the place up for sale, proclaiming, “But I will go, before it’s too late.” However, she does not stand a chance against Hundreds’ fury. At this turning point in the film, we [page 60] intuit that Caroline cannot survive. She has been clever and subverted Faraday. She has also demonstrated her willingness to shunt the family legacy and leave Hundreds to whomever might purchase it. However, to do so would remove Faraday from Hundreds’ sphere, and the house is not about to let that happen. 

In a strange sequence of events, Faraday asks his medical partner to cover his shift and spends the night sitting in his car in the park of Hundreds, as if to keep vigil. He exhibits rage, punching the steering wheel and showing real emotion (for the first time) at his disappointment and loss. The scene then cuts to Caroline, upstairs at Hundreds, creeping around, as though searching for something or someone, not unlike her mother’s quest to the nursery. She reaches the top floor, near the oculus, with everything in near-total darkness. Sounds suggest someone is in the house and she is trying to find them. The scene cuts back to Faraday in the car, who sees the start of dawn and engages the ignition. When Faraday returns to his home, he learns from his medical partner that Caroline had fallen to her death about two or three that morning. Faraday then offers a kind of epitaph about his life with the Ayreses: “The next few days were a sort of blur. A bad dream from which I was slow to wake. Hundreds Hall was lost to me, as was Caroline. There was, no doubt, fun at my expense in Lydgate. That would teach me to look outside my class.” Here again, class serves as the issue at the forefront of Stranger’s action, suggesting that perhaps even Faraday is sometimes susceptible to Hundreds’ misdirection. In misconstruing the real problem here as class alone, Faraday fails to understand fully how Hundreds has gained complete control over him even as it exterminated his predecessors. 

At the inquest, Betty also offers a kind of epitaph for Caroline: “She was happy to be leaving” Hundreds. However, had she left, Hundreds could have no longer controlled her or its own fate. We are left with a strong sense of uncertainty about who exactly killed Caroline, however. In a flashback [page 61] during the inquest, we see Caroline, searching, saying knowingly, “You.” Her tone and demeanor firmly establish that she addresses someone or something totally familiar that is about to kill her. She does not seem surprised to discover the culprit. The scene cuts immediately to Faraday at the inquest and then back to Caroline, as she states, in a vaguely accusatory tone again, “You.” Then it is as if someone or something rushes her and she falls, backwards, over the banister beneath the oculus, which “witnesses” or “oversees” her demise (see Figs. 11-13). In the absence of any visual cue, it would appear that Caroline finally came to understand that it was the house itself that she accuses as “you.” 

Caroline has to be killed because of her power of attorney. She possesses the right to determine Hundreds’ future. Upon her death, the right reverts to Roderick, at least temporarily, until legal measures might be taken by his new appointee. She also had to die because she served as competition for Faraday, even if her interest was hardly competition. In turn, Faraday is left to care for the abandoned, though still Ayres-owned, property even though the contents have been sold and the house appears plundered. The pathos of the closing scenes heightens the viewers’ sense of tragedy as chandeliers lay dismantled on bare floors and dead leaves skitter everywhere. The hall mirrors are now cracked and missing pieces as Faraday still searches his reflection for some sort of answer. 

Housekeeper 

Despite the sadness of its even further-dissipated state, Faraday remains a loyal lover to Hundreds. In the closing scenes of the film, he moves from room to room with various buckets, kettles, and pots, attempting to control the water [page 64] damage from rain seeping in everywhere (see Fig. 14). A dispassionate onlooker might, at this point, suggest that such a house had outlived its purpose and ought to be pushed in or burned down as many of the so-called “Great Houses” were during this high-tax era. One also wonders why a man like Faraday might continue to caretake a property he only owns in an emotional sense, but the answer seems evident. He has loved the house since childhood. In many ways, it seems to be the only thing he has ever loved. 

Indeed, Abrahamson is careful to establish that Faraday is now the keyholder of the place, with the Ayreses either dead or disempowered (see Fig. 15). As the medical professional who committed Roderick, he controls, at least in part, his future. In turn, Roderick seemed quite relieved to be away from Hundreds, just as Caroline anticipated relief at leaving. Thus, it seems unlikely that Faraday will incur much resistance about keeping the property even though he will find himself unable to intervene in its slow destruction, even as council [page 65] houses crop up in the parkland that Roderick sold off before he could stop him. 

As we near its denouement, Stranger offers up bookend images of the grand staircase, now littered with rain-catchers (see Figs. 16 and 17) and Faraday moving with undiminished purpose as he tends the house’s needs. The message is clear: he listens and responds where the Ayres only wished to escape that which they had made but could no longer hold onto. We are treated to (or is it subjected to?) the Faraday-Hundreds origin story once more, as he recites the mythology that has organized his life and tethered him to a house that has proven itself more than willing to kill to get what it wants. 

One question then remains: has Faraday succeeded? I would argue not entirely based on the film’s closing shot (see Figs. 18 and 19). As the adult Faraday manages Hundreds’ leaks and moves purposefully through its ruined rooms, locking and unlocking doors, we discover that a seemingly spectral version of the boy from 1919 stands, crying, under the oculus, looking down at what he will become. Director Lenny [page 67] Abrahamson asserts, “The boy does get the house, but what he gets is bricks and mortar and emptiness. None of the glamour, none of the warmth, none of the love and excitement that he imagined as a child” (qtd. in Zuckerman). The sadness and pain on his face suggest that he almost achieved his end, to possess Hundreds fully rather than just by theft and trespassing. What he had not planned on was that Hundreds wanted him alone as its savior, whereas Faraday would have preferred the life that came with marrying Caroline, even if it did not follow traditional patterns. He wanted life in Hundreds Hall and instead he appears only to be sacrificing his own in its maintenance. He did not count on murder in the equation of securing his dream house, especially as Hundreds’ vengeance undoubtedly leaves him isolated, alone, and wondering what happens if/when Hundreds starts to hate him. 

Works Cited 

Abrahamson, Lenny, director. The Little Stranger. Pathé, 20th Century Studios, 2018. 

Bradshaw, Peter. “The Little Stranger review—Ruth Wilson Shines in Mournful Ghost Story.” The Guardian, 30 Aug. 2018, www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/30/the-little stranger-review-ruth-wilson. Accessed 3 Oct. 2018. 

Coss, David. “Sutpen’s Sentient House.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 15, no. 2, 2005, pp. 101-118. 

“Hay Festival: Sarah Waters on The Little Stranger.” YouTube, uploaded by The Guardian, 26 May 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbV83bkUZI8&t=153s. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024. 

Jordison, Sam. “Guardian Book Club: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.” The Guardian, 11 Aug. 2010, www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/aug/11/book club-sarah-waters-little-stranger. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024. 

Lodge, Guy. “Film Review: ‘The Little Stranger.’” Variety, 30 Aug. 2018, variety.com/2018/film/reviews/the-little-stranger review-1202918627/. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024. 

Mayr, Suzette. “‘House of Mirrors’: The Sentient House as Homosocial Spaces in Andrew Pyper’s The Guardians.” Horror Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 97-114. 

Pugliese, Cristiana. “What Does a House Want? Exploring Sentient Houses in Supernatural Literature.” Preternature, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 299-326. 

Thomas, Scarlett. “House Calls.” The New York Times, 29 May 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/books/review/Thomas t.html. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024. 

Zuckerman, Esther. “Director Lenny Abrahamson Explains the Unsettling Ending of The Little Stranger.” Thrillist, 1 Sep. 2018, www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/the-little stranger-movie-ending-explained. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024. 

Joshua G. Adair is Professor of English at Murray State University, where he also serves as the Humanities+ coordinator. Adair’s work, whether in literary, cultural, or museum studies, interrogates the ways we narrate – and silence – gender, sexuality, race, and class; it has appeared in over seventy scholarly and creative nonfiction books and journals. His most recent book, edited with Amy K. Levin, is Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism (Routledge 2020). 

MLA citation (print):

Adair, Joshua. "Real Estate Agency: Hundreds’ Sentience in Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger (2018)." Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 1, 2026, pp. 35-68.