The Hollow of the Three Hills

On the surface level, “The Hollow of the Three Hills” could be interpreted as a story of Good Versus Evil, but subsequent or deeper readings show that the conflict is more nuanced. The conflict is not only between the old woman and the lady, but is both internal, with the lady dealing with The Destructiveness of Guilt and Shame, and external, as the lady struggles with The Danger of Strict Religious Beliefs. The old woman serves as a conduit through which the lady comes face-to-face with her shame, contributing to her ultimate death. The old woman’s role in the story is primarily to expose the lady to the consequences of her actions. Seeing the destruction caused by her leaving gives the lady great pain and distress. However, the lady is not simply a villain; she is also a victim of an oppressive society.

In one of the visions, the lady’s preacher husband announces to his congregation, which is her community, that his wife has “broken her holiest vows” (Paragraph 15), leaving him and their dying child “desolate” (Paragraph 15). This public shaming would not have been unusual in the Puritan religion, and readers can assume that the lady would have heard many other women shamed as well before she left the community. The normalization of public shaming, especially public shaming of women, would have been especially difficult for a grieving mother who was struggling with both her feelings and the role of her religion in dealing with her child’s illness.

Both the external and internal conflicts contribute to the ominous mood of the story. The shame that the lady is dealing with is consistently reinforced throughout the narrative. When the lady first meets with the old woman, the lady looks “upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained” (Paragraph 3). The lady is grappling with the shame she feels, trying to decide if knowing what has happened to her family is worth exposing her desertion to the old woman. The words “it was not so ordained” add to the ominous mood and make it seem like the choice is out of the lady’s hands. The lady has an outburst at the start of the first vision because she is so embarrassed that she does not want her parents to see her face, but then she quiets and is “still as death” (Paragraph 10). Her shame causes both the outburst and the stillness, contributing to the ominous mood as the reader is presented with an image of the lady’s death. The conflict that the lady has with her oppressive religion creates a dark mood as well. When the lady has a vision of a church service, she can hear as “the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful, uneven sound of the wind” (Paragraph 15). The unnerving sounds of both the church service and the wind contribute to the story’s atmosphere.

This atmospheric, narrative tension in “The Hollow of the Three Hills” is also enhanced by the setting. The two women meet in a place filled with dead foliage by a “pool of green and sluggish water” (Paragraph 1). Natural death and decay surround them from the very beginning, and soon the story will delve into the spiritual death the lady experiences as a result of voluntarily cutting ties with her family. When the lady sees the vision of her parents, they are described as sitting “by a melancholy hearth” (Paragraph 11) while the windows are “rattling in the breeze” (Paragraph 11). This gloomy image of the fire along with the eerie sound of the windows rattling enhances the tension and apprehension in the story. In the third vision of the child’s funeral, a bell is described as “knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower” (Paragraph 21) and the lady can see the mourners marching behind a priest. This dismal setting adds to the ominous mood of the story, especially since the funeral is described immediately before the lady dies. The lady’s death illustrates the theme of The Destructiveness of Guilt and Shame; the lady dies as soon as she realizes her child has died. Even though the lady’s death is also caused by the shame she feels from leaving, the lady’s pain at discovering that her child has died also contributes to her own death.