Toward the end of Haunting of Hill House, we finally see Eleanor's sanity spiral down. She knocks on doors and goes to the library and up the stairs where she hears someone calling her as she calls out 'Mother'. I think in this event, Eleanor's grip with reality is greatly loose because of the guilt she carries about her mother dying. In earlier passages, Eleanor talks about how her mother's death would be her fault anyway. This guilt I think was feeding into her fantasies. And sadly, because she put herself into a dangerous situation by going up the stairs, she meets a gruesome end as she is forced to leave the house. When Eleanor crashed into the tree it was like a cry for attention from her. Its like she wanted to feel like they would care about her if she could hear them telling her to stop.
In the Sandman, what I found most interesting was that the character Nathanael felt that Klara was a cold person when he read things to her or she made remarks he didn't like. He even called her a 'lifeless automaton' at one point. And ironically he ends up falling for an automaton called Olympia, despite signs that there was something strange about Olympia. I think perhaps this story could be commenting on relationships between men and women, just with a twist on it with a scientific feel.
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