University of Novi Sad

Faculty of Philosophy

Department of English language

and Literature

American Gothic of the 1940s and 1950s:

Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

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Abstract

The thesis offers a detailed analysis of the stories in Shirley Jackson’s collection The Lottery and

Other Stories (1949), in order to establish which elements of the gothic genre that the author uses

represent significant contribution to the genre of American gothic, a subgenre of gothic fiction.

Shirley Jackson’s place in American literature has been somewhat problematic due to the mode

she chose for her imaginative expression. Her fiction tended to be seen as subversive towards the

values and morals of the mid-century America; however, some of the greatest fears and concerns

of postwar period have found its outlet in her imagination. The thesis offers analyses of plots,

characters and narration with the aim to show how representations of everyday life can reveal

some very disturbing traits in human character. The thesis may contribute not only with its fresh

perspective on Shirley Jackson’s position in American fiction, but also with revealing traces of

the older American gothic stories and their unique burden comprised of the Frontier, fight for

Democracy, and the dark heritage of slavery. Using gothic mode and terror Jackson subtly

reveals undercurrents of American postwar living.

Key words: Shirley Jackson, short story, Gothic fiction, American Gothic, themes.

Apstrakt

Ovaj rad bavi se detaljnom analizom zbirke priča Širli Džekson Lutrija i druge priče (1949) kako

bi se ustanovilo koji elementi gotskog žanra koje autorka upotrebljava predstavljaju značajan

doprinos žanru američke gotske proze. Mesto Širli Džekson u kanonu američke književnosti

donekle je upitno zbog književnog izraza koji je dominantno zastupljen u njenom opusu. Njeno

književno stvaralaštvo poseduje subverzivnu crtu u odnosu na vrednosti i moralne norme

Amerike polovinom dvadesetog veka; ipak, neki od najvećih strahova i slutnji posleratnog

perioda pronašli su svoj izraz u njenoj prozi. U radu se analiziraju zapleti, likovi kao i naracija s

ciljem da se prikaže kako svakodnevni život može razotkriti neke vrlo problematične odlike ljudi

u savremenom svetu. Osim što se u ovom radu sagledava mesto Širli Džekson u američkom

gotskom žanru, on takođe razotkriva tragove starijih američkih gotskih pripovedaka u kojima

postoje tragovi karakteristično američki toposi i teme kao što su pojam granice, borba za

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demokratiju, i mračna strana nasleđa ropstva. Koristeći gotiku i teror, Širli Džekson suptilno

prikazuje odlike posleratnog života u Americi.

Ključne reči: Širli Džekson, kratka priča, gotska književnost, američka gotika.

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Contents  Introduction  ...................................................................................................................................................  5  

1. Gothic  .......................................................................................................................................................  6  

2.0 American Gothic and Shirley Jackson  ..................................................................................................  15  

2.1.Shirley Jackson: life and work  ..........................................................................................................  15  

2.2. American Gothic  ..............................................................................................................................  21  

3. The Lottery and other stories: Gothic themes and tropes  ........................................................................  26  

Conclusion  ..................................................................................................................................................  91  

References  ...................................................................................................................................................  93  

 

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Introduction

The first section of this paper provides a brief summary of the Gothic genre in general.

Given that many literary critics have already provided crucial characteristics of the genre and its

division into subgenres, I attempt to give account of its most distinguishable traits throughout

history. From the Gothic's emergence up to modern days, Gothic has undergone significant

changes regarding both its themes and narrative techniques. It can, however, be concluded that in

every era the Gothic genre has to do with people's anxieties and deepest fears as it serves as a

getaway from reason and order.

Given that this paper analyzes Shirley Jackson's relation to Gothic, I have provided the

author's short biography. Furthermore, I attempt to establish links between Jackson's life and her

writing, as her works generally reflect her own experiences to some degree.

The section that follows analyzes American Gothic as a subgenre. Namely, there are

several features that distinguish American Gothic from other Gothic subgenres – the frontier

experience, the Puritan inheritance, popular democracy, and the anxieties related to slavery. All

these factors contributed to American Gothic becoming a legitimate subgenre of Gothic fiction.

Moreover, the Southern American Gothic is discussed as a more specific subgenre marked by

works of Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Nathaniel Hawthorne. All things considered,

Gothic in America becomes a means for expressing anxiety and fear, as each era has its own

obsessions, all of them expressed through different Gothic works.

Lastly, this paper provides a detailed analysis of Shirley Jackson's collection The Lottery

and other stories (1949) by relying on elements of Gothic fiction. I attempt to establish a link

between the stories, portray their similarities, and point to the elements that evoke horror in

Jackson's readers, thus placing her among the writers of true Gothic fiction.

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1. Gothic

Although a broadly analyzed genre, Gothic is still considered to be a difficult field to

accurately define.1 With regard to literature, Gothic can be said to have originated in the late

eighteenth century. According to David Punter, ''[...]the Gothic is more to do with particular

moments, tropes, repeated motifs that can be found scattered, or disseminated, through the

modern western literary tradition." (Punter, 2004) Fred Botting refers to the Gothic tradition

stating that it possesses a continuity as it draws its inspiration, as well as plots and techniques

from medieval romances and poetry, from ballads and folklore, from Renaissance writing, and

from various seventeenth and eighteenth century prose forms. (2005) Readers' imagination is

tackled in Gothic texts, as they are often at the intersection of real and unreal, civilization and

barbarism, reason and desire etc. Hence, the readers are forced to cross the boundaries and accept

the Gothic's change of shape and focus depending on their own anxieties and fears. Gothic genre

has been discussed in various critical works and from different points of view. Montague

Summers' The Gothic Quest (1938) examines the classical Gothic texts and implements

categories such as supernatural-, historical-, rational- and terror-Gothic. (2005) From the

founders of literary Gothic to the twenty-first century Gothic works, many differences have

existed concerning both the form and content, despite which one can still determine the recurring

pattern of specific motifs (such as the vampire, the monstrous effects of science and technology,

supernatural settings and characters, haunted mansions, doubling etc.) Without a doubt, Gothic

marks provide the readers with a general sense of horror and dread, whether that horror be related

to creepy creatures or a conventional domestic life. Considering the fact that the spectrum of

horror is extremely wide and flexible, it is best to say that it is up to the readers to construct their

own notion of Gothic.

                                                                                                                         1  Historically speaking, the notion of Goths refers to a Germanic tribe that was, among several

other ones, responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, their earliest settlement being in the

Baltic. A Germanic tribe, the Getes, was first mentioned in Jordanes' "Getica" (551), together

with other Germanic tribes that were later to be collectively known as the "Goths."Thus, the term

"Goths" was initially used to refer to the invaders of the great Roman civilization only to be

expanded to include the medieval period generally.

 

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In an aesthetic sense, the style was described as a complete opposite of the classical – it was

regarded as disordered, chaotic and irrational. (Punter, 2004) The fact that Gothic was used as a

derogatory term for the Middle ages relies on the fact that the values that shaped the

Enlightenment were rejected by Gothic. "Buildings, works of art, gardens, landscapes and written

texts had to conform to precepts of uniformity, proportion and order. Aesthetic objects were

praised for their harmony and texts were designed to foster appreciation of these terms, to instruct

rather than entertain, to inculcate a sense of morality and rational understanding and thus educate

readers in the discrimination of virtue and vice." (Botting, 2005) Aesthetically, therefore,

"Gothic" was first used by Italian art historians during the early Renaissance to describe

European art and architecture from the middle of the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. "[...]the

terms "Goth" and "Gothic were [...] beginning to be used to designate anything medieval and to

establish through difference the superiority of the classical ideals that the Renaissance world was

attempting to re-establish." (Punter 2004) The idea that Gothic was inferior to the classical style

of architecture remained dominant until the eighteenth century, up to the point of revival of

interest in Gothic architecture and a reassessment of culture of the medieval world.

During the eighteenth century the definition of the Gothic began to be associated with

politics, as it is implied in James Thomson's poem "Liberty" (1735-6), for according to him, the

Goths were the ones advocating the liberty once taken by Rome. The very term Gothic,

contradictory, refers to the uncivilized on one hand and the true and brave on the other. All things

considered, it served to point to everything that was the opposite of classical – chaos as opposed

to order, excess as opposed to limits, wild as opposed to cultural, etc. According to Punter, in the

eighteenth century "a sense of grandeur" was needed in the English culture. Hence, Gothic

represented the primitive and pagan that "[...]resisted the establishment of civilized values."

(Punter, 2004) According to that, many writers began to return to the Gothic qualities. As Gothic

literature was undergoing significant changes and Gothic began to be positively associated with

nature and imagination, the attitudes towards it changed as well. Botting suggests that fiction

began to serve less as a model for proper moral behavior and started to portray a less unified and

rational side of the society. Thus, it invited the readers to something new and exciting by

cultivating their emotions detached from obligations of their everyday, ordinary world. Critics

generally agree that there were four areas that were responsible for this early revival of the

Gothic: the ancient British heritage, the revival of interest in ballads, the medieval English poetry

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and the major work of Edmund Spenser and of the Elizabethans. (2004) The eighteenth century is

crucial for Gothic because of the graveyard poetry as well. It is a term used to refer to the works

preceding the Gothic novel. Works such as Edward Young's "Night Thoughts" (1742), Robert

Blair's "The Grave" (1743) or Thomas Warton's "On the Pleasures of Melancholy" (1747)

included death, awareness of the limitations of human knowledge, as well as pain, danger and

terror. Graveyard poetry rejected "[...]human vices and vanities through an insistence on

mortality[...]" thus encouraging an interest in ruins, darkness, tombs and nocturnal terror.

Furthermore, antiquarianism had an effect on this poetry, with an obvious antithesis to the

Enlightenment culture. "Gothic style became the shadow that haunted neoclassical values,

running parallels and counter to its ideas of symmetrical form, reason, knowledge and propriety."

(2005) Hence, graveyard poets focused on darkness, ruins and unnatural creatures and ideas

openly confronting the rational. The last two decades of the eighteenth century, with the French

and American revolution taking place, were quite productive when it comes to Gothic fiction as

terror became associated with politics. The American Revolution (1776) resulted in political and

economic changes as well as the shifts of power, whereas the French Revolution (1789) rejected

absolutist monarchy marking the shift in both the class and the gender of readers. Ann Radcliffe's

Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), for example, appealed to her middle-class audience. Botting states

that the reason for the growing reading public (as it included more and more readers from the

middle class) was a change in the distribution of both power and wealth respectively, as they

moved a bit further from the aristocrats. Hence, writing was becoming more a professional

activity. However, the true horror in fiction is often thought to have emerged with Matthew

Lewis' The Monk (1796), as it is still considered to be one of the most disturbing and scandalous

works of English fiction. It is a perfect example of Gothic excess, being an obvious threat to

moral values at the time. It is often implied that Lewis satirized the sentimentality of Radcliffe's

work, as it "[...]interweaves horror with a general mockery of the genre." Furthermore, "[...]it

uses the conventional anti-Catholicism of Gothic fiction implied in the monastic setting, but it is

the tyrannical nature or, and barbaric superstitions inculcated by, all institutions, including

aristocracy, Church and family, that forms the general object of criticism." (2005) Punter states

that most of the romantic writers, such as William Blake and John Keats, played a part in shaping

the evolution of Gothic. Namely, Blake's early works include imitations of Spenser and several

other writers rehabilitated by the revival of the Gothic. For instance, Blake's "Fair Elenor" (1783)

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and "Thel" (1789) were influenced by the graveyard poetry, which is evident in the author's

preoccupation with the vocabulary reminiscent of that of the graveyard poets. "The graveyard

language, the emphases on secrets, [...], as well as the focus, throughout the poem, on the

innocent, vulnerable heroine who is travelling through dangerous realms clearly point us towards

the Gothic in terms of plot as well as scenario." (2004) Thus, the eighteenth century fiction might

be referred to as "Gothic romance" rather than "Gothic novel" with highlighting the link between

the narratives of love and chivalry and the tales that were later to be classified as "Gothic."

As far as the Gothic novel is concerned, it began to emerge during the industrialization

responsible for changing the society and its structures. Capitalism was responsible for the

emergence of general sense of isolation and the moving away from the natural world. In these

terms Gothic can be seen as a response to the effects of these particular changes. One of the

major Gothic works, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) emphasizes the dangers of human's

replacement by an artificial creature. The scientific discoveries disturbed the previously adopted

attitudes towards human identity and superiority with regard to their position in the world.

Frankenstein is, thus, considered to be a Gothic villain, having made a creation that led to

destruction: "Assembling a creature designed to be beautiful he is repulsed at its ugliness when

animated by the spark of life. His vivid nightmare signals the total reversal of his project: images

of death, decay, sexuality and woman return, like the monster, to haunt him with the antithesis

and consequence of his idealist fantasy." (2005) With industrialization, the new Gothic motifs

emerged, primarily that of the city. The horrors associated with filthy streets gradually replaced

the eighteenth century castles. Authors such as Charles Dickens and G. W. M. Reynolds used the

city to depict the savage, barbaric and primitive. However, the literary authors were not the only

one who were able to notice the city as the new site of terror. Many sociologists and journalists,

including Friedrich Engels and William Booth, showed the horrors of that period through the

heart of the modern metropolis. Thus, the Gothic fiction stopped being associated merely with

aristocrats and moved closer to its reading public. The nineteenth century Gothic moved closer to

the readers' homes and made way to corruption, materialism and abuse. "The home could be a

prison as well as a refuge." (2005) As seen in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), Gothic

terrors are associated with the decaying family house and its residents. Furthermore, a new

Gothic villain appears – the criminal, as the new scientific discoveries made ways for criminal

behavior and deviance. As the modern city became the core of terror, the criminal mind emerged

10    

as a new villain. In the late nineteenth century the terror previously located in the external forces

began to move closer to the human mind, as seen in the most popular Gothic works such as Oscar

Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Robert L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr

Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Punter points that evolutionary theories were responsible for the

change in human psyche and thus their awareness of the civilized being dependent upon the

existence of savage. Hence, Jekyll discovers that his respectable exterior is dependent upon the

existence of Hyde, whose deformed body and face portray something evil. It is therefore

suggested that the criminal as well as the insane can be identified through physical

characteristics. (2004) "The doubling in the novel, then, does not establish or fix the boundaries

of good and evil, self and other, but discloses the ambivalence of identity and the instability of

the social, moral and scientific codes that manufacture distinctions." (Botting, 2005) In The

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, filled with journals and letters, the world of the novel is

dominated by lawyers, doctors and scientists, hence becoming a novelty in the Gothic fiction in

terms of both its narrative and characters. Moreover, the notion of multiplicity is suggested in

certain Gothic texts. Punter considers it to be an even more disturbing concept than duality, as it

represents something "abhuman" (a term used by Kelly Hurley in 1996). It threatens human

identity and its integrity. It often occupies the space between the terms of certain oppositions

such as male and female, human and beast, etc. (2004) The abhuman may be noticed in The

Picture of Dorian Gray, as the portrait stands for something that threatens human identity by

mimicking the human and appropriating human form. Science and horror became intertwined and

the rational became compromised at the end of the nineteenth century. Like in Frankenstein, the

metaphysical ideas resulted in monstrosity. "The scientific replacement of nature and humanity,

the various means of producing and reproducing the material world and the creation of entities

that threaten human existence is a recurrent horror, undermining the naturalness and stability of

any order of identity and society." (2005)

This was also a period when new fears emerged – the fears of national, social and

psychological decay. Punter suggests that it is related to England being an imperial power in

decline and threatened by the new economic forces such as Germany and the United States.

Moreover, the traditional values and family structures that were the foundation of the supposed

superiority of the middle class were compromised and challenged by the emergence of the "New

Woman" and the homosexual. (2004) The New Woman was a feminist ideal that first appeared in

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the nineteenth century and represented educated and independent career women in Europe and

the United States. "One of the main objects of anxiety was the "New Woman" who, in her

demand for economic, sexual and political independence, was seen as a threat to conventionally

sexualized divisions between domestic and social roles." (Botting, 2005) Homosexuality,

although it has been present since the beginning of time, began to be tackled and implied in

certain literary works (such as the symbol of the mirror and the picture in Wilde's The Picture of

Dorian Gray and the speculations about Hyde's room decorations implying his presumed sexual

orientation) which was a novelty in fiction responsible for compromising certain moral values at

the time. The concept of "Imperial Gothic" must be discussed in relation to this particular period.

It has always been interpreted in various ways. Firstly, some critics include fiction that portrays

imperial exploration and power figure, such as the works of Rudyard Kipling. Secondly,

"Imperial Gothic" can be expanded to include Gothic works in which the empire plays a more

disguised role, such as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847). Moreover, the term can be even

more expanded to include texts such as H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) where

the links to the empire are more symbolical. Lastly, Imperial Gothic includes certain works that

question the imperial values rather than openly support them, such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of

Darkness (1902). (2004)

Regarding the Victorian Gothic, it can be said that it is related to the domestication of old

Gothic figures, as the horror moved closer to the reader. "The romantic Gothic villain is

transformed as monks, bandits and threatening aristocratic foreigners give way to criminals,

madmen and scientists." (2004) The villain became the outcast, and is often a subjects longing for

compassion and understanding. Romantic-Gothic heroes are thus affected by disillusion and are

unable to adapt to their surroundings. It is either a double or a shadow of himself that represents

"[...]an internal and irreparable division in the individual psyche." (2005) "The internalization of

Gothic forms represents the most significant shift in the genre, the gloom and darkness of the

sublime landscapes becoming external markers of inner mental and emotional states." (2005) The

city remains to be one of the main Gothic motifs almost completely replacing the medieval

scenery. Punter suggests that Gothic texts of the late nineteenth century focus on the idea of

degeneration due to the fact that the encounter between the English and their colonized subjects

were thought to may result in a barbaric and uncivilized response. However, the heart of the

supposedly civilized world, London, remains a symbol of cultural decay. Moreover, the human

12    

identity became compromised as Darwin's claim that man descended from an animal led to the

conclusion that "[...]if something could evolve, it could also devolve or degenerate, whether it

were individual, society, or nation." (2004)

The term "Female Gothic" was first used by Ellen Moers in Literary Women (1976),

referring simply to the works of female writers in the Gothic mode since the eighteenth century.

Botting analyzes the nature of Gothic villains while mentioning masculine sovereignty. (2005)

Punter states that it is difficult to establish clear distinctions between male and female Gothic,

and that many critics attempted to differentiate between the two by implying that "[...]the male

protagonists attempt to penetrate some encompassing interior", whereas the latter more often

represents "[...]a female protagonist's attempts to escape from a confining interior." (2004)

Therefore, female characters tend to be victims of aggressive males. I state that, in that sense,

Female Gothic can be regarded as a subgenre underlined by the female protests against

patriarchy. However, not many critics agree with this view. Punter recognizes the problem stating

that both male and female writers can produce any kind of Gothic. (2004)

Although the Gothic is related to a wide spectrum of themes, topics and motifs, there are

certain indicators and markers of this genre that are general for the majority of the works

generally considered to be "classic Gothic". Firstly, the haunted castle, with its darkness, terror

and secrets, has always been one of the central motifs in this genre, from the founders of Gothic

(Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794) to the contemporary writers and directors

(Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, 2001). Secondly, the monster signifying something unnatural

and frightening is largely present in the works of Gothic. From the grotesque mythical creatures

(such as the griffin or the hydra) to the aliens in science fiction films, monsters have always been

there to depict the innermost human fears. Similarly, the vampire legends have often been

present in the Gothic genre, ever since its earliest appearance in ancient texts. Punter points that

"...one of the most significant shifts in the movement from folk-lore to literature is the vampire's

transformation from peasant to aristocrat." (2004) Some critics explain the origins of the vampire

as being associated with the fears of the Plague, since Dracula's companions (rats, bats) were

linked to disease. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) reintroduces the classic features of the Gothic

novel – castle, terrors, isolation and graveyards. Furthermore, it introduces new systems of

modern writing manner: phonographs, typewriters etc. In addition, paranoia and a general sense

of uncertainty often appear in Gothic works. Whether it be connected with the unnatural and the

13    

surreal or with something realistic such as the horrors of the war, the domestic life or the

technology, paranoia is present in the characters causing them to know little or nothing about the

world around them. Furthermore, Gothic has always provided images of abuse. The violence

ranges from that located in medieval castles to that of domestic sites and the images of social

violence. Lastly, hallucination as well as the narcotics have always been present in Gothic

fiction. The readers are often not certain when it comes to reliability of the narrator. The most

crucial works depicting reality being affected by hallucinations are those of Edgar Allan Poe,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The use of narcotics leading to

hallucinations may either compromise the true nature of reality or sharpen a character's mind

providing them with a new way of seeing and interpreting their surroundings.

As for the twentieth century Gothic, Botting implies that various anxieties of the nineteenth

century reappear in the twentieth century, with their appearance becoming altered as "[...]science

fiction, the adventure novel, modernist literature, romantic fiction and popular horror writing

often resonate with Gothic motifs that have been transformed and displayed by different cultural

anxieties." (2005) Moreover, terror and horror become more and more located in bureaucracy and

technology, psychiatric facilities, intergalactic worlds etc. Jean-Francois Lyotard claims that

"[...]the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take."

(1984) Naturally, as popularity of films rose more and more, the classic Gothic novels were

represented graphically as well. As far as literature is concerned, works of H. P. Lovecraft, J. R.

R. Tolkien, S. King and F. Kafka are the most crucial in terms of novelties leading to bending

and shifting of classical Gothic style. Their works opened new doors to the gothic genre as it

became more and more flexible in terms of its themes and narrative techniques. As for the films,

there have been many fusions of old and new. For instance, there are markers of the nineteenth

century Gothic in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) as well as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

(1960). In addition, other Gothic undertones are brought to surface with science-fiction movies

such as Alien (1979) However, Gothic genre did not lose its popularity with the twenty first

century. On the contrary, it may be said that its popularity grew even more. As it has been

previously discussed, terror and human fears largely depend on the anxieties of the period people

live in. Alex Garland told a contemporary story of Frankenstein's monster in Ex Machina (2014)

re-emphasizing the dangers of human dependence on technology and artificial creatures taking

human form. Moreover, Darren Aronofsky presented terrifying stories of modern-day fears, vices

14    

and obsessions with the superficial in Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010).

Many other writers and directors of the twentieth and the twenty first century such as David

Lynch (Lost Highway,1997, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, 2014), Michael Haneke (Cache,

2005, Das Weisse Band, 2009), Lars von Trier (Dogville, 2003, Antichrist, 2009) moved terror

even closer to the audience by exposing the true horrors of contemporary time. All things

considered, what terror is is largely subjective and Gothic can, thus, take many different forms

depending on how the audience perceives it. Botting states that "[...] existing in relation to other

forms of writing, Gothic texts have always been marginalized, excluded from the sphere of

acceptable literature." (2005) However, as its popularity is still growing, the Gothic genre cannot

be regarded as unacceptable any more. Rather, it can be regarded as a genre depicting something

omnipresent but hidden in the world, appealing to the innermost fears and ideas of human psyche.

15    

2.0 American Gothic and Shirley Jackson

2.1.Shirley Jackson: life and work

Although critics such as Friedman and Bloom mention Jackson's role of an "entertainer", I

argue that the depth of her works implies that she is much more than that. In 1955 she was listed

among writers such as J. D. Salinger, Flannery O'Connor and William Styron in contemporary

American fiction. Furthermore, in 1958 a contemporary literature course at the New School for

Social Research required reading of Jackson together with Vladimir Nabokov and Jean-Paul

Sartre. Her writing has, thus, been recognized by many contemporary literary critics regardless of

the fact that many critics before that underestimated the complexity of her novels and stories.

Shirley Hadie Jackson was born on December 14, 1919 in San Francisco, California. Four

years later she moved to Burlingame with her family and attended a public high school there.

During her high school period she began writing poetry and short fiction. More than a decade

later her family moved to Rochester, New York where she finished high school as being one of

the top ranked students of her class. In 1937 she enrolled into Syracuse University, having

withdrawn from the University of Rochester prior to the Syracuse. At first she had planned to

major in journalism, but eventually changed her major in English and Speech. Two years later

she met Stanley Edgar Hyman whom she married in 1940. Having moved to New York with his

wife, Hyman became an editorial assistant for The New Republic and was responsible for

Jackson's first national publication in the magazine – "My Life With R. H. Macy." In 1942 the

couple had their first child – Laurence. In 1944 her story "Come Dance with Me in Ireland" was

elected for Best American Short Stories. In 1945 Hyman and Jackson moved to Bennington,

Vermont, where Hyman became a teacher at Bennington College. Jackson was working as a

substitute teacher of the creative writing class until the birth of her daughter Joanne. Three years

later her first novel, "The Road through the Wall" was published. That same year, in 1948, she

gave birth to her daughter Sarah and published seven of her short stories, including "Charles" and

"The Lottery." In 1949 she published her next book, the collection of short stories named The

Lottery, or The Adventures of James Harris. In 1949 the family moved again, this time to

Westport, Connecticut, because Hyman began working for The New Yorker. In 1951 her second

novel Hangsaman was published. Two year later, in 1951, the family moved back to Bennington

16    

where Jackson gave birth to her fourth child, Barry. That same year Jackson's story "The Summer

People" was chosen for Best American Short Stories and the following year "The Lottery" was

adapted for television. In 1953 Jackson's family chronicle, Life among the Savages was

published. The Bird's Nest, her third novel made it to print in 1954. The following years she

received many awards such as the one for Best American Short Stories. Her second family

chronicle, Raising Demons was published in 1957. The following year her novel Sundial reached

print and in 1959 another novel, The Haunting of Hill House, reached publication. In 1962 her

novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle became a best-seller and was later recognized as one

of the year's best novels by Time magazine. In 1964 Jackson's story "Birthday Party" was

selected for Best American Short Stories. Jackson died of heart failure on August 8, 1965. The

very next year Hyman edited collection of Jackson's work named The Magic of Shirley Jackson

which was published the same year. Three years a volume of work including Jackson's unfinished

novel, sixteen short stories and three lectures edited by Hyman and named Come Along With Me

was published.

Critics generally agree that Jackson's marriage with Stanley Edgar Hyman influenced both

her life and her writing to a great extent. Although he was somewhat responsible for her success

as a writer, he constantly controlled and manipulated not only her writing but her domestic labor

as well. Oppenheimer tells an anecdote which is just one of many instances of his behavior

towards Jackson. When she was pregnant, he saw her struggling with groceries and rushed to her

only to get the newspaper from under her arm. Running back to his chair, he left her alone to

continue to carry the groceries herself. Oppenheimer implies that the groceries would not only be

used to prepare something for him, but for one of the many female students he often brought

home. (1988) As picturing this situation tells enough itself, detailed commentary on the way in

which he used her is not necessary. Their relationship was unusual in a sense that they were

collaborators and codependents on one hand, and hostile on the other. Accordingly, Hyman both

respected his wife and her writing and diminished her by implying on numerous occasions that

she was below him. As he himself puts it, "My earnings pay the bar bill and that's it."

(Oppenheimer, 1988) It is evident from this that he was aware of and maybe threatened by his

wife's success as a writer, but chose to accept it as it was a way for him to achieve more than

mere financial stability – they lived in luxury and comfort. Their house was so big that it was

divided into four apartments, with the couple's own library that was even bigger than their town's

17    

one. Jackson knew that her husband was exploiting her but was unable to divorce him as she was

dependent on him. I suggest that Jackson's entry from her diary is nothing more than a proof of a

strange case of a Stockholm Syndrome in her marriage: "I am oddly self-conscious this morning

because Stanley is at home and there is literally no telling him what I am doing. I think he would

regard me as a criminal waster of time, and self-indulgent besides. I feel I am cheating Stanley

because I should be writing stories for money." (Hattenhauer, 2003) It may sound odd that I

chose to use the phrase "Stockholm Syndrome" when talking about a married woman living with

her husband by her own choice, but it can be noticed that Hyman manipulated Jackson to an

extent so great that she believed that it was her own fault that she had a simple writer's block

preventing her from making money. Often she believed that her husband had a right to use her

financially and, on many occasions, sexually.

While analyzing her journal entries, Hattenhauer states that she needed Hyman to control

her. Furthermore, she was stuck between her desire to leave her husband and her inability to do

so. From the very beginning until the end of their marriage Jackson wrote about wanting to leave

her husband, but never had courage to do so. (2003) Whereas Hattenhauer does not seem to

address Hyman's support for his wife's work and represents their relationship in a somewhat

black and white manner, Bloom does not fail to recognize that Hyman did, in fact, stand by his

wife's side and spoke for her publically openly defending her, which is definitely a gray area

rather than just the black one. In his work Shirley Jackson (2001) Bloom included a section from

Hyman's The Magic of Shirley Jackson pointing to the fact that Hyman seemed to understand

both his wife and her writing at times and spoke of her talent with utter respect: "Shirley Jackson

wrote in a variety of forms and styles because she was, like everyone else, a complex human

being confronting the world in many different roles and moods. She tried to express as much of

herself as possible in her work, and to express each aspect as fully and purely as possible." (2003)

Furthermore, Hyman speaks of lack of recognition that his wife received during her lifetime. He

implies that her name was often excluded from lists where it certainly belonged and that she did

not receive honors which other writers got. (Hague, 2005)

Barth's study uses the term "proto-postmodernist" to refer to Jackson's fiction. In other

words, he uses the term to refer to the late modernist writing that portrays characteristics of what

will later become postmodernism. Hattenhauer suggests that the term "proto-postmodernism"

implies nonrealist forms including discontinuous plots, absurd setting, intertextuality etc.

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Furthermore, he argues that Jackson's characterization is her most crucial proto-postmodernist

feature. As most of her characters are estranged, alienated and decentered, their main similarity is

that they rarely win or succeed, as it will be later mentioned in the section analyzing her short

stories. What is also noteworthy is that they are often flat and caricatured. As far as Jackson's

plots are concerned, they are, just like her characters, often disunified and implausible.

Hattenhauer points to the difference between magical realism and proto-postmodernism by

stating that while magical realists start with an absurd premise and develop it realistically later

on, Jackson seems to begin with what is mundane and then unravels it. What further contributes

to Jackson's literature being regarded as a proto-postmodernist is the intertextuality. Her plots and

characters are often given life by the use of different techniques from various non-realist modes.

"The nonrealist modes she reinscribes are, in descending order of importance in her fiction, the

Gothic, fantastic, fabulist, allegorical, tragic, darkly comic, and grotesque." (2003). Although it

may seem odd that writer such as Jackson might be considered to be a fabulist, it has to be

clarified that critics claiming this do not refer to the traditional notions of fabulae. In fabulae it is

usually the protagonist who benefits from their epiphany. However, Jackson's characters often

end up in the same condition as they were in when the story started – confusion, delusion and

uncertainty. How can, according to that, Jackson be considered a fabulist? The answer lies in the

fact that it is often her readers who benefit from the stories with this undertone. What connects

Jackson to Gothic is also the portrayal of her characters as grotesque. Whether they be physically

or psychologically grotesque, the readers cannot but not notice their nature and react to it.

Jackson's Gothic narratives rely heavily on anxieties caused by most often a female's sense of

entrapment and lack of self, hence the reason why the majority of critics include Jackson's fiction

in the Female Gothic genre. Not only does Jackson present the omnipresent anxiety in her work,

but the readers too are the ones affected by it as much as her characters. Regarding Hattenhauer's

aforementioned listing of modes in Jackson's fiction, the mode of parody must be added. Jackson

often uses this mode so as to refer to people and events from her own life. As it has already been

mentioned that Jackson, her mother and her grandmother all had interest in witchcraft, it is no

surprise that she satirizes the character of Mrs. Montague (in The Haunting of Hill House) who is

actually a parody of her grandmother who was responsible for the emergence of Jackson's interest

in faith healing and the Gothic fiction. Hattenhauer even implies that the recurring figure in

Jackson's fiction, the madwoman in the attic, was inspired by Jackson's grandmother. (2003)

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Eventually, Jackson became dependent on alcohol, as well as various drugs. She took codeine for

her migraines, diet pills, but also amphetamines. Her doctor even encouraged her to drink and

take drugs persuading her that it would help her lose weight. This drug and alcohol abuse was

most likely an inspiration for her stories involving the motif of hallucination, which will be

discussed later on. Anxious and miserable she even became agoraphobic, which was probably

the reason why she moved to a small town like Bennington with her family. It is somewhat

contradictory that Jackson feared the big city (New York) and the small towns at the same time.

As Hattenhauer implies, it was not the small towns itself that frightened her, but the small-

mindedness of its residents. (2003) She disliked the anti-Semitism in particular (as she had

married a Jew) and feared the influence of small-minded villagers on her children. This small-

mindedness will be discussed later in the analysis of her short stories as one of the recurring

motifs. Another one of her personal nightmares was her anxiety about publicity – she was

overweight (even obese) by the time she reached thirty, so her self-consciousness often interfered

with her judgment. Namely, she avoided being photographed and often declined to appear in TV

shows. It was her mother who was very much responsible for Jackson's lack of self-respect and

self-esteem. On numerous occasions she wrote to Jackson implying that she did not look

presentable and that she should take care of herself:

"Why oh why do you allow the magazines to print such awful pictures of you? I am sure

your daughters at school are proud to show off your picture and say "This is my mother." Your

children love you for your achievements but they also want you to be worth looking at too."

(Hattenhauer, 2003)

Jackson's relationship with her mother was estranged as she was never the daughter her

mother wanted. Ironically, Jackson's mother wanted her to conform to gender conventions, but

herself was rarely nurturing and warm. Roberta Rubenstein's 1996 "House Mothers and Haunted

Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic" analyzes in detail the psychology of Jackson's

relationship with her mother and explores the ways in which Jackson portrays the complex bonds

between mothers and daughters relying on Jackson's biography details. Like Oppenheimer,

Rubenstein points to the fact that Jackson was not the daughter that her mother wished for and

that she was persistent in attempts to control her unconventional behavior. On the other hand,

Jackson's first daughter, Joanne, felt that she was "too conventional" and that that was the reason

her mother did not fully understand her. On the other hand, it was the unconventionality and

20    

wildness of Jackson's second daughter, Sarah, that made her mother identify with her. (1996) The

complex nature of mother-daughter relationships was tackled by Jackson mostly in her longer

narratives, such as in Hangsaman where the protagonist's mother fails to help her daughter with

her emotional struggles or in The Bird's Nest in which the protagonist's mother was dead (absent

from her life). Kahane states that critical approaches to Gothic narratives emphasize an oedipal or

incestuous struggle between a powerless daughter and an erotically powerful father or other male

figure. Furthermore, Gothic elements can be thus recognized in the protagonist's complex

identification with her mother (whether the mother is good or bad, dead or alive) and her

entrapment causing her to long for some kind of protection. (1985) Thus, Jackson's somewhat

feminized father served as a surrogate for her mother, as Jackson often identified with him as it

was her father who she got her literacy from. Ironically, Jackson was often indifferent towards

her domestic duties, just like her mother. Her children were often so neglected that a neighbor

once washed and combed Jackson's daughter's hair. (Hattenhauer, 2003) The use of the term

"indifferent" must, however, be used very carefully considering the fact that Jackson wrote in the

1950s when women were generally evaluated as housewives first and professionals second.

Jackson used her literary skills to depict life in the suburbs in her time and did so by working on

two main levels: the aforementioned small-mindedness of suburban residents regardless of their

gender and her female characters' alienation and loneliness threatening to destroy their identities.

According to Betty Friedan's 1963 "The Feminine Mystique", the emptiness associated with the

role of a housewife in the 1950s was responsible for "the uneasy denial of the world outside the

home", as well as "the comfortable, empty, purposeless days" resulting in "a nameless horror".

(1963) Hence, women deprived of any kind of identity cannot function properly outside their

homes lacking the ability to be independent. Hague implies that it is panic and paranoia caused

by unfamiliar environments that take control of women's behavior when they step out of the

safety of their homes. (2005)

According to Wyatt Bonikowski's 2013 "Only One Antagonist", Jackson's female

protagonists are presented with an impossible choice: they can either conform to traditional

gender roles or descend into a permanent state of madness, anxiety and insecurity. (2013).

Female Gothic fiction is generally known for its representation of houses and mansions as being

primarily maternal spaces. They are, thus, responsible for Gothic heroines' loss of self and their

feeling of imprisonment affecting their ability to function outside of their homes. Lynette

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Carpenter suggests that Jackson's chronicles about her family life Raising Demons and Life

Among the Savages needed a reevaluation by feminist critics, as traditional male critics often

juxtaposed her status as a housewife with her Gothic writing. (1988) Critics often suspect that

Jackson suffered from a mild case of a multiple-personality disorder, drawing from the fact that

this particular disorder arises mostly from sexual abuse and that Jackson often incorporated this

theme in her works (subtle implication in The Road Through the Wall, and more open mentioning

of the theme in Hangsaman and The Bird's Nest). Accordingly, it is speculated that Jackson was

sexually abused by her maternal uncle, though the speculations are exactly that – speculations.

Jackson never spoke of anything related to that, although she often implies the abuse in her

novels. I suggest that the reason for her mentioning the sexual abuse derives from Hyman's abuse

of Jackson during their marriage rather than her uncle's abuse of her when she was a child (as it

was never proven to be true). John Clayton suggests that many college students are given simple

facts about Jackson's biography when discussing her literature implying that she is often regarded

as living "a quiet life" (1992) Agreeing with the absurdity of presenting her life like the quiet life

of a happy housewife and a mother, I suggest that a further reading and analysis of Jackson's

personality, anxiety and her encounter with the lack of understanding from people from her

surrounding is crucial when discussing her literary works. As Hattenhauer puts it, "[...]soon after

she died, she was contained, domesticated, and marginalized even by those who would celebrate

her." (2003) To sum up, Jackson's popularity resembled a rollercoaster – she was despised, then

elevated in literary circles, then forgotten, and then celebrated once again.

2.2. American Gothic

In the United States, Gothic originated in the nineteenth century with Charles Brockden

Brown's "Wieland" (1798). Although scholars have attempted to list the characteristics defining

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American Gothic as a genre, it has always been difficult to define Gothic in national terms.

Lloyd-Smith presented the four main features (regarding America's anxieties) of the American

Gothic which are widely applied in critical works related to the genre. Firstly, there is the frontier

experience going hand in hand with its inherent solitude and threats of violence. Secondly, there

is the Puritan inheritance underlined by ignorance and false ethic codes. Thirdly, the society was

overall affected by a general fear of European subversion. There were anxieties about popular

democracy which was a novelty at the time, regarded as lacking a sort of order in a developed

society. In addition, one of the most significant factors of anxieties were concerns with racial

issues regarding both slavery and the Native Americans. It is suggested that American Gothic is

characterized by its excess. In other words, the authors of American Gothic fiction tend to push

the limits and explore the extremes, whether they be sexual, racial or the extremes of cruelty.

Thus, American Gothic "[...] tends to reinforce, if only in a novel's final pages, culturally

prescribed doctrines of morality and propriety." (2004) The role of science was paradoxical, as it

stood both for a means of explaining the what had previously been inexplicable and at the same

time served as a threat with its new sinister capacities. What critics generally agree on, however,

is one thing – the American Gothic texts presented a threat to the picture of the American dream,

as well as to narratives portraying it, as they depicted the limitations regarding its actual

possibilities. What is ironic is that Gothic was predominant in American culture, considering the

fact that master narrative of Americans was related to progress and nationalism. Eric Savoy

points to this irony stating that "[...] the odd centrality of Gothic cultural production in the United

States, where the past constantly inhabits the present, where progress generates an almost

unbearable anxiety about its costs, and where an insatiable appetite for spectacles of grotesque

violence is part of the texture of everyday life." (2009) Robert Martin in his American Gothic:

New Interventions in a National Narrative attempts to analyze the American gothic according to

the histories of race and gender as well as the social cultures and psychology. What happened is

that Americans lost their dream of greatness and entered a different world. The emergence of the

genre focused on classes, genders and sexualities that had previously been marginalized. (2009)

According to Elizabeth Kerr in her study of Faulkner, the Gothic revival in the twentieth century

(the age of technology) is a clear parallel to its emergence in the eighteenth century (the age of

reason). (1979) One of the most popular Gothic theories regarding its production in the United

States it stands for the return of what has been repressed. "The failure of repression and forgetting

23    

– a failure upon which the entire tradition of the gothic in America is predicated – will be

complete in conscious eyes." Savoy compares the eighteenth-century Gothic castle with its ghosts

and shadows to Freud's rise of psychoanalysis making a parallel between the two – neither can be

organized and fully controlled. (2009) Moreover, the Gothic cannot exist without the unknown

which is to be compared to what is known, as well as without different dimensions. American

Gothic, thus, relies on the conflict between civilized and the other. Human tendency to make

sense of things juxtaposes the Gothic narrative. Freud contributed to Gothic in a sense that he

introduced the term "uncanny" denoting something repressed which recurs. "The psychic house

turns toward the gothic only when it is haunted by the return of the repressed, a return that impels

spectacular figures." (Savoy, 2009) Gothic negates national imaginary. Freud suggests that the

Gothic double has to do with splitting of one's ego which has its roots in narcissism. Gothic

works on two levels. On one hand, it serves as a means to analyze and explore what is hidden and

repressed in human psyche. On the other hand, it represents an attempt to intervene in social

issues. Botting suggests that in the mid-nineteenth century the bourgeois family was the scene of

ghostly return and that what caused the anxiety were "guilty secrets of past transgressional

uncertain class origins." (2005) Thus, the society's sense of self, identity and belonging

deteriorated and Gothic appeared as a marker of nostalgia. The traditional Gothic system changed

resulting in the emergence of mysteries of the mind and family pasts, as the human world and

social issues replaced the supernatural terror. The dark European Gothic tradition did not appeal

to the new world of America.

It comes as a no surprise that the Gothic is more present in the South than the rest of

America – it evokes terror and anxiety rooted in death, decay, violence and brutality. Early

American Gothic writers focused on concerns with frontier wilderness anxiety as well as how a

Puritan way of thinking affected society. The ruined plantations and mansions became typical

Gothic locations as they represented the secrets and the shameful history of the South. Fiedler

claims that the proper subject for American Gothic is the black man, "[...] from whose shadows

we have not yet emerged." (1997)

The real potential of the Southern Gothic (as well as Gothic in general) was first exploited

by Edgar Allan Poe, who is often considered to be a major influence on the American Gothic

fiction in general, as it was his work that distinguished American Gothic fiction from the

European one. Poe experimented in his fiction playing with conventions in order to resist the

24    

traditional cultural poetics of the nineteenth-century America. Poe's concern for mental illnesses,

traumas and the supernatural contributed to the genre to a great extent. The overall pessimistic

tone in his stories and poems was caused by the Puritan background. In other words, he portrayed

the decay of New England's Puritanism regarding romantic fiction. Poe's Gothic characteristics

involve the general theme of death and decay, madness, chaos, insanity, and the supernatural.

What differentiates him from earlier Gothic writers is the psychological aspect in his works,

meaning that they cause terror in a reader even when presented rationally and realistically. He

moved away from long narratives embracing the shorter forms and replacing traditional Gothic

qualities with more urban ones. Poe explored the human psyche in order to portray its extremes.

Although many of his works are not placed in the South, his stories' characteristics often portray

the Southern Gothic qualities – the decaying family house, inexplicable anxieties, incest, as well

as racial and social issues. "The Fall of the House of Usher" features all Southern Gothic features

– the decaying mansion, characters that are both physically and mentally ill, doubles, etc.

William Moss declares that the foundations of Southern Gothic are Poe's ruins of the house of

Usher. (2013) Furthermore, Ginsberg emphasizes the importance of Poe's treatment of race

claiming that in his story "The Black Cat" he portrays violence directed at helpless victims as a

symbol of slavery. (2009) This violence, thus, represents a Southern sentimentalization of a

master-slave relationship. In Poe's own time his Gothic works related to the national level were

often frowned upon by scholars. However, they gained appreciation from the literary critics later

on.

Another influential author of American Gothic is Nathaniel Hawthorne. Critics agree that

the majority of Hawthorne's fiction belongs to Dark Romanticism, although it includes numerous

Gothic qualities. His fiction is concerned mostly with haunting past that overshadows the happy

family life in society. He focused on the capability of seemingly good people to give in to self-

destruction and sin. Moreover, he wrote ghost stories and tales that involve the supernatural and

are undeniably classified in the Gothic genre. Hawthorne's awareness of his ancestors' sins (his

great-great-great grandfather was a judge and a ruler in the Church that hunted witches) resulted

in the influence of the factor concerning the Puritan background on his works.

William Faulkner, the most recognized representative of typical Southern Gothic fiction,

places his works around swamps, deep woods and decaying plantations. His most popular work,

"A Rose for Emily" is undoubtedly the best instance of his Southern Gothicism, as it features

25    

themes of necrophilia, secrecy and sin – all clearly Gothic characteristics. The story can also be

analyzed in terms of reactions to patriarchy and a response to what was repressed. Richard Gray

points to the extremity of the protagonist's condition causing her to react, thus portraying "[...] the

degree of her imprisonment." (2000) Not only does Faulkner rely on Southern Gothicism in his

stories, but he does so in writing his novels as well. The Sound and the Fury features the

decaying dynasty, the haunted mansion, the imprisoned heroine, violence and mysteries.

Southern Gothic includes the presence of the surreal and the irrational, as well as characters'

impulsive desires, and an overall sense of isolation. This general sense of alienation has its roots

in the South's anxieties related to racism, slavery and patriarchy, which were the historical

realities of the time. Furthermore, these works are also affected by Freud's theory of the return of

the repressed. Faulkner's Yoknapatampha County represents the portrayal of the Southerners'

anxieties, as well as the anxieties of the Indians, the blacks and even the aristocratic families. The

key symbols and motifs signal the memory of many unresolved issues burdening the South.

After Faulkner, Southern Gothic writers that are crucial to the genre are Eudora Welty,

Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. The twentieth-

century Gothic, with its themes, ideas and undertones, is universal and has to do with a collective

self. The twentieth century, being the age of scientific novelties and automatic ways of the world

cause the loss of human identity as well as human alienation. This is where Gothic narratives

came to use – they served as the ways of shaping one's identity. Rationality and the civilized

became compromised by new terrors – the unknown – and one's capability to cope with it.

H. L. Malchow refers to the Gothic not as a genre, but as "a language of panic and

unreasoning anxiety" (1996) Indeed, the Gothic works do signal the overall anxiety – both the

authors' and the readers'. As Lloyd Smith suggests, Gothic is in fact about the return of the past

and of what has been repressed. Accordingly, those past secrets control the present and tell about

things that the culture does not want or does not dare tell itself. (2004) The social anxiety

regarding class, gender and race underlines the Gothic extremes, considering people's fear related

to superstition (with regard to the guilt about past actions). Moreover, these anxieties caused the

fear of the threat of a revolution and a suspicion that the empire and the colonies might bring

something sinister. Thus, xenophobia began to emerge. Gothic was, hence, closely related to

cultural and historical realities. In different eras different anxieties were present in American

society. Namely, early Gothic was concerned with the oppression related to class and gender, as

26    

well as the settlers' fear of the Indians and of what was wild and unknown. Moreover, the mid

and late nineteenth-century Gothic proposed the fear related to specific immigrant groups (mostly

the Irish). Also, Veeder suggests that what was repressed in the nineteenth century the most was

– sexuality. He claims that this period's literature's focus was on sexuality. For instance,

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter poses issues of female sexuality and independence. During this

period scientists generally agreed that women were less intelligent as female brains are smaller

than males' (as their bodies are smaller too) and that women's brain cells did not function

properly due to blood loss the one time of the month when they were menstruating. Of course,

these misconceptions were later to be resolved, but they definitely dominated the way of thought

during that period. (1999) In addition, the twentieth-century Gothic portrays anxieties caused by

distaste against homosexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. What constitutes the late

twentieth century and the twenty-first century Gothic fiction is similar to the fear of the

nineteenth century – the fear of the unknown. However, popular fiction replaced the Indians and

the wilderness with intergalactic worlds, aliens and artificial intelligence (AI) threatening the

nation's identity and sense of self. Belief has also always been compromised in Gothic fiction, in

a sense that desperate characters tend to grasp a certain belief and make it their truth, leading to

the horrifying combination of madness and doom resulting in an even more desperate behavior.

When referring to Gothic, Veeder proposes the term "social healing" claiming that its emergence

is always influenced by a certain social issue – economic exploitation, racial and gender

discrimination, religious intolerance, etc. (1999) Gothic helped cope with the effects of what was

repressed by disregarding the silence and denial. Thus, Gothic fiction provides the readers with

what they need in order to heal the repressed.

It can be seen that certain features are omnipresent in American Gothic works, regardless of

the era. Thus, what can be concluded is that Gothic has always served as kind of a getaway from

repressed fears.

3. The Lottery and other stories: Gothic themes and tropes

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This section provides a detailed analysis of the stories collectively published as The

Lottery and other stories. The Lottery and other stories was first published in 1949 and

consists of twenty-five short stories. Although all the stories are unique with regard to

their themes, settings, plots etc. they share certain similar characteristics and patterns, as

Jackson places her characters in settings familiar to the reader. The fact that her characters

are shown in their homes, gardens, city streets, small town squares or stores, brings the

stories closer to the readers who are then able to experience the horrors of human psyche

and of the hostile environment. All characters in her stories are outsiders – they are prone

to madness and descent into the unstable and tend to lose touch with reality. Of course,

some of the stories do contain traces of the surreal, but the majority can be analyzed with

regard to the innermost human fears (which are real in any sense) and internal struggles

and/or the omnipresent cruelty of humans.

Firstly, a distinction between horror and terror must be emphasized once again. As

it has already been mentioned, Ann Radcliffe drew the line between the two terms

explaining that terror does not show things explicitly, but only suggests them. Here, the

readers are more involved as they think about the hidden beneath the surface. On the other

hand, horror portrays horrific things explicitly. Hence, it freezes the reader thus producing

a different kind of excitement. I suggest that Jackson manages to include both the terror

and the horror level in her collection. Some of the stories (e.g. "A fine old firm") are

domestic ones and suggest pure terror through the social commentary.

On the other hand, stories such as "The Lottery" explicitly portray images of

violence thus making the reader shocked. As Gothic definitely represents the world of

doubt, it is dominated by uncertainty (both the readers' and the characters'), which is

something that Jackson successfully managed to portray, as the events are usually

inexplicable and juxtaposed to reason and logic, or the reader cannot trust the

protagonists' point of view and is not certain about the real nature of the events happening

in the story. One of the most noticeable recurring motifs is that of James Harris.

Originally, his character is from the ballad called "James Harris (The Daemon Lover)"

and was collected by Francis James Child in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads

(1882-98). In the original ballad James Harris secludes a woman from her family with

promises of better life, leading her onto a ship only to leave her there to die. In Jackson's

28    

collection there are several variations of the name – James, Mr. Harris, Jim Harris etc.

However, one can easily conclude that it refers to the omnipresent James Harris – a tall

man in a blue suit who pursues or threatens a female character. Jackson both emphasizes

the singularity of the antagonist and generalizes him only to make him a symbol standing

for a woman's descent into madness. As Bonikowski suggests in "Only One Antagonist",

Jackson herself attempts to escape her role as a mother and a housewife by surrendering

to James Harris. (2013) Furthermore, the demonic reference to the antagonist is related to

the understanding of female sexuality as something originating from the demonic itself. In

Jackson's stories, women are given an impossible choice – they can either conform to

their passive role or indulge in life filled with madness and insecurity. It is the female

passivity that makes them seek the company of James Harris. (2013)

Relying on the suburban horror, Jackson drifts away from the traditional Gothic

settings and her stories are not placed in the unnatural, haunted, dark locations. On the

contrary, she places her characters in the ordinary American settings as her vision of

horror is in one's mind and encompasses seemingly ordinary individuals one encounters

every day. The thought of the existence of something sinister and hidden produces the

effect that Jackson wishes. The majority of her characters are lonely and/or unmarried

women who are unhappy and unfulfilled either professionally (like Hilda Clarence),

personally, or both. Obsessed with mirrors, lacking self esteem and being overwhelmed

by pressures from their environment, they end up unstable and anxious. They are the ones

that are most prone to losing sense of self and touch with reality and often attempt to take

on another identity. Here she discusses the notion of traditional gender roles and how not

conforming to them can lead to depression and uncontrollable anxiety.

As far as settings are concerned, Jackson's attitude towards the cruelties and small

mindedness of small towns does not imply that she considers cities to represent a perfect

environment. In the Jackson world, one cannot escape the banalities and anxieties of

everyday life. In the country the characters are exposed to gossip and close minded people

whereas in the city they lose their identities among anonymous masses. It seems like there

is no way out for her characters, and it can be stated that she emphasizes that what stands

for horror is inside the person's mind, for they cannot seek happiness and some sort of

epiphany that is to free them of all troubles if they are internally deeply unsatisfied.

29    

Jackson also tackles the notions of madness and mental illnesses, either openly (like in

"Colloquy") or implicitly (as in "Elizabeth"). In both cases the outcome is the same and

leaves the characters desperate and disturbed. Another common notion she deals with in

her stories is the notion of conformity. She constantly emphasizes the dangers of small

communities that ban outsiders or pressure them to conform. In stories such as "After you,

my dear Alphonse", "Flower Garden" or "Come dance with me in Ireland" Jackson

comments on racism as close minded people from small towns tend to be overly polite in

order to mask their racism and stereotypes by being unnaturally kind to African

Americans or immigrants. She also portrays the more serious side of conformity, as it can

be seen from the "The Lottery".

It is important to say that Jackson also openly rejects the blind obedience to

tradition. Blindly following it causes the characters to feel powerless in trying to change

anything and turns them superstitious without an objective reason, as they do not tend to

question anything.

In her stories, a reader can easily analyze the character relying on their home. If

there is a description of a home in the story, one can without a doubt analyze the aspects

of a character's psyche. If it is messy and chaotic, the characters are likely to be

characterized as messy and chaotic themselves, individuals with no sense of boundaries

rejecting order and social conventions. If an apartment is similar or even the same as

another apartment in the building, that character surely struggles to cope with their issues

of doubling of their personality and overcome the fragmentation of self. Homes have

another purpose – Jackson uses them to emphasize the contradiction in their notion.

Namely, although they should represent one's sanctuary and safe place, in Jackson's

stories they are often the true Gothic setting – a place that causes the characters to feel

unsafe and exposed. Moreover, they experience a sort of entrapment and confinement in

their homes, where they should be carefree and happy.

Another issue that Jackson discusses with regard to homes is the intrusion of

privacy. The most obvious example is "Like mother used to make" as it builds on the

pressure and tension whilst acknowledging the true terror behind one's privacy being

usurped and home (together with identity) consumed and stolen. The characters in the

stories often lose a grip of self – their identities are in most cases compromised and their

30    

dissatisfaction with themselves leads them towards trying to adopt another identity, abuse

narcotics and alcohol, or give in to madness instead of solving problems by concrete

means. It can be said that anxiety is the most appropriate word to describe any of the

stories. The characters also suffer from many phobias – agoraphobia, claustrophobia, and

even xenophobia. This is why they are often shown as imagining or thinking about the

world ending. This apocalyptic perspective can be analyzed on three levels – the

characters can be concerned with the actual possibility of the world ending (which is

highly unlikely), they might be expressing their point of view of the world and society in

their time, or, most likely, the apocalyptic images stand for their own mental state. This

section attempts to analyze the stories with regard to the most prominent motifs, themes,

characterization and settings and provide a comprehensive view on what is it that causes

horror and terror in readers and makes Jackson a Gothic writer.

The first story in the collection, "The Intoxicated" (1948), focuses on the conflict

between a young girl, Eileen, and a guest at her parents' house party. The guest is first

shown drinking, after which he indulges in a conversation with the young girl, who tells

him that she believes that the world is going to end. He disregards her opinions attributing

them to her youth and, automatically, her lack of experience. The story ends with the

guest's conversation with her father about "kids nowadays" so her beliefs are disregarded

by both of them.

As A. M. Holmes claims in his introduction to the short story collection, Jackson's

young girls always know far more than all others and are usually disappointed at the

behavior of their (mostly male) elders. This perception of the world ending and the

prediction of an apocalypse can also be found in two other stories: "Pillar of Salt" and

"Colloquy", which are to be discussed later. In "The Intoxicated" the girl is convinced that

the world has no future and her point of view is utterly pessimistic: "I don't really think

it's got much future. At least the way we've got it now." (5) The guest who confronts the

girl is an adult man who is shown drinking and trying to sober up in the first lines of the

story. His inability to seriously acknowledge Eileen's attitudes shows his inability to break

away from the society's conformity, given his lack of understanding and open

mindedness. It may be assumed that he is partly aware that the girl might be right,

however, he does not show it. Jackson's (as well as Eileen's) commentary on the society

31    

and the world's banalities is rejected both by the guest and the girl's father, portraying

their moving away from the objective view on the state that the world is in. The girl's

terrifying omen involves the crushing of cities, particularly the buildings – "Somehow I

think of the churches as going first, before even the Empire State building. And then all

the big apartment houses by the river, slipping down slowly into the water with the people

inside. And the schools, in the middle of Latin class maybe, while we're reading Caesar."

(6) This apocalyptic vision is even more horrifying considering the fact that it comes from

a young girl, an inexperienced individual who still manages to depict her darkest thoughts

and fears. The objects she mentions are the ones related to big cities rather than small

towns, as Jackson depicts her view on the cities' consumption of human identity and self.

The most prominent part of her vision is the one describing homes: "Everything that

makes the world like it is now will be gone. We'll have new rules and new ways of living.

Maybe there'll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else,

you see [] The office buildings will be just piles of broken stones." (7) Jackson always

relates the notion of homes to her characters' identity. In this case, homes are something

sinister that people use to hide from the world, to lock themselves behind closed doors

thus masking their true selves. Eileen's attitude is that suburban homes are all the same,

and in her vision they are shattered so that people no longer have the sense of identity and

are forced to face their true selves, as well as those around them. Maybe in that world the

two confronted sides (in this case Eileen and the guest) would be able to openly confront

each other rather than indulge in passive-aggressive conversation, unable to be completely

open because of social conventions. It is important to mention that after the dialogue, the

hostess is shown talking to a tall, graceful man in a blue suit, which is, of course,

reminiscent of James Harris. Although he is not explicitly mentioned in the story, nor is

he shown participating in the story's relevant events, his presence is overshadowing the

whole story. To a casual reader this quick glimpse of an unknown guest in a blue suit

might seem irrelevant. However, given Jackson's tendencies to use James Harris as a

marker of something evil and sinister, him appearing the second after the conversation

about the apocalypse comes as no surprise. As the story progresses to an end, the guest

talks to Eileen's father saying that he has had an interesting conversation with his

daughter. When the guest mentions that she is doing her Latin, the father says: "Gallia est

32    

omnia divisa in partes tres" (8) This is the second reference to Caesar in "The

Intoxicated", and in both cases it signals the apocalypse threatening the world. The

aforementioned phrase is translated as "Gaul is a whole divided into three parts" and

serves to reemphasize Eileen's visions, as, according to her, the world, as well as people's

identities, are to be fragmented and crushed. The guest's tendency to undermine Eileen's

visions is also shown in his statement that "maybe there'll be a law to keep all seventeen-

year-old girls in school learning sense." (7) The story ends with the words "Kids

nowadays" (8), as the two men disregard Eileen's visions and attitudes attributing them to

her lack of experience and young age.

"The Daemon Lover" (1949) portrays a protagonist, an unmarried thirty-four year

old woman, on her wedding day. She gets up and starts getting ready for her wedding,

choosing what to wear and making last minute changes to her apartment. However, the

groom-to-be, known as James Harris, does not arrive. Desperate, she begins to wander

through the city in search of him. She encounters people and asks them if they saw James,

however, none of them seems to give her a straight and definite answer. Finally, a boy

directs her to a house and she heads there as she is convinced that James must be there.

Although the apartment is vacant, the woman hears voices only to encounter a rat in a

deserted house. The final lines of the story imply that she would go near the house to

search for James on numerous other occasions in the future.

The very title of the story suggest the upcoming events, in other words, it implies

the presence of something sinister in the plot. This story is the one that most obviously

draws a parallel between the original ballad of James Harris and the omnipresent Jackson

antagonist who pursues women and whose threatening presence leads them towards self

destruction. The story opens with the lines "She had not slept well" (9), immediately

suggesting the protagonist's insomnia and anxiety thus providing a foundation of one's

analysis of the protagonist's mental state. The opening lines together with the comments

such as that she "worried unnecessarily" and "hesitated over what to say" (9) serve to

portray the protagonist's anxiety and uncertainty. She is first shown writing a letter to her

sister saying that she is to be married, and claiming that the events leading to that point

were "even stranger than that" (9). Thus, she provides the readers with a sensation that

there is something (or someone) sinister overshadowing the story. Having finally torn up

33    

the letter, she starts to plan on what to wear, as she wants to be "soft, feminine" (9). This

desire to appear feminine speaks of her self esteem, as Jackson tackles the societal

conventions, considering the fact that her protagonist is thirty-four and unmarried, which

stood against everything society demanded of women at the time. Her low self esteem

becomes even lower when she looks at a dress with a print deciding that it was "too young

for her" (9) thus portraying her awareness of her age and gender roles of her time.

Furthermore, she is described as experiencing a headache and taking an aspirin,

suggesting that she is overwhelmed and anxious. "With sudden horror she realized that

she had forgotten to put the clean sheets on the bed, [...], working quickly to avoid

thinking consciously of why she was changing the sheets." (10) This sudden realization

and mentioning of the sheets surprises the reader and the reasons behind it are never

actually explicitly explained. Puzzled, one may only assume that she spent the night with

someone else and forgot to change the sheets, feeling guilty and wanting to get rid of

everything that proves her infidelity – "She put everything she had worn the day before,

including her nightgown, into the hamper." (11) Many critics agree about this

interpretation, however, I suggest that it might be analyzed on a different level. There is a

possibility that Jackson's protagonist wants to get rid of her old self, as the day she

decides to change the sheets and get rid of everything reminding her of the day before is

the day of her wedding. Like a woman in the ballad of James Harris, she thinks that her

life is about to change with James and she does not want anything to remind her of her

old, desperate and lonely life. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she cannot help but

notice that the dress she is wearing was made for a girl and not a woman, "for someone

who would run freely, dance, swing, it with her hips when she walked." (11) The image of

a carefree girl is the protagonist's counterpart, as the young girl stands for everything that

the protagonist is not. Although years ago she was a young girl who could dance and

swing freely (which is why she has the dress in the first place), now she is a thirty-four

year old woman anxiously pacing around her apartment waiting for James to come,

drinking coffee and smoking and anxiously checking the time. "She was not satisfied with

her clothes, her face, her apartment" (12) is a longer way of saying that she was not

satisfied with her life. This fact is the basis for my analysis of her changing the sheets and

hurrying to get rid of everything from the day before. Marrying James is, in her mind, her

34    

ticket out of loneliness. "Reconciled, settled, she tried to think of Jamie and could not see

his face clearly, or hear his voice. It's always that way with someone you love, she

thought, and let her mind slip past today and tomorrow, into the farther future." (12) The

fact that she cannot see his face clearly obviously suggests something sinister about the

man she is about to marry. She attributes this to love, implying that it can blur all things.

However, the readers are at this point starting to be aware of James' sinister intentions and

his evil nature, particularly if the events from the original ballad are taken into

consideration. The protagonist of "The Daemon Lover", just like a woman in the ballad, is

seduced by promises of bright future and a complete improvement of her life. Hours

passed, and there is still no sign of James. Anxious and impatient, she even imagines

hearing James laughing down the hallway. After some time, the protagonist starts to take

the situation more seriously, gradually realizing that James is probably not going to come

for her. "She was frightened and felt an urgent need to hurry." (14) Optimistic and

romantic readers might claim that Jackson uses the term "frightened" to portray the

protagonist's concerns about James' well being, as she might be frightened that something

has happened to him. However, it is much more likely that she is frightened because she

realizes that she is about to lose one thing that was about to change her life and help her

escape loneliness and numbing anxiety. Finally, she decides to take matters into her own

hands and sets off to find James. When she arrives at James' address, the readers are

surprised at the claim that she had not been there before. It seems almost unbelievable that

a person has never visited their partner to whom they are about to be married. She does

not, however, see James' name on any of the mailboxes, and from this point on her

descent into madness most clearly begins. Up until this point, both the protagonist and the

reader had a little hope that everything will turn out to be fine with the wedding.

However, not being able to trace James leaves the protagonist more and more hopeless.

She decides to ask the Roysters, a family whose apartment James was allegedly

borrowing. As she was coming up the stairs, "the hall was very dark and the stairs looked

darker" (16) creating an image of a labyrinth in which the protagonist was lost. Just as the

woman from the ballad was lost at sea, the protagonist of "The Daemon Lover", a

modernized original ballad, is wandering the city streets and dark buildings. Having

realized that the Roysters are of no help to her, she moves on to the next apartment, where

35    

an incredibly hostile man with "narrow, inspecting" eyes (19) tells her that he does not

know of anyone who resembles James' description. More and more hopeless, she goes

back to the streets where she encounters a newsdealer who first claims that he has not

seen anyone resembling James, but later claims that "maybe he did come" (20). The

changing of his answer happened because there was another man buying newspaper right

behind the protagonist, and the newsdealer finally had an audience and just made fun of

the woman. In the middle of their conversation, "she was finally aware of her over-young

print dress, and pulled her coat around her quickly" (20) portraying once again her low

self esteem, dissatisfaction with her looks and awareness that she is not young anymore.

Next she encounters a florist who tells her that a tall man in a blue suit came at about ten

o'clock to buy chrysanthemums. Naturally, in western culture, these flowers are used to

honor loved ones and are often placed on graves. Surprised at the choice of flowers, she

decides to leave the store and continue her search for James. The chrysanthemums in the

story are another marker of a sinister nature of the plot, and a definite signal that there is

something evil and terrifying about James Harris. When she has an idea to go to the

police, she suddenly sees herself objectively and goes on to justify her actions and build

on her self esteem and public self image – "Yes, it looks silly, doesn't it, me all dressed up

and trying to find the young man who promised to marry me, but what about all of it you

don't know? I have more than this, more than you can see: talent, perhaps, and humor of a

sort, and I'm a lady and I have pride and affection and delicacy and a certain clear view of

life that might make a man satisfied and productive and happy; there is more than you

think when you look at me." (23) The choice of words such as "perhaps" and "of a sort"

proves her lack of self esteem as everything she says in the aforementioned quote seems

forced and unnatural, as if she does not believe those things herself, but rather wants to

believe in them, which is why she is trying to convince both herself and those around her

that she is not a worthless human being just because she did not conform to social

conventions and is unmarried at the age of thirty-four. After that she encounters an old

man who tells her that he has seen a tall man in a blue suit carrying flowers, and the

protagonist was certain that he was waiting for her in her apartment. She does not,

however, find him there. "Her own apartment was waiting for her, silent, barren." (25) As

Jackson often represents her characters through the images of their homes, one can

36    

conclude a lot about the protagonist's state of mind at this point. In her apartment she

feels trapped and anxious, and it does not serve as a sanctuary from the hostility of the

world around her. Going back to the street, she meets a boy and gives him a dollar, after

which he tells her that he had seen Jamie with flowers and directs her to the apartment

house. It can be seen that the only two people who can verify Jamie's existence are not

credible (just like the protagonist) – an old (probably senile) man and a child. She knocks,

but no one answers the door, although she is sure that she hears voices inside. Finally she

goes to the attic and sees "the empty attic room, bare lath on the walls, floorboards

unpainted. She stepped just inside, looking around; the room was filled with bags of

plaster, piles of old newspapers, a broken trunk. There was a noise which she suddenly

realized as a rat, and then she saw it, sitting very close to her, near the wall, its evil face

alert, bright eyes watching her. She stumbled in her haste to be out with the door closed,

and the skirt of the print dress caught and tore." (27) This last image of "The Daemon

Lover" is entirely Gothic in its nature. Up to this point the terror in the readers was

present because of their realization that something evil must be lurking and their

awareness of a woman's descent into madness. However, the image of an empty attic and

a rat staring at the protagonist provides a true Gothic scenery as the story culminates and

ends, leaving the protagonist lonely and helpless. The final picture of her wandering the

streets and coming back on numerous occasions to knock on the door concludes the story

with feelings of desperation and loneliness. The protagonist's descent into madness is

gradual, or at least perceived as gradual by the readers. Rereading the story might help

one detect the signals of her mental instability from the opening lines. It is the end where

the reader finally realizes the extent of her madness as she is torn between reality and

fantasy. Although the people she encountered are clearly markers of reality, the

protagonist chose to ignore them and let herself fall deeper into the abyss of delusion. The

rat in the final picture might stand for James Harris himself, as it is humanized and

described as evil – it drives the woman from the sense of reality, sanity and self. All in all,

"The Daemon Lover" can be analyzed on two levels – realistic and supernatural.

Realistically speaking, James Harris does exist, and the events following can simply be

attributed to a desperate woman's desire to get married and escape loneliness, leaving her

even more desperate at the end, as a cruel male figure left her on their wedding day. On

37    

the other hand, given that the name of the story's antagonist clearly has roots in the

ancient English ballad, the story is supernatural and James Harris does not exist, but only

represents a woman's descent into madness and losing touch with reality.

"Like Mother Used to Make" (1949) opens with an image of David Tenant who

goes grocery shopping at a local store. When he comes home, he is seen taking care of his

apartment and is content with every little detail in it. The readers learn that he expects a

guest for dinner that evening, his neighbor, Marcia. It is learnt that Marcia lives in the

same building, in an identical apartment, however, hers is not taken good care of like

David's. When she arrives she is rather rude and unpleasant. Some time later, a man

arrives to see Marcia (James Harris) and Marcia starts to pretend that David's apartment is

hers. To readers' surprise, David accepts participating in the game and is, in the end,

forced out of his own home to Marcia's, where she begins to clean the messy apartment.

David Tenant's apartment is described as "warm, friendly and good" (30) and,

taking into consideration Jackson's tendency to relate one's character to their home, it can

be concluded that David is a warm, friendly and good person. However, one thing catches

his eye every day – "the plaster was falling in one corner and no power on earth could

make it less noticeable." (30) Although everything seems perfect in his apartment, he

cannot help but worry about his ceiling, as it is the one thing that disrupts the serenity of

his home. This mentioning of David's obsession with the plaster serves as a prediction of

his home being usurped. He himself describes his home as "charming" (30) and the long

passage in the story describes every detail of his apartment, focusing primarily on David's

point of view, and how he was satisfied by the perfect combination of colors and shapes:

"He could not come into this room without feeling that it was the most comfortable home

he had ever had; tonight, as always, he let his eyes move slowly around the room, from

couch to drapes to bookcase, imagined the green bowl on the end table, and sighed as he

turned to the desk." (31) Although David feels that his home is perfect, he still imagines

buying things that would make it even better. Jackson constantly emphasizes the

pleasantness and comfort that David experiences in his home only to build the tension

towards the story's culmination. One particular sentence serves as an introduction to the

main course of the story's events: "It pleased him to have only one key to his home, and

that safely in his own pocket, it had a pleasant feeling to him, solid and small, the only

38    

way into his warm fine home." (31) At this point the readers can easily conclude that his

tranquility is to be disrupted, as the detailed description of the key serves to emphasize the

importance of one's privacy – key is the means of achieving one's serenity by locking

themselves in the sanctuary such is their home. Deciding to go to Marcia's apartment to

invite her over for dinner, he leaves his home and unlocks the door of hers. Her

apartment, although it is exactly the same as his, is "not agreeable for him to come into".

(31) The reason for his uneasiness about her home is the chaos inside it – "Marcia's home

was bare and at random, an upright piano a friend had given her stood crookedly, half in

the foyer [...], Marcia's bed was unmade and a pile of dirty laundry lay on the floor." (31)

The fact that he notices these things reemphasizes the love and care he has for his home.

He cannot even imagine how someone can live in a chaotic environment. There are two

reasons behind Jackson's description of Marcia's apartment as chaotic and disordered.

Firstly, it serves to help the readers understand Marcia's character before she is even

introduced into the story. Thus, the readers already have prejudice about her when she

comes to David's apartment and regard her as a silly, disorganized and messy individual.

Secondly, the description once again emphasizes David's personality, as it stands for

complete opposite of him (as well as his home). One cannot help but concluding that the

story's protagonist has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although it is rather brave to

psychologically diagnose a literary character, I state that there are many grounds on which

this can be concluded. To begin with, he is concerned with matching the colors perfectly –

he chooses the orange plates in order to fit them with the couch cover and the napkins. He

pays too much attention when preparing salad – he is concerned about the order of

vegetables and how they will look in the bowl. It is also mentioned that he eats the same

breakfast every morning and in a particular manner which is not to be disturbed. Later on,

there is a description of the way in which he arranges his silverware – "the spoons,

stacked up neatly one on top of another in their own grooves, and the knives in even

order, all facing the same way [...], butter knives and serving spoons and the pie knife all

went into their own places" (38) Throughout the story there are numerous other hints that

point towards David's obsession with the order of things, hence the conclusion that his

tidiness is not healthy, given the fact that it affects his life and behavior. One may argue

that his desire to keep things in order is simply because of love for his home, as he is

39    

shown taking care of it "gradually, tenderly" (32). I argue, however, that obsessing over

every single detail is a sort of getaway from reality and that it leads to superstition – in his

mind, if the order of his home were disrupted, he would undoubtedly think that his life

will take turn for the worse. If his tidiness and a desire for order were not affecting his

life, I would agree that the reason behind them is simply love for his home. However, that

is not the case. As he is "checking everything and admiring the table, shining and clean"

(33), his guest arrives "with a shout and fresh air and disorder." (33) This juxtaposition

emphasizes great differences between the two characters, as main events of the story

involve conflict between order and chaos. David's clean, shining apartment is usurped by

Marcia, "a tall handsome girl with a loud voice, wearing a dirty raincoat" (33). She also

arrives late, which is another level of opposition between the two. As I have already

mentioned, the readers have already formed their attitude towards Marcia on the basis of

description of her apartment, and (probably unconsciously) begin to regard Marcia's

actions and behavior as unacceptable. Jackson affected the readers' attitudes cleverly, by

using a third person as a narrator, so it seems to the readers that they have formed their

own opinion. However, I argue that the narrator is not impartial and objective, and that

David's point of view is the only one that is given in the story. I base this statement on the

fact that only good sides of one's tidiness and obsession with order are presented,

although there are signs of bad sides to them as well. Furthermore, the descriptions of

Marcia and her apartment are rather subjective, as not one good thing has been said about

them. As they are finishing dinner (during which David noticed that Marcia failed to

admire the silverware) and eating a cherry pie, a man arrives to the apartment. It comes as

a no surprise that the man at the door is Mr. Harris, an omnipresent antagonist. His arrival

can be analyzed on three different levels. The most obvious reason behind his arrival is

his pursuit of Marcia, as James Harris traditionally comes as a threat to single, unmarried

women (such as Marcia). Secondly, as the gender roles are obviously reversed in this

story, he comes as a threat to David's privacy and tranquility, an evil presence further

usurping his home when he is already overwhelmed only to disrupt his tranquility even

more. Thirdly, there is another option which is rather unusual, but not unlikely. Although

there seems to be no connection between any of the short stories in this collection (as

plots and characters apart from James Harris differ in each story), I propose that the fact

40    

that "Like Mother Used to Make" comes right after "The Daemon Lover" is anything but

random. "The Daemon Lover" ends with its protagonist hearing voices in an apartment

building behind the locked door, and it may be the case that the voices she heard are those

of Marcia, James Harris and David in "Like Mother Used to Make". James Harris is done

with one woman whose state of mind he managed to destroy, and simply moves to

another person, as his purpose is to disrupt people's lives in the Jackson universe. There is

one hint pointing to this hypothesis. Namely, in "The Daemon Lover" the protagonist

claims that she has not cooked in a long time, and in "Like Mother Used to Make" James

Harris says: "I've forgotten what homemade pie looks like" (36), which may be a means

to link the two stories. There is no proof of this theory as Jackson never mentioned that

she linked her short stories. However, it is highly plausible given the nature of James

Harris' character and his presence in more than one story. David's tension becomes more

and more unbearable as now there is not one, but two individuals usurping his privacy,

and he is described as disgusted with someone else's presence in his clean, perfect home –

he had "an urgency to be rid of them both; his clean house, his nice silver, were not meant

as vehicles for the kind of fatuous banter Marcia and Mr. Harris were playing at together."

(37) He cannot stand his clean table being covered with dirty dishes and cigarette ashes,

an image once again pointing to his obsessive-compulsive disorder affecting his life and

socializing with others: "The sight of his pretty table covered with dirty dishes and

cigarette ashes held David." (37) Finally, he cannot stand the dirt anymore – he puts on an

apron and begins to was the dishes. He notices stains from Marcia's lipstick on his cup, an

observation that is a means to point to David's fear of someone else leaving marks on his

personal belongings, thus intruding his privacy even more. Marcia's reaction surprises

both the reader and David – she tells him to sit down and begins to imply that he is the

guest and not the host: "David recognized her tone; it was the one hostesses used when

they didn't know what else to say to you, or when you had come too early or stayed too

late. It was the tone he had expected to use on Mr. Harris." (38) The tone in question is

what brings horror to David – his worst fears have come true at this point, as someone

else took his identity and completely adopted his life. Marcia's adoption of another

identity can also be analyzed from another perspective – her own. Jackson often portrays

unfulfilled and unhappy women wanting to escape reality by this means. In that case one

41    

can empathize with Marcia, as this act proves her own mental instability and

dissatisfaction with her life. Marcia finally escorts David out of his (at this point her)

apartment and David takes part in this role play. "Surprised, David took the key of her

apartment from her, said good night to Mr. Harris, and went to the outside door." (39) He

goes into Marcia's apartment, looks at the mess and chaos, and begins to clean it.

"Wearily, David leaned over and picked up a paper from the floor, and then he began to

gather them up one by one." (40) This plot twist is surprising to the reader, as it is a

culmination of the conflict between David and Marcia. His act of participating in Marcia's

game might not have been such a surprise, given the fact that David is shown as generally

being nice and polite, and his leaving may be considered as a favor to his friend.

However, the closing image of the story is indeed a shock to the reader. His cleaning of

the apartment might be seen as David adopting a new identity (like Marcia), the one that

stands for a complete opposite of his old one. In this case the rereading of the story is

required, as all previous descriptions of David's happiness and content might be analyzed

as forced and fake. Another perspective is that the act of cleaning the apartment serves to

emphasize the what has been mentioned in this analysis – his inability to escape his

obsessive-compulsive disorder that affects his functioning to a great extent. Moreover, it

can be stated that his cleaning serves to show his attempt to reconstruct his old identity,

which Marcia and Mr. Harris took from him. Hattenhauer implies that one of the most

prominent features of the story is Jackson's reversal of gender roles. He claims that when

Mr. Harris arrives he contributes to this reversal, as he is obviously masculinized (being

shown as a large, tall man) and Marcia is feminized. Furthermore, Marcia is masculinized

in relation to David, whereas David is further feminized in relation to both of them. This

serves to show that both the dominator and the dominated can be of any gender. (2003)

Indeed, when David adopts his new identity and agrees to leave his apartment, "David

shook hands limply" (39) with Mr. Harris. The adverb "limply" suggests David being

feminized as he is completely unable to confront Marcia. When he is pushed out of his

apartment he loses his identity both psychologically and physically. The horrors of one's

loss of self reach their climax in this story, as Jackson points to disruption of one's privacy

and life. David lost everything that made him who he is, and at the end he cannot function

properly, desperately trying to bring order into the chaos. The presence of James Harris

42    

emphasizes the sinister behind the events and points to the true horrors of one's descent

into madness. It is not said in the story whether Mr. Harris knew that Marcia's apartment

was not in fact hers. Given his sinister nature it is highly unlikely that his role is the one

of an observer. I suggest that he deliberately chooses to participate in Marcia's game and

enjoys both Marcia's and David's desperate attempts to form their identities.

"Trial by Combat" (1944) is the fourth story in the collection. Mrs. Johnson is aware

that someone goes into her apartment and steals her belongings. As she lives in a building

where the key to one apartment might open other apartment's door, she realizes that the

thief must be Mrs. Allen, an old woman whose apartment is identical to her own. She

decides to confront the old woman, however, when she realizes that the two of them are

quite similar in many terms, she decides to keep quiet and does not openly confront her.

Rather, she decides to go into Mrs. Allen's apartment and make sure that she is the one

who stole her things. When she goes into the apartment to search for evidence, Mrs. Allen

appears and Mrs. Johnson claims that she got in to find a painkiller for her headache, not

confronting the thief regardless of the evidence.

"Trial by Combat" comes right after "Like Mother Used to Make" and the two

stories are definitely similar in many terms. Here too two identical apartments are present.

Furthermore, this story too tackles the issue of usurpation of one's privacy as well as the

broken tranquility of one's home. The importance of homes is emphasized in this story as

well, as they are the ones that link the protagonists together and are the basis of their

conflict. The things that Emily Johnson first notices are missing are her perfumes,

handkerchiefs and an initial pin, which many can agree that are the markers of one's

identity. The things that Mrs. Allen chooses to steal are the ones that define Mrs.

Johnson's identity, for she does not steal for financial reasons. On the contrary, the

reasons behind her actions are deeper than finances. She does so in order to try and adopt

Mrs. Johnson's identity by taking away from her the things that are closest and most

private. Mrs. Johnson does not decide to confront Mrs. Allen or tell someone about her

situation: "She had hesitated about complaining to the landlady because her losses were

trivial and because she had felt certain that sooner or later she would know how to deal

with the situation herself." (41) Mrs. Johnson is immediately portrayed as a weak

character whose uncertainty prevents her from confronting Mrs. Allen. It is later learnt

43    

that she has lost her husband, and this must be considered when analyzing her decision

not to tell the landlady. The fact that she wants to "deal with the situation herself"

(emphasis is not in the original text) proves that she is still unable to do so at this moment,

and that she is not used to solving problems on her own. She is new to lonely, single life

and as such she is aware that she needs to become more assertive and strong. However,

she does not feel ready yet. She decides to go to Mrs. Allen's apartment and find evidence

that she is the thief. When she enters, she notices that Mrs. Allen's home is pretty much

the same as her own – there is the same narrow bed, the same dresser and an armchair, the

window in the same position, etc. Unlike in "Like Mother Used to Make", the antagonist's

apartment is not chaotic and disordered, but rather clean, resembling the protagonist's

home. Mrs. Johnson even claims that Mrs. Allen's apartment is nicer than her own. This

makes sense because whereas Marcia and David are complete opposites, Mrs. Johnson

and Mrs. Allen are nearly the same – they live in the apartments that look exactly alike,

both their husbands were in the Army and are now deceased, none of them have children.

It is because of these similarities that Mrs. Johnson avoids openly confronting her

neighbor and even sympathizes with her. Mrs. Allen is aware of their similarities and

suggestively points to the dangers of loss of one's identity: "You can't make people feel at

home if you put all the same furniture in the rooms." (42) She even admits having said

this to the landlady, who in return maintains that the maple furniture is "clean-looking and

cheap" (42). Emily decides to stand by the window because she wants to see things from

her neighbor's perspective and maybe understand the reasons behind her stealing Emily's

stuff by becoming more familiar with Mrs. Allen's thoughts: "Emily stood by the window

for a minute, looking out on Mrs. Allen's daily view: the fire escape opposite, an oblique

slice of the street below." (43) Jackson modernizes the Gothic motif of the mirror and

often substitutes mirrors with windows. In traditional Gothic texts the mirror serves to

reflect the percipient and in Jackson's work windows allow the percipients to see through,

sometimes even allowing them to look at their own reflections at the same time. When

Mrs. Johnson mentions that someone has been stealing her things, Mrs. Allen pretends

that she does not know anything about it. Emily says that nothing important has been

missing and implies that what scares her is that someone has been coming to her room:

"Nothing important. But someone's been coming into my room and helping themselves."

44    

(44) She does not feel worried about the materialistic things, but expresses her horror at

the thought that her privacy has been usurped and exposed. The feeling of someone else

going through her personal things, touching them and looking at her privacy scares her

and she concludes that someone has a key to her door, to which Mrs. Allen answers: "All

the keys in this house open all the doors" (45). Like in "Like Mother Used to Make"

Jackson mentions a key and uses it as a symbol of someone's ability to keep their privacy

to themselves, safe and secure behind a locked door. However, the illusion of Mrs.

Johnson's privacy being safe is crashed by Mrs. Allen's claim that all keys in the house

can open all doors. After the visit and the conversation with Mrs. Allen, Emily once again

realizes that her things are missing, this time two packages of cigarettes and "a pair of

cheap earrings" (45). Jackson says that the earrings are not expensive only to reemphasize

that the reasons behind Mrs. Allen's intrusion are not of financial nature, which makes her

acts even more terrifying. She decides to go to Mrs. Allen's apartment when the old

woman is not at home: "I just want to pretend it's my own room, so that if anyone comes I

can say I was mistaken about the floor. For a minute, after she had opened the door, it

seemed as though she were in her own room." (45) Obviously, Mrs. Johnson at this point

began to experience what Mrs. Allen must have been experiencing when she went to

Emily's room – a strange familiarity with every little detail of one's private space.

Looking around the room, she had "a sudden sense of unbearable intimacy" (46) with

Mrs. Allen and realized that Mrs. Allen experienced exactly the same emotions in her

home. Although the story is not a traditional Gothic one, with haunted houses and dark

hallways, there is one scene in "Trial by Combat" that is extremely reminiscent of an old-

fashioned Gothic tradition: "Emily was counting her handkerchiefs when a noise behind

her made her turn around. Mrs. Allen was standing in the doorway watching her quietly.

Emily dropped the handkerchiefs she was holding and stepped back." (46) The image of

an old woman watching the protagonist quietly signals that something sinister might be

present, evident in the fact that Emily stepped back and that her hands were trembling.

She says that she only needed an aspirin for her headache, to which Mrs. Allen tells her

that she would run up later to see how Emily is feeling. The story thus closes with Mrs.

Allen reminding (or maybe even threatening) Emily that she can come to her home

whenever she pleases. Jackson leaves the conflict of the story unresolved and reminds

45    

both Emily and the readers that their fears about someone usurping their privacy are likely

to come true, evoking the feelings of uneasiness and terror. If the story is analyzed on

another level, a supernatural one, Mrs. Allen does not really exist. Namely, this theory

implies that the two women are one person in different stages of life. Mrs. Johnson is, in

this case, a mentally disturbed lonely woman who can imagine her own future as Mrs.

Allen. This theory would also imply that Mrs. Johnson got rid of her things herself but

does not remember doing so, slowly turning into Mrs. Allen by disposal of things that are

reminders of her old self. In both cases the story evokes feelings of terror and fear – either

the fear of one's privacy being usurped, or the fear of loneliness, desperation and loss of

identity.

In "The Villager" (1948) Hilda Clarence, a 35 year old woman living in New York

is the story's protagonist who goes to look at an apartment and furniture. The readers learn

that she came to New York twelve years ago in order to fulfill her wish of becoming a

dancer and failed. Now she works as a stenographer and is not satisfied with her life.

However, she still prides herself on her accomplishments and the fact that she did good in

New York all by herself. When she arrives at the apartment, she finds a note from the

owner, Mrs. Roberts, claiming that she has left and will be back, and that the customer is

welcome to look at the furniture. While looking at the things in the apartment, Hilda

Clarence finds a book of dance photographs, realizing that Mrs. Roberts is a dancer and

tries to do a dance pose from the book (so as to reassure herself that she is still able to do

so) but becomes sore. Soon she receives a phone call from Mr. Roberts telling her to give

a message to his wife – that she should call him and that the two will likely move to Paris.

This is when Ms. Clarence decides to adopt Mrs. Roberts' identity. A few seconds later a

man comes into the apartment, a certain James Harris, and Ms. Clarence fully changes her

identity and starts pretending to be Mrs. Roberts. The story ends with her leaving the

apartment and with no resolution of the conflict.

The story's opening portrays Miss Clarence carrying Stendhal's The Charterhouse of

Parma, "which she had read enthusiastically up to page fifty and only carried now for

effect" (49) implying that she is the woman who is concerned with public self image and

cares about what others will think of her, as she is trying to appear more worldly than she

really is. She came to New York when she was twenty-three when she wanted to become

46    

a famous dances, and now she is a thirty-five year old single woman who works as a

stenographer. However, she takes pride in her job, her appearance and her lifestyle, still

goes to dance recitals, and is constantly writing to her old friends at home convincing

both her friends and herself that she is better than she would have been in her home town.

Her obsession with public self image is again emphasized when she lights a cigarette so as

to "enter the apartment effectively" (50). When she learns that the owners are not at home

and that she is free to look around on her own, she begins to inspect things that reveal the

owners' privacy rather than furniture that she thought of buying – she peeks into their

refrigerator, the inside of a cupboard, the bathroom etc. Once again there is the issue

present of disturbing one's privacy and commentary is made on people's wishes to know

even about the most personal details of someone else's life. When she finds a book of

modern dance photographs, Miss Clarence concludes that Nancy Roberts must be a

dancer. While she is looking at the book, a phone rings and Mr. Roberts asks Miss

Clarence to tell his wife that they are moving to Paris. At this point there are two things

that Miss Clarence is envious about – the fact that Nancy succeeded in her dancing career,

and the fact that she is about to move to Paris – a city associated with glamour and art. It

is after the phone call that she decides to try and do a pose she saw in the book. Having

raised her arms, she decides that it is "not as easy as it used to be" (53), and her body

begins to ache. At this point a man enters the apartment – James Harris. Once again the

arrival of James Harris is in no case random or accidental – his prey are women who are

vulnerable, insecure and desperate, just like Miss Clarence. He arrives during an

embarrassing moment that reminds Miss Clarence that she is not as young and energetic

as she used to be. She immediately starts pretending to be Nancy Roberts, like other

women who try and adopt another identity in order to be freed from their own. As a

woman who cares about what others think of her, it is important that at least one person

(in this case Mr. Harris) acknowledges her accomplishments and her public self image.

Like in "Like Mother Used to Make", I suggest that Mr. Harris knows that Miss Clarence

is pretending to be someone else, but chooses to participate in the game, as he feeds on

people's desperate attempts to overcome their insecurity and madness. Finally, it can

again be speculated that Mr. Harris does not indeed show up at the apartment, but serves

as a means to point to Miss Clarence's descent into madness, as she, like many other

47    

Jackson heroines, did not conform to society's norms and remained unmarried in her mid-

thirties. In Jackson's world, not conforming to the norms can only bring suffering and

dissatisfaction, accompanied by madness and delusion. The story closes with "Her

shoulders ached" (56), a final reminder of Miss Clarence's inability to escape her life and

adopt another one, as her failed attempt to copy the pose from the book signifies her

attempt to make her life better.

One of the shortest stories in the collection, "My life with R. H. Macy" (1941), is

written in the first person and describes a first day at work of an employee at Macy's.

Having been segregated and ordered around by faceless coworkers and given a set of

numbers to identify her, she quits on the first day.

The story opens with an image of isolation used to announce and predict the

pessimistic nature of the story: "And the first thing they did was segregate me." (57) The

readers can easily notice that Jackson is about to comment on the conformity. She openly

rejects the modern capitalism that segregates people and takes away their individuality.

The narrator then repeats the word "segregation" only to emphasize one's alienation in

modern society – "Then they taught me. They finally segregated me into a classroom, and

I sat there for a while all by myself (that's how far segregated I was.)" (57) Moreover, it

reduces people to numbers and figures, which is why Jackson mentions so many numbers

in this story – "I went and found out my locker number, which was 1773, and my time –

clock number, which was 712, and my cash-box number, which was 1336, and my cash-

register number, which was 253, and my cash-register-drawer number, which was K, and

my department number, which was 13. I wrote all these numbers down." (58-9) The

lengthy, exhausting listing of all the numbers and letters tires both the reader and the

narrator. Its purpose is, however, very clear – it is to point to banalities of everyday life in

which people are regarded as numbers lacking identity and individuality. It seems like

there is no escape from this loop in the story and however banal the listing sounds,

Jackson does not exaggerate – one is likely to be lost in faceless masses working at a

place such as Macy's. The narrator calls all women Mrs. Cooper (although they obviously

have different names). However, the narrator does not learn the names and just refers to

everyone as Mrs. Cooper because all of them lack identity and are pretty much the same-

faceless. The story ends with the narrator deciding to resign after her first day at work,

48    

openly refusing to become just another number lost among the rest. The very last sentence

– "I wonder if they miss me" (60) is sarcastic, as the rest of the employees probably do

not even notice that she is gone (which the narrator realizes, hence the sarcasm).

In the next story, "The Witch" (1948), there is a woman sitting on a train with her

two children – a baby and her son, Johnny, who is four years old. Johnny, bored with the

journey, contemplates the surroundings through the window and tells his mother that he

sees a witch. His mother does not pay much attention to him and attributes his

commentaries to his youthfulness and childishness. A man in a blue suit then enters and

starts talking to Jonny about his little sister – how he decapitated her and chopped her into

small pieces, finally feeding the pieces to a bear. Johnny seems rather entertained by the

story, despite his mother's orders to disregard what the man is saying. The story ends with

Johnny's comment that the man in a blue suit must be a witch.

The appearance of James Harris (although it is not explicitly said that it is indeed

him) in this story is rather unusual considering Jackson's tendencies to link him to lonely

women, for the focus of this story is not on the woman, but a child. Therefore, it might be

assumed that the boy was the one seeking the company of James Harris out of boredom.

Of course, it may still be possible that the unnamed inattentive woman is the one who is

truly dissatisfied with her life and longs for the company of a tall man in a blue suit.

Nevertheless, his appearance in this story along with the title suggests that "The Witch" is

one of Jackson's supernatural stories. The true horror of the story arises from the boy's

fascination by the man's story – he does not consider it gruesome and cruel, but enjoys it

and wants to hear more details. Jackson does indeed have a tendency to imply that evil in

humans is universal, which is why she often deliberately chooses the persons who are

normally regarded as the most innocent, like children or the elderly, to portray incredible

cruelty. The horror effect of the story is achieved by its unpredictability, as the ordinary

plot is gradually transformed into a gruesome story of decapitation of a child with many

details: "I bought her a rocking-horse and a doll and a million lollipops [...] and then I

took her and I put my hands around her neck and I pinched her and I pinched her until she

was dead." (66) Jackson deliberately puts things reminiscent of innocence and childhood

(lollipops, a doll, a rocking-horse) in the same sentence with the word "dead" in order to

shock the reader and make this story a true Gothic one. The climax of the story is the fact

49    

that the boy participates in the conversation without any feelings of empathy. Not only

does he seem fascinated, but he also wants to find out more and asks questions

encouraging the man to continue telling his story. The story also implies a mother's

inattentiveness to her child, as the boy's connection with the man arises from the fact that

someone is finally paying attention to him – earlier in the story, the boy's mother ignores

everything her son says. "He looked down at the little boy and nudged him with an elbow

and he and the little boy laughed" (66) shows their connection and their mutual

understanding. The boy's mother assures her son that the man was not serious: "He was

just teasing," the mother said, and added urgently, "Just teasing." (67, emphasis in the

story) The mother's insistence that the man was just teasing portrays her horrific

realization that her child is sinister and cruel in his nature. She then gives him a lollipop

and goes back to her seat. The boy, looking out the window again, claims that the man

was probably a witch himself (although he did not seem to mind that and was even

fascinated).

Jackson continues to portray evil in the seemingly innocent as the story that

immediately follows "The Witch" is "The Renegade" (1948). The story opens with a

description of Mrs. Walpole's ordinary day – she needs to help her twins, Jack and Judy,

get ready for school, prepare breakfast, greet her husband, etc. Contemplating the

responsibilities that await her, the phone rings and she hears that the family dog, Lady, is

thought to have killed chickens in the neighborhood. Mr. White, the caller, insists that the

dog must be taken care of, a thought that leaves Mrs. Walpole shaken. She goes to town

and converses with other townspeople, all of which agree with Mr. White – the dog must

be punished. After she returns home, she sees Lady there, and soon Jack and Judy come

home from school. They have also heard about Lady's activities and start describing in

detail how Lady must be punished – by attaching a spiked collar around her neck and

pulling the leash while she chases chickens, decapitating her. Mrs. Walpole feels sick at

the thought of it and runs outside, identifying with Lady and experiencing the pain that

her children were describing.

Mrs. Walpole, running through the house trying to please her family members, is

definitely a true Jackson heroine. Although she does not seem lonely considering the fact

that she is married and has two children, her family life is not ideal. When her husband

50    

enters the kitchen, he says greets his wife "without glancing up" (70) and Mrs. Walpole is

shown thinking about confronting her husband, but finally dismissing her thoughts and

setting breakfast before him. At this point it can easily be noticed that she feels neglected

and chooses to ignore her true feelings by burying them under the image of a perfect,

loving wife and mother. It is said in the story that the Walpoles did not live in the country

town long – "They were still city folk and would probably always be city folk, people

who owned a chicken-killing dog, people who washed on Tuesday, people who were not

able to fend for themselves against the limited world of earth and food and weather that

the country folk took so much for granted." (74) Mrs. Walpole never really conformed to

her new surrounding which is why she feels lost and trapped. It is obvious that she is not

like people around her – she cannot understand their ways of thinking and their small-

mindedness. As an outsider, she is prone to being either segregated or forced to conform

and become like the rest. Given the fact that Jackson herself lived in a small town, it may

be concluded that she speaks through Mrs. Walpole about her thoughts and feelings about

small towns and their residents in general. When Mrs. Walpole goes to visit her neighbor,

Mrs. Nash, she realizes that she will never become one of them and will never feel safe

and secure in a small town: "The bright sunlight across Mrs. Nash's kitchen doorway, the

solid table bearing its plates of doughnuts, the pleasant smell of the frying, were all

symbols somehow of Mrs. Nash's safety, her confidence in a way of life and a security

that had no traffic with chicken-killing, no city fears..." (76) This description of Mrs.

Nash's home serves to juxtapose her to Mrs. Walpole, reminding her once again that she

is an outsider who does not belong in a small town and causing her to feel more and more

lost. The townspeople constantly tell her that she should "take care" of Lady, and Mrs.

Walpole cannot even begin to think of killing the dog. All seemingly innocent and warm

people portray their inner cruelty through their ideas of how the dog should be punished.

All of them hide behind their smiles, making doughnuts and casual conversations with

each other, which is what contributes to feelings of horror in the story. Seemingly

ordinary, nice people are capable of the harshest brutality in "The Renegade", a fact that

Mrs. Walpole manages to observe and acknowledge as sinister and terrifying. When her

children come home and start talking about Lady's punishment, she realizes that they have

been exposed to the small-mindedness of their surrounding and that they have become

51    

just as cruel. They describe the dog's death in details and they both begin to laugh while

doing so. Their laughter brings the true horror to the story, as once again the seemingly

innocent children are shown as being capable of the most brutal actions and thoughts.

Moreover, they describe the killing of the dog with cold reason while hugging Lady.

Having realized that her children are no different than the townspeople, Mrs. Walpole

"closed her eyes, suddenly feeling the harsh hands pulling her down, the sharp points

closing in on her throat" (83) – an image that the twins described while talking about

Lady. Thus, it becomes obvious that Lady is Mrs. Walpole's double, as she identifies with

her to a great extent. They are both renegades, as the title of the story does not refer only

to Mrs. Walpole, but to the Lady as well. They are both punished by not being able to live

according to their desires and instincts. Lady's killing of the chickens was not deliberate

(it is a simple animal instinct) whereas the townspeople's desire to kill Lady displays

something malicious and brutal. Mrs. Walpole does not conform to her surroundings,

given her refusal to kill the family dog. Like in other Jackson's stories, one must pay

attention to the meaning of home. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary where its owners

can feel safe. However, Mrs. Walpole's obligations as a housewife make her feel trapped

and suffocated. Moreover, she cannot shield herself in her house from brutality and evil as

her own children are no different than the rest. At the end, when she leaves the house, it

represents her attempt to escape her confinement. However, even in the fresh air she feels

as if she was stuck in a spiked collar. Through the story's pessimistic ending Jackson

shows the universal fate of the outsiders who failed to conform – wherever they go, they

will always feel trapped and powerless.

The next story, "After you, my dear Alphonse" (1943), is the first story in the

collection in which Jackson comments on the issues of racism. A boy, Johnny, arrives to

his house with his African American friend, Boyd. Mrs. Wilson, Johnny's mother,

welcomes the boys and scolds Johnny for not helping Boyd with carrying wood. They sit

at the table to eat and Mrs. Wilson begins to ask Boyd questions about his family. She

finds that his father is a foreman at a factory (although she assumed that he was just a

worker there), that his mother does not work, and that his sister wants to become a

teacher. Having found that Boyd's family is not poor and that they did good for

themselves, she offers Boyd some second-hand clothes, which the boy politely refuses.

52    

Annoyed at his refusal, she insists that she is not angry and that the boy's attitude

disappoints her. The boys leave the house to go play outside and pay very little attention

to Mrs. Wilson's annoyance.

"After you, my dear Alphonse" is a typical domestic story. However, as other

Jackson's domestic stories, it tackles deeper issues, in this case – stereotypes and racism.

Given that its plot is in a small town, it is no surprise that Jackson once again openly

stands against the small mindedness of country people. The story's cruelty and racism are

placed inside one's home, proving that they exist even in seemingly happy surroundings.

When Mrs. Wilson first sees Boyd carrying wood, she asks her son "what did you make

Boyd do?" (85) thus jumping to conclusion that Boyd did not choose to carry the wood

himself, but that a white boy (her son Johnny) made the African American child do

something that he did not want to do. It can be seen that she does not seem to understand

that her son does not have the same mindset as his mother. The boy does not share his

mother's views and cannot understand the motives behind her inquiry. I have mentioned

that Southern American Gothic often portrays guilt of America's past-slavery. Jackson

adopts the patterns of traditional Southern Gothic works and comments on these issues

herself, in the form of a short domestic story. As the story progresses, her assumptions

about Boyd and his family become more and more stereotypical and racist. When Boyd

and Johnny sit at the table, Mrs. Wilson states that "Boyd will eat anything" (86, emphasis

in the story) falsely concluding that his family is poor. She claims that the boy will eat

anything because he "wants to grow up and be a big strong man so he can work hard" (86)

making another assumption that Boyd will grow up to be a labor worker and does not

even think about another possibility. Automatically, she assumes that Boyd's father is a

worker at a factory and is described as "defeated" (87) when Johnny states that the boy's

father is a foreman. Mrs. Wilson feels defeated because she did not expect any of the

responses about Boyd's family. She formed a certain picture about them, but the boys'

responses crushed that picture and she does not know how to form a new one without

stereotypes. Another assumption she makes is that Boyd's parents have more than two

children, but Boyd tells her that there is only two of them. Furthermore, he says that his

sister wants to become a teacher, to which Mrs. Wilson replies: "That's a very fine attitude

for her to have, Boyd. [...] I imagine you're all very proud of her?" (87) By being overly

53    

polite to Boyd she displays patterns of disrespect towards Boyd's family, as she considers

his sister's wish to become a teacher completely impossible to come true. The last

assumption she makes (the gradation of her stereotypes ends with this) is that Boyd's

family cannot afford to buy clothes, which is why she offers some of their old clothes to

Boyd. The boy, however, politely declines her offer: "I guess we buy about everything we

need. Thank you very much, though." (88) Finally, Mrs. Wilson's picture about a poor and

hungry African American family is completely destroyed, and she cannot present herself

as a polite and generous person who helps those in need. Hence, she ends up annoyed and

anxious, confused about her stereotypes and false conclusions. On the other hand, Johnny

takes Boyd's hand and pulls him to the door so that they can go outside and play,

commenting that his mother is "screwy sometimes" (89). Boyd says that his mother too

acts like that sometimes (showing that stereotypes are universal and not limited to white

people only), and ends the story with "After you, my dear Alphonse" (89), a phrase which

is recurring in the story. The phrase that appears throughout the story and even serves as

its title is an illusion to the comic trip Alphonse and Gaston, the two Frenchmen who are

overly polite to each other which makes them unable to complete any task. The boys use

the phrase ironically, to make fun of people who behave like Alphonse and Gaston,

whereas Mrs. Wilson reveals her bad manners by being overly polite to Boyd. Children

are not prone to conformity as much as adults, which Jackson emphasizes in several other

stories, such as "Afternoon in Linen" and "The Intoxicated". In such stories children are

not harmed by adults' biases and conventions. The boys in "After you, my dear Alphonse"

are unmoved by Mrs. Wilson's manners and leave the house still making fun of the comic

thus implying the comfortable level of their friendship which is not affected by racism.

The story that follows is "Charles" (1948), which is together with "The Lottery"

often considered to be Jackson's work. Every day a woman's son, Laurie, comes home

from kindergarten and tells stories about his classmate, Charles, his bad manners and how

he misbehaves at school. Charles becomes somewhat of a legend in their home and the

parents are entertained by the stories of his actions. One day Laurie's mother decides to go

to a PTA meeting and finally meet Charles' mother. When she arrives, the teacher tells her

about Laurie and the readers can easily connect the dots, realizing that the actions

described are actually Charles' actions that Laurie had told them about. Finally, the

54    

teacher says that there is no Charles in their class, confirming the readers' doubts about

Laurie having an alter ego in the form of Charles.

As the story is written in the first person and the boy's name is Laurie, it may be

assumed that the story has certain autobiographical elements. This is another one of

Jackson's domestic story, however, its ending is extremely unpredictable (like "The

Lottery") and shocks the readers rendering them confused and forced to question all the

events that preceded. Like in "After you, my dear Alphonse" Jackson uses gradation to

cause the tension. Laurie first tells his parents about Charles' mischief rarely and does not

present the actions as serious, slowly moving towards the really terrifying things such as

making a little girl's head bleed or hitting the teacher. Claiming that Charles is a bad

influence on Laurie, the parents do not even consider that their son might not be a perfect

child either. When the narrator's husband agrees that Charles is indeed a bad influence, he

says that there are "bound to be people like Charles in the world" (92) admitting that evil

does exist, but is relieved that it does not exist in his home. The parents decide to meet

Charles' parents. There are two motives behind their decision. Firstly, they want to talk to

the parents about Charles' influence on other children and secondly, they are curious and

glad that Charles is not their son. When they finally go to the PTA meeting, the narrator

decides to talk to the teacher telling her that she must have her hands full with Charles, to

which the teacher answers: "We don't have any Charles in the kindergarten." (96) It is

with this sentence that Jackson produces the true terror in the readers (as well as Laurie's

mother) as they begin to look back at all the events prior to this point. Jackson does have a

tendency to link cruelty to the seemingly innocent, which is evident in her other stories

such as "The Witch" or "The Renegade". In this story, however, there is no mentioning of

murder like in the former two. Cruelty is rather portrayed through the child's deceiving of

his parents and mischief at kindergarten. Jackson once again places horror in the domestic

setting, for in this home the residents do not know enough about each other and hide their

true selves although they live under the same roof. Although the story's ending is

shocking and unpredictable, there are certain hints that Charles is actually Laurie – he

insults his father calling him an "old dust mop" (93) and stomps through the house.

However, the parents do not regard those actions as sinister for in their mind they are

happy that Laurie is not as cruel as Charles. It can, however, be argued that the narrator is

55    

aware that there is a possibility that her son is not as innocent and good as he claims to be,

but that she chooses to repress it. It is either that or she is completely unaware, which

makes it even worse considering the fact that a mother fails to recognize her son's true

self. Jackson uses a motif of a double (which is not new in this collection) as Laurie

invents his alter ego to hide his actions. There are several possibilities for him inventing

Charles and I suggest that all of them are plausible. Firstly, he wishes to tell his parents

about his mischief at school but also to avoid punishment. Secondly, he wants to entertain

them with the stories, as when he talks about Charles his parents seem to pay attention to

every little detail that he says. Thirdly, he wants to adjust to school's socialization and

draw attention (both the teacher's and his classmates') to himself. Lastly, he wants to

express himself as his true nature is like that of Charles. If he knows that Charles is not

real, his actions become regarded as more sinister, as he deliberately invents an alter ego

in order to continue behaving badly and his deception of his parents is planned. On the

other hand, if Charles is his imaginary friend and the boy is certain that he exists, then the

story becomes a true Gothic one (like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). In both

cases Jackson manages to shock the readers and make them feel just as naive as the story's

narrator, as they did not question anything Laurie said and regarded him as a perfectly

honest little boy and a victim who is exposed to someone else's bad influence.

The eleventh story in the collection is "Afternoon in Linen" (1943). Mrs. Kator and

her son, Howard, visit Mrs. Lennon and her granddaughter, Harriet. The boy plays the

piano, and Mrs. Lennon reveals that Harriet knows how to play the piano too. However,

Harriet lies and says that she does not know how to play it. Later on, Harriet's

grandmother tells the guests about the poems that her granddaughter writes. Once again,

Harriet refuses to play along and says that she does not write poetry and that she has

plagiarized the poems, thus embarrassing her grandmother and her mother in front of the

guests.

Jackson opens the story with a description of the Lennons' home thus placing the

plot in the domestic setting: "It was a long, cool room, comfortably furnished, bushes

outside the large window and their pleasant shadows on the floor." (97) Like in other

domestic stories, the concept of a warm, comfortable house does not imply that it is a

sanctuary and a safe place for the owners. Rather, it juxtaposes the perfect image of its

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interior to its owners' inner selves. "Afternoon in Linen" is similar to "After you, my dear

Alphonse" in terms that both stories portray children who are not willing to participate in

the adult games. Harriet is not interested in competition regarding the children's talents

and refuses to take part in it. Mrs. Kator and Mrs. Lennon are doubles in the story – their

behavior is identical, and the two are reminiscent of Alphonse and Gaston from the

comic. Jackson exaggerates their politeness towards each other thus displaying their inner

thoughts and desires to win the competition as their unnatural politeness masks their true

selves. Harriet, a wise young girl (like the girl from "The Intoxicated") refuses to entertain

her grandmother's guests. She does not conform to social conventions and would rather be

considered a liar than a pawn in the game that the women are playing. Howard, Mrs.

Kator's grandson, is the story's antagonist together with the women. He teases Harriet and

accepts to participate in the competition, not realizing that he is simply a pawn used by

adults to try and outperform each other. Harriet is, hence, wiser than the boy as she

manages to see behind the surface and recognize the reasons behind the women's behavior

and desire to show off the children's talents. When Harriet claims that she did not write

the poems but plagiarized them, she takes the papers out of her grandmother's hand and

says: "And you can't look at them anymore, either" (102), holding the papers behind her

back, "away from everyone" (102). This act implies that she can truly appreciate art

(unlike her grandmother, Howard and Mrs. Kator) and considers her poems to be personal

and private. For Harriet, her poetry is too precious to be shown around for entertainment

of others who are unable to truly appreciate it and does not allow it to be used as a means

to win the competition she regards as silly and meaningless.

Jackson moves on to portraying the suburban horror with her next story, "Flower

Garden" (1949). Mrs. Winning lives with her mother-in-law (also known as Mrs.

Winning), her husband, her father-in-law, and her son and baby daughter. Some time ago

she imagined living in the small cottage, but she chose to move in with her husband's

family instead. Soon, they hear that the new neighbors are to move in to the cottage, and

Mrs. Winning decides to meet them. She goes to the cottage and acquaints Mrs. MacLane

and her son, Davey. When she arrives at the cottage, she contemplates the interior and

envies Mrs. MacLane. However, they soon become very good friends and their children

start playing together too. One day Mrs. MacLane notices a young African American boy,

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Billy, and asks him to help her around with her garden for money, which the boy happily

accepts. The next day the boy's father offers to help tend the garden instead of his son,

and starts working for Mrs. MacLane. The townspeople (including Mrs. Winning and her

mother-in-law) do not approve of her employment of Mr. Jones and begin talking behind

Mrs. MacLane's back. Meanwhile, Mrs. MacLane's cottage and, more noticeably, her

garden, become the most beautiful in the neighborhood. One day, when Mrs. Burton

invites Mrs. Winning's son to the birthday party and emphasizes that she does not want

the MacLane boy there, Mrs. Winning completely turns her back to her former friend and

starts ridiculing her with the rest of townspeople. She decides to confront Mrs. MacLane

and explain to her that hiring an African American man is unacceptable, but Mrs.

MacLane does not recognize the problem. Offended, Mrs. Winning leaves. Soon after

their conversation a bad thunder destroys the garden as it knocks the Burton's tree into it.

Although Mr. Jones offers to help and fails to move the tree, Mrs. MacLane decides to go

back to the city and ignores her neighbors who are waving at her.

The story is placed in Vermont, which implies that it has certain autobiographical

elements, i.e. Jackson's attitude towards small towns, given that she spent a part of her life

in Vermont. Jackson emphasizes similarities between Mrs. Winning and her mother-in-

law from the story's opening, thus introducing her motif of doubles by calling them "the

two Mrs. Winnings" (103). Furthermore, she presents a stereotypical image of women at

the time as they resemble "some stylized block print for a New England wallpaper" (103)

– grandmother, mother, daughter and granddaughter. Moreover, Jackson points to the

similarities between Mrs. Winning's husband and her father-in-law, calling them "the

older Howard" and "the younger Howard" (112) emphasizing the two men's lack of

identity and uniqueness. Mrs. Winning has always wanted to move in to the little cottage

but ended up with her husband's family in the big old house at the top of the hill. Jackson

emphasizes that her husband's family has lived there for generations, and once again

Jackson's characters cannot seem to reject the family traditions and become accustomed to

them. When Mrs. Winning hears that the little cottage has been sold, she has a strong

desire to see who bought it. As she walks towards the cottage, the ground is described as

"slushy and miserable to walk on" (105) with the skies grey and dull, which relates to

Mrs. Winning's mental state – over the years the woman herself became dull and

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miserable, as her dreams of living in a small cottage did not come true. When she finally

meets Mrs. MacLane, she notices that she is younger and pretty, making it clear that Mrs.

MacLane represents Mrs. Winning's counterpart, a complete opposite of what she is – a

close minded woman from a small town whose age prevents her from starting a new life

thus making her jealous of her neighbor. Looking at the interior of the cottage, Mrs.

Winning notices every little detail – a beautiful blue bowl, cheerful colors of the curtains

and the furniture, a lot of windows looking at the garden. Jackson again relates the homes

to their owners' identities – whereas Mrs. Winning's house is old, traditional and has not

been changed for years, Mrs. MacLane's cottage is youthful, cheerful and full of life. Mrs.

Winning is not satisfied with her life – when her husband comes back home he only nods

to his wife, and her son crashes into the kitchen shouting "Where's dinner?" (112). Hence,

the woman's identity has obviously been reduced to being a mother and a wife, and

nothing more than that. Her only purpose is to take care of her family disregarding her

dreams of having a beautiful garden and cheerful home. The Winnings ear dinner "silently

and efficiently" (112) and are described as anxious to be back from their work – "the

farm, the mill, the electric train; the dishes, the sewing, the nap" (112). This list of

obligations points to the fact that all of them are caught in the middle of the new age, an

industrialized era dictating their days and confining them in zones which all of them are

unable to escape. When Mrs. MacLane visits Mrs. Winning, she expresses her genuine

delight with the old house – she is not jealous like Mrs. Winning was when she visited her

cottage. Finally, Mrs. Winning admits to her neighbor that she would give anything in the

world to live in her cottage. This statement does not only imply that Mrs. Winning is

jealous of her home, but rather that she wants Mrs. MacLane's entire life. By stating this

she admits that she wants to be younger and free to have a home and a life that she wants

without her husband and his family controlling her every move. After a few days, when

Mrs. Winning visits Mrs. MacLane again, the two women notice that their children are

ridiculing an African American boy. Mrs. Winning says that the Jones children are half

black, and adds: "But they're all beautiful children" (116). By adding "but" to her claim,

she unmasks her true attitude towards African Americans – just like the rest of the

townspeople, she is a racist too, despite trying to mask it behind her being seemingly

polite. Just like in "After you, my dear Alphonse", the racism among small town people

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cannot be hidden by any means. Jackson comments on this issue by placing racism in

seemingly perfect homes and domestic environment. Jackson does so on purpose – she

wants to point to the fact that behind locked doors of perfect suburban homes there is

human cruelty fueled by stereotypes, conformity and racism. When Mrs. MacLane asks

the Jones boy about his name, the boy remains quite and Mrs. Winning says: "He's Billy

Jones. Answer when you're spoken to, Billy." (117) thus taking a superior position in

relation to the boy. Mrs. MacLane finally employs Billy's father to help her with the

garden, an idea Mrs. Winning does not support. She expresses her anxiety by saying: "Of

course you won't have him any longer than just today?" (123) Mrs. MacLane, however, is

not a racist and fails to recognize the problem with employing Mr. Jones for a longer

period of time, maybe even permanently. She does not consider it to be embarrassing nor

does she think that she is degrading the man by paying him to help her with her garden.

Mrs. Winning meets Mrs. Harris when she goes to the store. Obviously, the woman is

reminiscent of James Harris because of her last name. Although James Harris himself

does not appear in "Flower Garden", his presence is implied through the introduction of a

Mrs. Harris to signal something sinister in humans. Mrs. Harris talks to Mrs. Winning

about Mrs. MacLane and her clothes, particularly making fun of her yellow shoes. At this

point Mrs. Winning has still not entirely conformed to the townspeople's attitudes: "When

she thought of Mrs. MacLane she thought of the quiet house, the soft colors, the mother

and son in the garden; Mrs. MacLane's shoes were green and yellow platform sandals,

odd-looking certainly next to Mrs. Winning's solid white oxfords, but so inevitably right

for Mrs. MacLane's house, and her garden..." (124) It can be seen that Mrs. Winning

associates Mrs. MacLane's personality with bright colors making a parallel between her

friend's extravagant shoes and her boring white oxfords. Just like the women's shoes, Mrs.

MacLane is brave and daring, refusing to conform and become like the rest of the gossipy

women, whereas Mrs. Winning does not dare step out of the limits of the town's norms.

Although Mrs. Winning supports her friend and her decisions, the pressure coming from

her mother-in-law and the town's women becomes unbearable. Jackson bans the outsiders

and forces them to conform to the majority's norms and standards. Thus, Mrs. Winning

begins to distance herself from Mrs. MacLane's family, even encouraging her child not to

play with Mrs. MacLane's son that often. Gradually, the townspeople marginalize Mrs.

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MacLane and her son more and more. Mrs. Burton even tells Mrs. Winning that she does

not want to invite Mrs. MacLane's son to her son's birthday celebration. It is at this point

that Mrs. Winning realizes that it is dangerous for her public self image to remain

associated with Mrs. MacLane, as she is likely to become marginalized too. She has two

choices – to confront her friends and neighbors and react according to her true feelings

thus freeing herself from the chains made of social norms or to conform and avoid threats

to her (and her family's) public image. As Jackson's female protagonists are usually not

traditional brave heroines fighting for equality, the choice Mrs. Winning makes comes as

no surprise – she realizes she has to give in to townspeople's pressure and blend in the

mass of faceless individuals. To do so, however, she has to convince herself that Mrs.

MacLane did something wrong when she hired Mr. Jones to work for her. She

acknowledges that Mrs. MacLane did nothing wrong by thinking that her decision is

childish and dreadful, but ignores her true feelings and acts cold to her friend. When Mrs.

MacLane claims that she thinks that people are rude to her because of Mr. Jones, Mrs.

Winning things: "The nerve of her, trying to blame the colored folks" (132) thus shifting

the blame to Mrs. MacLane, as doing so makes it easier for her to distance herself from

the woman whom she considers to be a good person. It may be assumed that Mrs.

Winning's feelings did in fact change and that she adopted the attitudes of the

townspeople, for in "Flower Garden" racism is not reduced to an individual – it affects the

entire town. However, her feelings towards Mrs. MacLane remained the same, she just

chose to repress them and hide them even from herself, deciding that it is smarter to

conform so as to avoid being marginalized. Finally, the story's antagonists win the battle

against Mrs. MacLane who at this point became the protagonist of the story. She finally

decides to go back to the city deciding that she cannot live among small minded people.

Through her decision Jackson portrays her own attitude towards small towns – the

majority always wins and manages to ban the outsiders who refuse to conform. The story

ends with Mrs. Winning ignoring Mrs. MacLane's waving and walking "with great

dignity" (134) towards the old Winning house, making it clear that her choice is to accept

her life as it is given that she does not have courage to change anything. She has become

just like her mother-in-law, a woman who gossips and bans outsiders based on their

lifestyle. Moreover, she is proud of her decision, given that she walks towards her old

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house with great dignity, proving that she is certain that that is the right choice and that

she is meant to live the rest of her life according to society's norms and rules, despite her

dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

The thirteenth story in the collection is "Dorothy and my Grandmother and the

Sailors" (1949). The narrator tells the story about her childhood memories – every year

she would go with her friend Dorothy to San Francisco to buy new coats during fleet

week. Naturally, the city is filled with sailors during that time. Her mother and

grandmother have always warned her about the sailors (although no explicit reason is ever

given) and the girls become extremely cautious whenever they establish any kind of

contact with the sailors. After shopping for coats, the girls meet with the narrator's uncle

Oliver (the radio operator on a battleship). Once the narrator gets lost and fails to find her

uncle, mother, grandmother and a friend, when she encounters a captain who takes her to

them. Her mother and grandmother are furious and point to the dangers of being near the

sailors. When all of them go to the movies, there are two empty seats next to them and the

two sailors sit down. Frightened, the girls leave the theater and the grandmother, the

mother and the uncle take them out for hot chocolate. However, the two sailors enter the

cafe so the girls are again terrified, and Dorothy even has to spend the night at the

narrator's house.

Although Jackson grew up near San Francisco, the possible autobiographical

elements of the story are unknown. Rather, I propose that the story can be analyzed with

relation to the old ballad of James Harris. James Harries is not explicitly mentioned in the

story, but the representation of sailors as threats to females cannot be disregarded. The

narrator's mother and grandmother constantly warn her and her friend about sailors – they

are the ones who are the most threatening figures in the story. It could be that the women

know of the ballad, or even that they experienced the dangers of giving in to the sailors

themselves. Even when a captain brings the girl back to her family after she gets lost, the

women continue to emphasize the dangers of trusting a sailor, thus presenting their

(irrational) fears and projecting them onto the children. The story can, however, be

analyzed on another level: Jackson's comment on the issue of how an irrational fear can

be induced in people without any logic. Thus, she emphasizes the dangers of close

mindedness that affect one's behavior (in this case Dorothy's), as the narrator is not as

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prone to accepting what others tell her. The story, hence, shows how individuals can be

taken over by the mass mentality (like in "The Lottery" or "Flower Garden") without their

own critical view on things. What is ironic in the women's behavior is the fact that the

narrator's uncles are sailors (her grandmother always talks about her son Paul who is in

the navy) and takes pride in her son being a sailor and Oliver working on a battleship. On

the one hand, she prides on her sons' achievements in the navy, whereas on the other hand

she warns the girls about the sailors and tells them to stay away from them. This

contradiction emphasizes the lack of logic and reason behind the women's warnings about

trusting the sailors. It could be that their mothers and grandmothers told them about the

sailors and that such attitude has been present for generations. In this case Jackson wants

to ridicule people's inability to reject meaningless traditions (like in "The Lottery") and

prove the dangers of blindly following tradition, given that it ends in the girls' irrational

fear and illogical behavior. All in all, there are four main ways to analyze the story.

Firstly, it can be analyzed through Jackson's biography (there are, however, not enough

evidence for that). Secondly, it can be viewed as a reminder of the existence of James

Harris and how girls should be warn about him from young age. Thirdly, Jackson

comments on how easy it is to induce illogical fear and anxiety in people without any

foundations. Lastly, it shows Jackson's tendency to ridicule pointless elements of tradition

and how they affect people who are unable or unwilling to question them.

In her next story, "Colloquy" (1944) Jackson comments on insanity and descent into

madness. Mrs. Arnold visits a doctor and asks him how to tell if someone is going crazy.

She then goes on to elaborating on her take on things and tells him about her husband who

was unable to purchase a copy of The Times at his usual newsstand making him annoyed

for the rest of the day. She then wonders why people use overly complicated medical

terms, when, ironically, the doctor begins to explain by using other formal medical terms.

Hysterical, she repeats a few keywords and leaves the doctor's office.

"Colloquy" most directly points to Jackson's characters' general instability.

Although the instability is implied in most stories, the protagonist of "Colloquy" openly

tackles and tries to confront the issue. The protagonist is Mrs. Arnold, another Jackson's

dissatisfied housewife experiencing a crisis. As her counterpart, there is a doctor who is

"competent-looking and respectable" (145), a dominant male figure who stands for reason

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juxtaposing Mrs. Arnold's instability. Mrs. Arnold wants to know why everything is so

complicated: "I don't understand the way people live. It all used to be so simple. When I

was a little girl I used to live in a world where a lot of other people lived too and they all

lived together and things went along like that with no fuss." (146) Obviously, things were

never simple and people were never carefree – Mrs. Arnold was a child during the joyful

period she talks about. Now, however, she is an adult with responsibilities and everyday

anxieties making her miserable and unstable. When the doctor begins to talk, he uses

terms such as "international crisis", "surtax net income", "geopolitical concepts" and

"deflationary inflation" (147). Realizing the meaninglessness behind his words and his

lack of commitment, Mrs. Arnold begins to cry wondering if everyone but her is crazy

(implying that the doctor is crazy too). Jackson suggests that it may be the environment

which is guilty of her characters' instability and that they might not even be fundamentally

mad. In Mrs. Arnold's mind, she is an outsider who is unable to deal with reality in a way

that people around her expect her to, and they are the ones that are crazy for giving in to

norms and social rules. Thus, she is driven into madness. At the end, she repeats three

words that the doctor said earlier: disoriented, alienation and reality, clearly describing

her own mental state. She then repeats the word "reality" and goes out. Thus, she

acknowledges the world's ways and becomes aware that she needs to accept them so as to

be able to function in society. Mrs. Arnold's view of the world is similar to Eileen's

perspective in "The Intoxicated"-the world is heading towards destruction and is

becoming worse every day. Parks claims that Mrs. Arnold pays an enormous price for her

refusal to accept the society's definition of reality-she will be driven into madness and

loneliness. Generally, Jackson's female characters rarely win a battle against oppression

and conformity as they struggle to overcome their alienation and gradually fall into

madness. "In the tales of Shirley Jackson, poetic justice and moral virtue do not win out as

in many popular gothic and fairy tales, for she is true to her vision of the evil of our time.

And she places her trust in the fact that if a tale is good and powerful, one need not

explain or defend it, one need only tell it." (1984)

Jackson introduces in her next story another unfulfilled female character –

"Elizabeth" (1948). Elizabeth dreams of sunny warm climate when she is woken up by an

ugly, rainy day in New York. She needs to go to her job as a literary agent. When she

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goes to the store to buy orange juice, she meets Tommy who tells her that he finished his

play and sent it to an agency. Offended that he did not choose her agency to send his play

to, Elizabeth goes on a bus and heads towards her workplace. In a crowded bus a woman

insults her but Elizabeth does not start a fight with her. She goes to the agency where she

meets her friend, colleague, lover and boss, Robert Shax. After he leaves, a young

woman, Daphne, comes in telling Elizabeth that Robert gave her a job at the agency.

When Elizabeth and Robert meet for lunch, Elizabeth is passive aggressive because

Robert hired Daphne without talking to Elizabeth first. When they get back to the office,

they find a letter from their employee (an older woman replaced by Daphne). Soon,

Daphne tells Elizabeth that her uncle called her and that he is visiting New York.

Elizabeth refuses his invitation to dinner telling him that she has an important meeting

with a client. Ironically, Robert refuses Elizabeth's invitation using the same excuse, after

which Elizabeth suggests that he should leave the office and relax for a bit. She then calls

a former client, Jim Harris, and the two decide to meet up for dinner. Soon after she tells

Daphne that she is fired and that she is not satisfied with how she wrote the letter to their

former employee and orders her to do it again before leaving the agency. When she comes

home, she cleans her apartment and gets ready for dinner with James, slowly drifting into

a fantasy about a better life.

Elizabeth is a traditional Jackson protagonist, given that she is in her mid-thirties,

unmarried and consumed by dullness of everyday life. The story opens with her dreaming

about a hot sunny garden when an alarm wakes her, stopping her fantasies of carefree life.

She looks through the window and sees the grey sky, wanting to get back to her dream.

However, "it was morning and habit lifting her up and dragging her away into the rainy

dull day." (149) Jackson again uses colors to establish a clear contrast between a green

grass and a grey sky, indicating the enormous gap between fantasy and reality. Elizabeth

hears "the ugly morning noises of people stirring" (149) recognizing the familiar patterns

of people's lives. The first three passages of the story serve to portray Elizabeth's attitude

towards life in New York and the most prominent means for doing so is the choice of

words – "habit", "schedule", "routine" (149) emphasizing the dullness and banalities of

her days. Elizabeth is not satisfied with her looks, either. Jackson again uses the mirror as

a motif that serves to indicate her protagonist's dissatisfaction with her life in general –

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she stands in front of the mirror every morning wishing she was a blonde, "never realizing

quite that it was because there were thin hints of grey in her hair." (150) Her desire to be

blonde announces the appearance of Daphne, Elizabeth's counterpart, in the story. Her

home is a one-room apartment and it is suggested that it is the only place where Elizabeth

feels safe – it is there whenever "she needed a place to hide in" (150). However, she

suggests that the apartment looks "dreary" when she wakes up in the morning and wishes

to buy yellow drapes and yellow dishes. Her desire to do so is reminiscent of "Flower

Garden" in which the warmth of one's home is related to bright and cheerful colors –

Elizabeth feels as if placing brightly colored details in her apartment would make her feel

more satisfied and positively affect her mood. Elizabeth is, by all means, a New Woman.

However, she uses irony when she thinks about her life as such – "the brisk young

businesswoman and her one-room home" (151). Namely, she does not feel satisfied

although many would argue that she did good for herself in New York. Despite her

acknowledgment of her dissatisfaction, she has a superiority complex, particularly

noticeable in her attitude towards a clerk in a drugstore who wants to become a

playwright – "he gets up in the morning and eats and walks and writes a play just like it

was real, just like the rest of us, like me" (153). Elizabeth dismisses the possibility that he

may in fact be a good writer – she degrades him thinking that he is just a small fish in

show business pond. Moreover, she considers herself to be more successful than him and

is even offended that he eats and walks just like she does-in her mind, he is not worthy of

doing so because, after all, she is a successful woman and he is a drugstore clerk.

Surprisingly, when she learns that Tommy sent her play to a different agency, she is

deeply offended. Thus, it can be concluded that she does not think of herself as highly as

she claims. She wants recognition from everyone around her, including those who she

belittles. It is important for her to keep up appearances by demanding acknowledgment of

her success by everyone. When she gets on a crowded bus, she pushes a woman so as to

get to the last available seat demonstrating once again her superiority complex. The

woman calls her "dried-up old maid" (155), but Elizabeth does not confront her. If she

was as confident as she claims to be, she would not be moved by such comment.

However, she thinks about the woman's words the entire day, regretting not confronting

her. Just like in "The Villager", she came to New York when she was in her early

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twenties, and just like Hilda Clarence, she did not become as successful as she had

initially hoped. It is then when she met Robert Shax, her business partner, lover and

friend. The two started a literary agency that has never become particularly successful.

The city consumed her and she became drawn into its schedules and hectic ways of life.

Jackson constantly reminds the readers about the story's tone by emphasizing that it is

raining, as rainy weather is a means to reflect Elizabeth's inner thoughts and emotions by

establishing a contrast between reality and her fantasies of green grass and sunny days.

Sitting in her dark office, she wishes that she could paint the walls light green, once again

attributing her discomfort and unhappiness to external factors. When she reads a

heartwarming letter from her father, she throws it into the wastebasket "on top of the

dentist's bill" (161) portraying her desire to get as far away as possible from her former

life in a small town. Moreover, she considers the letter and the dentist's bill to be the

same, given that she considers them both meaningless. On the one hand, it may suggest

her lack of empathy and her cold personality. On the other hand, it implies her desire to

get rid of everything related to her former self, for now she considers herself to be a true

New Woman, a professional who is far too important to be bothered with past. I suggest

that she is aware that she is not as successful as she pretends to be, and that she throws the

letter because she does not want people from her hometown to recognize her failure.

Moreover, when she talks to her uncle on the phone, she assures him that she is "grand"

(176) and refuses his invitation for dinner, once again distancing herself from everything

reminding her of her old life. "She was anxious to end the phone call, dissociate herself

from the Hunts and her father and the nagging hints that she should go home. I live in

New York now, she told herself while the old man's voice continued with a monotonous

series of anecdotes about her father and people she had known long ago; I live in New

York by myself and I don't have to remember any of these people; Uncle Robert should

be glad I talk to him at all." (177) Obviously, Elizabeth thinks that people from her past

are not worthy of her time and wishes to dissociate herself from them. For her, they are

mere reminders of her former self – before she became a New Woman in New York.

When Elizabeth goes to have breakfast with Robert, Jim Harris is introduced to the story

– Elizabeth claims that they were going to make a lot of money as Jim was going to bring

all his friends. He then vanished after making a promise, because, as always, his promises

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are too good to be true. However, Elizabeth still clings to Jim's words considering him to

be her ticket out of life she is not satisfied with. Getting back to the office, she calls Jim

Harris inviting him to dinner. He, however, tells her that his little sister is in town

(obviously an excuse), but Elizabeth is insistent about the two of them meeting. The

timing of her making the call is not accidental and trivial – she decides to call him after

Robert declines her invitation to dinner and right after she realizes that Robert fancies

Daphne more than her. Thus, like other Jackson female protagonists, she turns to Jim

Harris, the tall man promising her a better life. Daphne serves as Elizabeth's most obvious

counterpart – she is young, attractive, has a family that supports her and she just came to

New York from a small town to become successful. For Elizabeth, Daphne is the

reminder of everything that she is not and she cannot, hence, stand her presence and has a

strong desire to get rid of her. She tells Daphne that she is fired and gives her advice on

how to dress and behave – she should wear suits (like Elizabeth's) and comb her hair

differently (the way Elizabeth does). Thus, Elizabeth makes sure to emphasize her

professional superiority over Daphne, given that Daphne's lack of job experience is the

only thing that makes her inferior to Elizabeth. Not only does she fire her on the first day,

she also makes her rewrite a letter claiming that the first draft was not good enough. As

Daphne was typing the letter, Elizabeth "shook her hear slowly and laughed" (186)

portraying her lack of empathy and jealousy of Daphne's youth and optimism. After a

long day, Elizabeth finally goes back to her apartment. At the story's beginning it is

implied that Elizabeth is more or less satisfied with her home. However, when she comes

home, "the appearance of her room shocked her" (188). It is now implied that the

apartment clearly reflects Elizabeth's state of mind – "the hurried departure of a rather

unhappy and desperate young woman with little or no ability to make things gracious, the

lonely ugly evenings in one chair with one book and one ashtray, the nights spent

dreaming of hot grass and heavy sunlight" (188). Clearly, Elizabeth is not as satisfied with

her life as she claims to be, hence her rejection of her family and friends from her

hometown – she wants to be a sole witness to her misery and does not want anyone else to

see through the locked door. That is, everyone but Jim Harris, for he is the only one she

allows into her apartment. Years ago, she bought kitchen appliances and dishes for she

wanted to "make miniature roasts for her and Robbie, even bake a small pie or cookies,

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wearing a yellow apron, and making funny mistakes at first" (189). Once again, the

yellow color suggests youthfulness and happiness. She begins to imagine of what could

have been – deep under her mask of a happy professional woman lies a desire to be a wife

and a mother, for then she would not be lonely and miserable. She could not, however,

ever admit that she longs for something like that. Waiting for Jim Harris to arrive, she

chooses to wear a dark red silk dress which is "youthfully styled and without the grey in

her hair it made her look nearer twenty than over thirty" (190). Looking at her depressing

apartment, she admits that "no yellow drapes or pictures would help" (191) and still hopes

that "something wonderful would happen to change her whole life" (190). Elizabeth

claims she needs a new apartment, bright and with big windows and pale furniture.

However, it is not the apartment Elizabeth wants to change – it is her whole life. She

relies on Jim Harris to help her and slowly drifts into a fantasy: "he was someone who

loved her, he was a quiet troubled man who needed sunlight, a warm garden, green lawns"

(191). The story closes with the same image it opens – Elizabeth's fantasy of warm and

bright surroundings standing for the opposite of her reality. Like other Jackson heroines,

she does not plan to do anything realistic to change her life, but rather chooses to sit still

and hope that James Harris would take her away. Given that such female protagonists are

driven into madness and delusion, James Harris might also suggest suicidal tendencies of

Jackson characters. His appearance always brings something sinister and given that

Jackson's stories belong to the Gothic genre, such theory is not unlikely. Although there is

no solid proof of that, it may be seen that his appearance brings images of warm and

sunny images that are reminiscent of heaven. Accordingly, women in the stories dream of

something that would induce their rebirth – possibly a suicide.

After the hectic city in "Elizabeth", Jackson switches the focus to a domestic

environment with "A Fine Old Firm" (1944). Mrs. Concord and her daughter are sewing

when they are interrupted by a visitor, Mrs. Friedman, whose son Bobby is in the army

with Mrs. Concord's son, Charlie. Both boys wrote to their families about each other, but

their mothers recognize that they gave different account of events. Mrs. Friedman then

offers to help Charlie get a job at her husband's law firm, but Mrs. Concord declines

stating that Charlie is already lined up for a job at their friend's firm. Agreeing that these

are both fine firms, Mrs. Friedman leaves.

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A simple, short story like "A Fine Old Firm" serves to comment on pettiness in

small town communities. Reminiscent of "Afternoon in Linen", the story portrays a

competition between the two women about each other's social status in their community.

The women in the story are doubles – both of them act the same and none of them has a

personality that would make them stand out from the faceless masses in the small town.

"A Fine Old Firm" definitely belongs to Jackson's domestic stories and portrays the

women's concerns with how their families are viewed in the community. Both their

husbands have respectable careers and both their sons are in the army with jobs awaiting

them, which makes the competition between the women utterly meaningless. Their

mentioning of law firms is just a means to mark their families' social positions. Just like in

"Afternoon in Linen" and "After you, my dear Alphonse", the two women are polite on

the exterior but attempt to compete in terms of social perspective on the interior.

The seventeenth story in the collection is "The Dummy" (1949). Mrs. Wilkins and

Mrs. Straw go to a restaurant to have dinner. When they sit at the table, they notice a

young woman and make comments about her green dress. Moreover, the woman came in

with a companion, whom the women suspect to be a ventriloquist, a next act in the

restaurant. The man is holding a dummy (a hideous wooden replica of himself) and starts

his act. The audience laughs, but the two women still make petty comments on both the

ventriloquist and the woman who came with him. After the act, the man and the woman

start to argue, as the girl thinks that he has had enough to drink. The man agrees with her,

but uses the dummy to insult the woman telling her that he is about to drink more and

threatens to leave her on the street. Annoyed, Mrs. Wilkins slaps the dummy and leaves

the restaurant with Mrs. Straw. The story ends with the woman in the green dress

straightening the dummy's head.

In the story as unusual as "The Dummy" Jackson uses the motif of doubles to

induce horror in readers. The most obvious set of doubles is the ventriloquist and his

dummy. However, Hattenhauer claims that the two women – Mrs. Straw and Mrs.

Wilkins are doubles themselves, given that Mrs. Straw echoes everything Mrs. Wilkins

says or does. (2003) When they arrive at the restaurant, the women complain about

everything, from their seats to the overall atmosphere and entertainment. They are petty

and gossip about everyone and everything. A woman in a green dress is particularly

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interesting to them, as they claim that she is "not a very pretty girl" and that her

companion "looks like a monkey" (202). The women do not seem to have any positive

comments on anything, which portrays their own dissatisfaction and petty lives. When the

ventriloquist gets on stage, his dummy is presented as his obvious double – "where the

man was small and ugly, the dummy was smaller and uglier, with the same wide mouth,

the same staring eyes, the horrible parody of evening clothes, complete to tiny black

shoes." (203) The image of a grotesque wooden copy of the man causes discomfort in the

readers, as a hideous wooden replica is humanized and brought to life via the

ventriloquist's act. When the act ends, the ventriloquist does not give up on the dummy,

but continues to speak through him, portraying his fragmentation of self. He is clearly an

alcoholic and when his partner, the woman in the green dress, confronts him about it, he

uses the dummy to argue instead of him. The story contains elements of the unnatural and

fantastic with the dummy's gain of his own identity in reality. Like in "Charles", the

dummy is an alter ego whose purpose is to express the ugliness inside, for on the outside

the ventriloquist is kind and respectful towards his partner (it is the dummy that

disrespects her). The dummy is acknowledged as a separate being not only by a

ventriloquist, but by other characters respectively – Mrs. Wilkins slaps the dummy instead

of the man, and the woman in the green dress straightens his head. The ventriloquist is

obviously deeply unhappy, hence his fragmentation. The rest of the characters

acknowledge his fragmentation of self by treating the dummy as a separate being. Such

humanization of the ventriloquist's alter ego evokes true terror in readers as they are

presented with a grotesque replica coming to life with the help of the story's characters.

In her next story, "Seven Types of Ambiguity" (1946), Jackson introduces a

character of James Harris again. A married couple comes to the bookstore owned by Mr.

Harris to purchase some books. Mr. Clark, a young college student occasionally comes to

the bookstore to help Mr. Harris and look at the book that he wishes to buy when he has

enough money – Seven Types of Ambiguity by Empson. The husband insists that he used

to read when he was younger but that he does not know much about literature. Mr. Clark

helps him make a list of books he wants to purchase and leaves the bookstore once again

mentioning Empson's book that he wishes to buy. Although he has no interest in the book,

the man asks Mr. Harris if he could buy it and Mr. Harris agrees and puts it on the list.

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The appearance of James Harris in "Seven Types of Ambiguity" is far more

different than in the majority of the collection's short stories. Here, he does not serve as a

sinister male figure threatening an unhappy female protagonist implying her descent into

madness, but rather serves as a reminder of a faulty and cruel human nature. When the

man who came to buy the books describes which books he wants to buy, he emphasizes

that he wants them to look nice, portraying his artificial character and lack of

understanding of literature and art. He constantly repeats that he has always liked books

by Dickens and it appears that his is the only name he can think of. Whereas the man is a

casual reader (more precisely, not a reader at all), Mr. Clark is a young and well educated

student whose knowledge about literature shames the man. Being an obvious counterpart

of the man, Mr. Clark is particularly interested in a book Seven Types of Ambiguity, a

complex literary work that the man could never comprehend. The man is aware that the

young man is more educated and knowledgeable, which is why he has a strong desire to

defend himself – he says that he has always worked really hard and had no time for

reading, thus attempting to degrade Mr. Clark implying that he is too lazy to do any kind

of "real" work: "When I was his age I was working for four or five years" (215). Here the

readers can sense his pettiness and jealousy, even resentment of Mr. Clark's education and

intellect. Moreover, he repeats that he likes to read a couple times, thus convincing both

Mr. Clark and himself that he is not poorly educated and shallow. The man's wife is

exactly the same as him – she has not read a lot of books and does not know which books

interest her. Hence, Mr. Clark offers to help make a list of books the couple might find

interesting. It is learnt that Mr. Clark has been saving money to buy the book by Empson,

and hopes that no one else will buy it before he gets enough money. However, the man

whom Mr. Clark helped decides to buy the book, despite the strong possibility that he will

never properly read and/or understand it. Although he is a pleasure reader and would not

appreciate Empson's book, he purchases it only because it means that Mr. Clark will not

own the book himself. Mr. Harris does not protest the man's desire to buy Seven Types of

Ambiguity but simply makes another entry on the list. Jackson comments on society's

ways – those who have more money automatically have an excess to all sorts of things,

whereas those that are truly passionate about something but not that financially stable

(like Mr. Clark) are often deprived of them. The two antagonists in the story are the man

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and Mr. Harris. The first one is an embodiment of envy whereas the latter represents

greed. All things considered, "Seven Types of Ambiguity" signals the inherent human

cruelty and sinister tendencies to deliberately deprive others of what they truly long for on

the basis of pure envy.

Jackson continues to tackle the issues of human nature in a domestic story "Come

Dance with me in Ireland" (1943). Three women – Mrs. Archer, Mrs. Kathy Valentine

and Mrs. Corn are looking after Mrs. Archer's baby when the doorbell rings. It is an old

man selling old shoelaces who appears to be homeless and almost faints at the door. The

women invite him in, cook him a meal and seat him in the chair. The man stops eating

and abruptly leaves, thanking the women for their hospitality and giving Mrs. Archer all

the shoelaces. Moreover, he insults the women (especially the old Mrs. Corn), after which

Mrs. Corn says that he is a drunkard and the man leaves.

It is important to emphasize that "Come Dance with me in Ireland" has neither

protagonists nor antagonists. Although many would argue at the beginning of the story

that the women are generous and kind whereas the Irish man is poor and a victim of

society, a deeper analysis would prove that neither the women are that kind nor is the man

a poor victim. When he rings the doorbell and Mrs. Archer talks to him, the man self-

effacingly says: "The first person on this block who has been decently polite to a poor old

man" (219) thus manipulating the woman into thinking that she is more generous and a

better person compared to others. When the man almost faints, Mrs. Archer is hesitant

when she reaches her hand to help him: "As her fingers touched the dirty old overcoat she

hesitated and then, tightening her lips, she put her arm firmly through his and tried to help

him through the doorway." (220) She is disgusted at the image of a dirty old man whom

she presumes to be a homeless immigrant, but has to keep up appearances and retain her

image of a generous and loving woman. However, her artificial politeness is easily seen

through as she hesitates to take his hand, does not want him to sit "in the good chair"

(220) and only wants to give him what is left in the wine bottle instead of giving him

whiskey. Kathy too is overly polite towards the old man and speaks to him as if he was a

child, asking him questions like "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" (221) The women do not

treat the old man as an equal, but take a superior position to him, creating a boundary

between a homeless, drunk immigrant and caring, generous, loving women. Mrs. Corn's

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artificial politeness is even more transparent – she does not even talk to the man directly:

"Does he feel better now? I'll bet he was just drunk or hungry or something." (221,

emphasis in the story) Hence, Mrs. Corn does not directly address the man although he is

in the same room and can obviously hear her. Moreover, she assumes that he is either an

alcoholic or did not eat on the streets for days. The women's selflessness proves to be

selfishness as they do not help the man with a sincere desire to help, but rather the desire

to appear helpful. The women then decide to make him a meal, and their fake politeness

becomes more and more obvious-Kathy claims that the man will not mind if eggs are

half-raw and that "these people" (222) would eat anything, establishing a clear difference

between them and the Irish immigrants. Mrs. Archer adds that she will give him some

canned figs left over from lunch, as she was wondering what to do with them anyways,

thus continuing to treat the old man as an inferior figure. This desire to give her old stuff

to someone whom she considers to be less fortunate is reminiscent of Mrs. Wilson from

"After you, my dear Alphonse" who wishes to give a little African American boy her

family's second hand clothes. When Kathy says that she needs to leave the room, she tells

her friends to keep an eye on the man, implying that she does not trust him to stay alone

in the room, for they think he might steal or ruin something. Having realized what she

said, she quickly adds: "He might faint again or something" (222) as an attempt to justify

her words and save her public image of a caring woman. Jackson does not make James

Harris a focus of the story, but his presence is there. Namely, Mrs. Archer claims that her

husband, Jim, would be mad if he heard that they let an old drunk Irish man come into

their home. Thus, the name suggests a cruel human nature and overall sinister tone of the

story, despite him not being an active character of the plot. When the women seat the man

at the table, Mrs. Archer does not want to use a tablecloth, but rather takes a paper bag out

of a cupboard, tears it in half and spreads it on the table, for she does not want the man to

ruin her household items as he is, in her eyes, not worthy of being treated with genuine

respect. When the man starts eating, he claims that he used to know Yeats, an Irish poet,

and begins to recite one of his poems: "Come out of charity, come dance with me in

Ireland" (225). Thus, the man becomes an equal by trying to present himself as something

that he is not with a goal to lift himself up in the eyes of others. Of course, no one could

definitely claim that the man lies about being acquaintances with Yeats, but it is highly

74    

unlikely. It is more likely that he managed to recognize the women's forced politeness and

generosity and just responded to that by attempting to prove to them (and himself) that he

is much more than a drunk immigrant. He then throws the shoelaces on the floor telling

Mrs. Archer to pick them up and "divide them with the other ladies" (225) and says that

he hates old women (alluding to Mrs. Corn). It is at this point that it becomes obvious that

the man has never been a poor victim of hypocrite women, but that he is capable of

turning the tables and being rude and hostile himself. There are no true good deeds and

generous people in Jackson's stories, for she presents the human nature as it is-faulty and

lacking genuine empathy. However, there is a great difference between the women and

the Irish man-he wants the women to know that he recognized their fake hospitality and is

direct and honest when he tells them what he really thinks about them, as no social

conventions are stopping him from speaking his mind. The man leaves the house while

reciting Yeats' poem ending it with: "And time runs on" (226) leaving both the women

and the readers shocked. Furthermore, there is a threatening tone to his words signaling

the possibility of "Come Dance with me in Ireland" being a supernatural story. Namely,

there are many theories that the old man is an old mysterious man from Yeats' poem

which would imply the presence of fantastic elements. I argue, however, that the story

belongs to Jackson's suburban horror stories with no elements of supernatural, for she

manages to evoke terror in readers by realistic plots respectively. Hattenhauer claims that

this is a true proto-postmodernist story because its plot includes the old man being both

the victim and the victimizer-the reversal of subject positions where each of the characters

turn out to be the exact opposite of what they appear to be. (2003) The horror in "Come

Dance with me in Ireland", thus, lies in duality of human nature and people's capability of

cruelty, as well as their tendencies to present themselves as something they are not.

"Of Course" (1948) brings James Harris back to the spotlight (despite him not being

an active participant of the story's events). Mrs. Tylor goes to meet the new neighbors -

Mr. Harris and his wife and son. The husband is not present, so Mrs. Tylor talks to Mrs.

Harris. Through their conversation she learns that Mr. Harris dislikes movies, newspapers,

TV, radio shows and bridge, which breaks her illusion that she might become friends with

the new neighbors. The story closes with Mrs. Tylor finishing the conversation with Mr.

Harris and taking her daughter to the movies.

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Jackson again portrays the banalities of suburban life with "Of Course". All the

elements are there-gossipy women, small town communities, the town's attitude towards

outsiders and, of course, the presence of a James Harris figure serving as a means to point

to the sinister. At the beginning, Mrs. Tylor is optimistic and feels that she would get

along well with the new neighbors. However, her predictions are to be crushed when Mrs.

Harris begins to explain her husband's nature. For example, he forbids his family to go to

the movies and "feels that movies are intellectually retarding" (231) thus establishing a

clear intellectual boundary between the Harris family and the rest. Moreover, Mr. Harris

hates the radio and newspapers, considering them to be "a mass degradation of taste"

(233). Mrs. Harris' frustration can be felt through her conversation with Mrs. Tylor-she

uses her husband's words to describe the resentment of the means of entertainment, but

does not appear to agree with him, as she is described as "looking around anxiously at

Mrs. Tylor." (233) The readers also learn that Mr. Harris is a scholar, that he writes

monographs and reads Pre-Elizabethan plays. Mrs. Tylor appears to be utterly shocked

and does not actively participate in the conversation-she just repeats the phrase "Of

course", for she cannot get into an open conflict with the new neighbors because of social

norms and conventions. The story ends with Mrs. Tylor telling her daughter that she

would take her to the movies, disappointed with her conversation with Mrs. Harris.

Although James Harris is not present (as he could not bear the moving and went to his

mother's house), he dictates the story as an authoritative, forbidding and strict figure. It is

obvious that his wife is afraid of him-she does not dare disagree with his views on life and

means of entertainment such as the newspapers or the radio. She learnt his words by heart

and just reproduces them to everyone around her (even when her husband is not there),

for Mr. Harris is a dominant figure in their family and she is the submissive one. It is her

submission and passivity that are the reasons for the omnipresence of James Harris figure.

As such, she is yet another Jackson heroine with unbearable anxieties and gradual descent

into loss of self.

Jackson moves the focus from small town communities to hectic city life with

"Pillar of Salt" (1949).A married couple, Brad and Margaret, decide to go on a vacation to

New York, as their friends are out of town and left them the apartment. The two are

excited and make plans about the things they want to do in New York. The first two days

76    

go by rather quickly. When they go to a party, Margaret feels overwhelmed because of a

crowded apartment and leans out of the window only to hear people shouting that the

building is on fire. Terrified, she thinks that the building where they are staying is on fire

and becomes hysterical and tries to warn people at the party, however, no one seems to

acknowledge her. She runs out into the street and realizes that some other building is on

fire and returns to the party. When the couple return to their apartment, Margaret realizes

that her perception of New York has changed and she begins to feel panic and anxiety

from that point on. They go to Long Island for the weekend only to encounter a girl

telling them that she has found a leg on the beach. The policeman arrives and tells them

that other body parts have also been found and that there was a murder. The next day

Margaret refuses to go out with Brad and decides to stay in the apartment. However, she

feels trapped and uneasy and finally decides to go out to the store. Again she experiences

anxiety and panic attacks in the city and feels completely paralyzed. In the end, she goes

back to the store and calls her husband asking him to come get her.

The story opens with a description of a tune running through Margaret's head as she

and her husband get on a train to New York. She considers the tune to be cheerful and

optimistic, as she hopes that she will feel happy in New York with her husband. Later on

the tune will be associated with a complete opposite-feelings of uneasiness and

unbearable anxiety. Thus, Jackson completely changes the association of the motif of the

tune (clearly the tune is a metaphor for New York). Margaret has lived in the small town

for ages and has not been to New York for nearly a year. Hence, she became accustomed

to life in a small community and although she feels happy, she is anxious deep inside as

she fears the changes that are to follow. For example, she eats a roast beef in the dining-

car of the train, "reluctant to change over too quickly to the new, tantalizing food of a

vacation." (236) When Brad and Margaret arrive at the apartment, both of them go to the

windows "automatically" (237) noticing the cars, the people and the noise. Margaret

claims that she is incredibly happy as she notices these things but, contradictory, these

will be the things that will cause her uneasiness and panic attacks. When the two of them

go to a party, Margaret feels incredibly uncomfortable because of the room being very full

and noisy. However, she keeps repeating that everything is "wonderful, so exciting" (239,

emphasis in the story) thus convincing both herself and people she encounters that

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everything is fine, completely disregarding her panic attacks in a crowded room. When

she learns that there has been a fire she turns to the people in the room, raising her voice

and exclaiming that the house is on fire. She is afraid of public humiliation as she fears

people would laugh at her. However, no one acknowledges her. Here, a major

contradiction in her personality can be noticed: she is afraid that people would ridicule her

and fears social interaction, but at the same longs to be noticed and paid attention to.

From this point on her stay in New York turns into a complete nightmare, as Jackson

gradually introduces factors that contribute to people in big cities feeling anxious and

unstable. Margaret cannot find her husband given that he is lost among people who are all

strangers to the woman-in other words, the faceless mass consumed him and he

completely blended in. Desperate, Margaret runs outside and notices that the stairs are

"insanely long" (241) serving as a modernized Gothic motif of a labyrinth-long stairs of

an urban building replaced dark underground passages from traditional Gothic texts as

they contribute to Margaret's descent into madness. When she finally manages to find her

husband, she complains that "they wouldn't listen" (241) and adding that she felt trapped

"high up in that old building [...] and in a strange city." (241) Margaret's entrapment

comes from the inside, as she is obviously not satisfied with her life and, possibly, her

marriage with Brad. However, in her small town she is able to hide behind familiar

routines, whereas in a big city she is exposed to people and surroundings she considers

strange. The next day she decides to go shopping alone and, while on a crowded bus, she

once again experiences estrangement of people around her saying to herself: "No one

listens to me" (242, emphasis in the story). Although there are many people around her,

they all look alike to her-alienated and lonely people with no distinctive characteristics

forming a faceless mass that she fears to be consumed by. Margaret establishes a clear

parallel between children from big cities and those from a small town, noticing that the

toys "were so obviously for New York children: hideous little parodies of adult life, cash

registers, tiny pushcarts with imitation fruit, telephones that really worked." (242)

Obviously, children from New York, according to her, seem to hurry to grow up-they

want toys that simulate an adult life of a working class in an industrialized era. She forms

a picture of small children in the city who are dressed up like their parents, carrying with

them "a miniature mechanical civilization" (242) and "toy cash registers in larger and

78    

larger sizes that eased them into the real thing". (242) Hence, their innocence and carefree

lifestyle become consumed by big city schedules and ways of life, unlike those of small

town children. When Margaret sees a dime on the sidewalk, her first instinct is to pick it

up. However, concerned with the public image of self, she concludes that there are too

many people for her to bend down, "for fear of being stared at" (243). Again, the

aforementioned contradiction can be noticed-she is at the same time frustrated that no one

notices her but has a strong desire to retain her public image and does not want people to

look at her. A few moments later she begins to hallucinate an image of a city crashing-the

buildings crumbling, windows breaking, gapes appearing in the sidewalk. These images

are reminiscent of Eileen's predictions of the world's end in "The Intoxicated". However,

Eileen appears to be sane and talks about the apocalypse with cold reason, whereas

Margaret experiences a true nervous breakdown and becomes consumed by her fantasy.

"Food was so elusively fast, eaten in such a hurry, that you were always hungry, always

speeding to a new meal with new people. Everything was imperceptibly quicker every

minute" (244) Margaret cannot bear the hectic way of life in the big city and the fact that

everything feels "quicker every minute" places her in a loop from which she feels unable

to escape. When she goes to the beach with Brad, she finally feels secure, as she is

relieved that the beach feels so far away from the city. However, her short term break

from anxious panic attacks is disrupted when a girl runs to them saying that she needs a

policeman because she has found a leg on the beach. When Brad and Margaret return to

the apartment terrified, Margaret says that "it starts to happen first in the suburbs" (248)

and when Brad wants to know what she is talking about, Margaret replies: "People

starting to come apart" (248) Obviously, she does not only refer to the severed body parts

of a man whose leg they saw on the beach, but rather to herself. She admits that her

mental problems and anxieties began at home, but came to the surface in the city. The

next day she feels dizzy when she looks down to the street and confines herself in the

small bedroom of the apartment. However, she feels as if the building was shaking and

decides to try and go out again. Apparently, there is no way for her to escape her anxiety

and unhappiness, for she feels agoraphobic when she is out and claustrophobic when

inside a small room. Her uneasiness is not, therefore, cause by her surroundings but rather

her inner state. Heading to the store, she has to make way through a crowd of people and

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still wonders what they think of her. Finally, she makes a call to Brad begging him to

come get her. At the end she does not manage to find refuge anywhere-for she cannot find

refuge from herself. She wants to go back to her routines in a small town for the chaotic

ways of the city affect her anxiety to a great extent, for at least in a small town she can

stay in her comfort zone. Margaret in "Pillar of Salt" faces lack of identity and numbing

emptiness as a response to the big city experience. Hague emphasizes the protagonist's

obsession with dirt, decay and disintegration as her feelings of powerlessness and

invisibility overcome her. Furthermore, she points to the difference between Margaret and

Clara (the protagonist of "The Tooth" that is to be analyzed later on) stating that Clara

embraces her lack of identity and escapes into a new world. In other words, she is not

afraid to enter a fantastic and probably more dangerous world, whereas Margaret calls her

husband to save her due to paralyzing fear. (2005) Hattenhauer claims that there is a motif

of a double present in this story, but in a different sense. Namely, Margaret is her own

double, as she views herself through the eyes of others-she worries what strangers will

think of her. She is in between her desire to be anonymous and the desire to be

acknowledged by other people. (2003) The story's title is an allusion to biblical story

about Lot's wife who becomes a pillar of salt when looking back toward her burning

hometown Sodom. Salt disappears and dissolves, just like Margaret dissolves in the city.

Just like Lot's wife, she is shown looking at the burning buildings and becoming a pillar

of salt, for Jackson once again uses the city in order to destroy her character's identity.

As opposed to the hectic chaos of a big city, "Man with Their Big Shoes" (1949)

portrays the collection's horror related to domestic life. Mrs. Hart, a young pregnant

woman employs Mrs. Anderson as a housekeeper. Although Mrs. Anderson is not a

particularly pleasant person, Mrs. Hart keeps her as she feels satisfied about having a

maid. Mrs. Anderson begins to talk about her husband who is a drunk and quite an

abusive person, hinting at her opinion that all men are like that. Mrs. Hart, however, trusts

her husband enough and does not attribute those characteristics to him. When Mrs.

Anderson tells her that she spoke about Mr. Hart to another woman in their town, Mrs.

Hart is alarmed by the fact that neighbors discuss her private life with each other. Mrs.

Anderson then suggests that she should move in (because Mrs. Martin, a neighbor, said

so), and Mrs. Hart cannot seem to tell her directly that she does not want her to do so. The

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story ends with Mrs. Hart passively listening to Mrs. Anderson as she continues to talk

about the idea of her moving in with the Harts.

The story's introduction portrays images of peaceful life in the country-the quiet

streets with gardens, kind people, maple furniture and beautiful porches. Mrs. Hart's home

seems perfect and she feels secure in the country and is all in all satisfied with her life.

Mrs. Anderson, however, is a complete opposite of her (a double)-she is a cynical,

gossipy old woman who constantly suggests that Mrs. Hart's husband is the same as her

own. When she says "It's the men who make dirt on the floor" (255) she is not actually

saying that they make a mess, but suggests that they are the ones that disturb the peace in

a woman's life and home. It is learnt that her husband is an abusive alcoholic and she feels

deeply unhappy. When Mrs. Anderson complains to Mrs. Hart about her life with her

husband, Mrs. Hart touches the yellow curtain and completely ignores her maid's

complaints. The motif of a yellow curtain has been previously discussed in "Flower

Garden" and serves to point to the female protagonist's warmth and feelings of tranquility

in her home. Finally, she quickly drops her hand from the curtain, turning to "smile

sympathetically at Mrs. Anderson" (259) - she does not, however, prove her genuine

sympathy, but rather politeness fueled by the small town's conventions. Mrs. Anderson

continues to talk about her dissatisfaction saying that "someone always has to do the dirty

work for the rest" (260) but Mrs. Hart loses track of what her maid was saying and begins

to fantasize about telling her New York friends about her beautiful country house and her

family. The desire that her happiness be recognized by others is similar to that of Hilda

Clarence in "The Villager", for both women want others to be jealous of them. Mrs.

Anderson wants Mrs. Hart to be miserable too-she implies that Mr. Hart might be an

alcoholic or that he is interested in other women. Mrs. Hart, however, trusts her husband

and denies Mrs. Anderson's implications. Mrs. Anderson claims that all men treat their

wives the same to which Mrs. Hart replies: "I think a successful marriage is the woman's

responsibility." (261) It can be seen that she lives according to traditional gender roles as

she indirectly implies that Mrs. Anderson's unhappy marriage must be her own fault. Mrs.

Anderson then suggests that she should move in with the Harts and claims that Mrs.

Martin suggested that. Mrs. Hart then becomes aware that people talk behind her back,

"her kind neighbors watching her beneath their friendliness, looking quietly from behind

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curtains." (262) Hence, fear overcomes her as her image of a perfect small town turns into

a crippling anxiety caused by the existence of a duality of humans, for small town people

are close minded and gossipy while appearing to be friendly. It is then when Mrs. Hart

realizes that she is a target of the town's gossipy women who tend to peak into one's

privacy. Thus, she realizes that she is one of them now and has to be careful so as not to

threaten her family's image in the society. Mrs. Hart then tries to politely decline Mrs.

Anderson's suggestion but Mrs. Anderson is persistent claiming that she would not be in

their way and suggests that they should put the baby in her room so she can take care of it

once it is born. As Mrs. Anderson does not have any children, her desire to take care of

the baby reflects her desire to have a family, for she has never had that with her abusive

husband. It is her dissatisfaction and loneliness that made her cynical and petty. Sitting at

the table drinking tea, Mrs. Hart begins imagining Mrs. Martin, frozen faces of her

neighbors and her friends in New York reading her letters with envy. As the pictures

switch in her mind, she looks at "Mrs. Anderson's knowing smile across the table" (264)

and realizes "with a sudden unalterable conviction that she was lost." (264) The story's

ending thus suggests Mrs. Hart's transition from being a happy housewife living in a

perfect home to anxious small town woman afraid of what others will think of and say

about her. Mrs. Anderson has manipulated her in a sense that she cannot find a way to

decline Mrs. Anderson's suggestion that she should move in with Mrs. Hart and realizes

that by declining her proposal she is exposed to gossip ruining her family's public image

in the town-she knows that Mrs. Anderson is the primary source of gossip and is afraid

that the old woman would spread malicious gossip about her and her husband. Another

element contributing to the story's terror is an issue of home invasion, although here it is

much more subtle than in "Like Mother Used to Make" or "Trial by Combat"-Mrs.

Anderson refuses to leave the house although it becomes obvious that Mrs. Hart does not

want her to stay permanently. Mrs. Hart, however, conforms to the small town social

conventions rather than confront Mrs. Anderson. Her act of succumbing to conformity is

fueled by fear of Mrs. Anderson's possible gossip about the Harts. Hence, she becomes

yet another Jackson heroine who is destined to spend her life ignoring her inner thoughts

and desires and continue living according to norms and conventions confining her in a

small minded community.

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"The Tooth" (1948) is, along with "Charles" and "The Lottery", the most analyzed

story in the collection. Clara Spencer goes to New York to have her rotten tooth taken

care of. Her husband takes her to the station and she gets on the bus to the city. On the bus

she falls asleep (because she took sleeping pills and painkillers) when a man in a blue suit

wakes her. He talks to her about distant destinations where everything is better and

dreamlike. When the bus makes a short stop for a break, Clara and Jim go into a

restaurant. When they go back on the bus, Clara falls asleep again when someone wakes

her saying that it is 7 AM and that they are in New York. Clara says goodbye to Jim who

hands her pearls after telling her about distant destinations once again. When she arrives

at the dentist's office she is in great pain because of her tooth, and that is all she can think

about. The dentist tells her that her left molar needs to be removed and sends her to a

surgeon. Nervous, Clara asks the nurse whether the procedure will hurt after which she

falls asleep because of anesthetics they give her. During the operation she dreams of Jim

and fantasizes about the life he told her about. When she wakes up she goes to the

bathroom where she sees her reflection in the mirror but fails to recognize her own face.

She learns that her barrette says "Clara" and throws it in the trashcan, still confused about

her own identity as she fails to acknowledge her looks among other women in the

bathroom. Having finally figured out which reflection is hers, she is not satisfied with the

way she looks, her age, and her pale face. She has no recollection of who she is, where

she is from or what she is supposed to do. She goes into the street where she sees Jim and

goes with him to another dimension, imagining herself walking on the hot sand.

There are several noticeable features of "The Tooth" that are familiar to the reader

(given that Jackson incorporates them in the majority of the stories in the collection).

Firstly, the female protagonist who is deeply unhappy and struggles with sense of self and

identity. Secondly, Jackson once again portrays her attitude towards hectic and chaotic

city – like in "Pillar of Salt", New York has completely consumed the protagonist's

identity. Moreover, there is a threatening figure of James Harris present, pursuing the

protagonist with promises of better life. At the story's beginning Clara assures herself and

her husband that she is all right and that there is no need for him to come with her to the

dentist. She took codeine, whiskey and sleeping pills, all of which contribute to her

mental state and provide an illusion that she is all right. With Clara's statement "I just feel

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as if I were all tooth" (266) Jackson implies that her inner anxiety is reflected in the tooth

which serves as a metaphor for her general dissatisfaction. It has consumed her and she

now feels as if that misery is the only thing that defines her. When Clara's husband

mentions that she had a toothache on their honeymoon, it becomes clear that her

dissatisfaction began a long time ago and that it has now come to surface and became

unbearable. On the bus Clara becomes aware of her looks – she has an old lipstick, "a run

in her stocking and a hole in the toe" (269) pointing to the fact that she has stopped taking

care of herself during time in her marriage. She lost herself in her marriage and has been

lost for years, so her pain is a displacement of herself before her marriage. Clara hopes

that "after the tooth is fixed, after everything's all right" (269) – she assures herself that

her dissatisfaction is caused by her toothache and hopes that her life will get better once

the tooth is taken care of, for at this point she is not aware that her dissatisfaction is

deeper than it seems. Hattenhauer claims that her getting rid of the tooth is her attempt to

get rid of her husband and current identity. Like in "Pillar of Salt", Clara is her own

double and her mirror opposite. (2003) She first talks to a tall man in a blue suit

(obviously James Harris) in a restaurant – he tells her about waves, warm surroundings,

flutes playing all night and the moon that is "as big as a lake" (271). The appearance of

James Harris might be contributed to the fact that Clara is, at this point, heavily medicated

and under the influence of alcohol. However, I propose that he would have appeared even

if she was not medicated, for his targets are lonely and dissatisfied women he wishes to

pursue. Along with "The Daemon Lover", James Harris in "The Tooth" has the most

similarities with the original ballad's James Harris – he openly talks about life at sea and it

is apparent that he is a sailor – "and while we were sailing past the island we heard a

voice calling us...." (272) Clara longs for a getaway from her marriage, so she puts her

head on James' shoulder and falls asleep, giving in to a fantasy about warm beaches and

sand "so white it looks like snow." (273) Like in "The Daemon Lover", the reader cannot

be sure whether James Harris is real or is he a fantasy, a means for lonely women to

escape everyday misery. When Clara arrives at the dentist's office, her tooth is "identified

so clearly" (277) – Jackson's choice of the word "identified" serves to draw a parallel

between Clara and the tooth: she is not able to identify herself, but her misery and

dissatisfaction (represented by the tooth) are clearly visible. Clara's left molar has to be

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removed, and she is given an anesthesia, which takes her to another dimension. She feels

someone taking her arm (clearly James Harris) and sees "the world widened" (280). When

the nurse wakes her up, Clara asks: "Why did you pull me back? I wanted to go on." (281)

Her fantasy is clearly much more appealing than her reality, which is why she protests

when she is deprived of it. Furthermore, given that she imagines herself leaving down a

hallway, it might suggest death. I have already mentioned that James Harris might stand

for suicidal tendencies, a theory that would explain Clara's resentment towards the nurse

and the doctor when they wake her up. When she sits up, she feels as if "she had been in

the cubicle all her life" (281) pointing to the fact that she is, in fact, unhappy, and that she

has felt that way for a long time. With her tooth removed, Clara is fragmented and

disoriented – she has lost her identity. She has never experienced true freedom and once

James Harris shows her that there is more to life, it becomes all she thinks of. After her

tooth has been removed, Clara looks at the mirror but cannot recognize her own face – as

her identity has been reduced to the tooth, once she got rid of it she cannot acknowledge

her true self. She desperately struggles to establish an identity for herself: "There were

some pretty faces there, why didn't I take one of those?" (283-4) She is not satisfied with

how she looks and wishes she was someone else. Finally, she says the silver barrette with

the name "Clara" engraved, a wedding ring on her left hand and an initial pin with the

letter "C" (like in "Trial by Combat", an initial pin is one of the most personal belongings

suggesting the core of one's identity) – all reminders of her old self. She then throws the

items into the ashstand, attempting to get rid of everything reminding her of her former

life full of misery and dissatisfaction. Having left the building, she takes Jim's hand. In the

story's last passage it is learnt that she left a slip of paper headed "Extraction" in the

bathroom. This detail is present because if emphasizes her decision to get rid of her old

self, or, in other words, to extract her former self together with the tooth. Not noticing

other people's glances, Clara is shown running barefoot on the hot sand with her hand in

Jim's. Obviously, this image is her fantasy as her descent into madness has reached its

climax with this scene. However, it can be analyzed more optimistically: she decided to

leave her life behind and experience freedom she has never had. According to this, the

story's ending can be analyzed in several different ways. On the one hand, Clara is one of

the bravest Jackson heroines in terms of her courage to make a change – she does not

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remain passive once she realizes she is deeply unhappy, and the final image portrays her

willingness to make a change and not give in to dullness and misery. Bonikowski is one

of the critics who suggests that the ending might not be pessimistic – it might show

Clara's attempt to escape her old, unhappy married life. (2013) However, given that her

escape is aided by James Harris (who always brings about something sinister with him),

there is a strong possibility that she is even more unhappy now as her instability became

more visible and stronger, thus completely consuming her. Thus, Jackson leaves her

protagonist without her identity and completely separated from reality.

The penultimate story, "Got a Letter from Jimmy" (1948), sets an atmosphere for

"The Lottery." The narrator and her husband are having dinner when he tells her that he

has received a letter from Jimmy. The readers do not know who Jimmy is or why the two

men do not have a good relationship. The husband then says he does not want to open the

letter while his wife is curious as to why. He then proceeds to talk about other things, but

the wife does not want to let the letter go, reminding him of his initial plan to send the

letter back without opening it. The story ends with the wife's internal vow to bash her

husband's head and leave him in the cellar with the letter in his hands.

This domestic short story obviously reminds the readers of the existence of James

Harris with its title. Although he is not present in the story, his presence dictates the

story's atmosphere, as his sinister nature provides the horror. The story does indeed set the

atmosphere for "The Lottery", given that it portrays cruelty in an apparently safe domestic

surrounding. The horror arises from the wife carrying on to converse with her husband

naturally although her inner thoughts are anything but normal – she is mentally unstable

and her husband is not aware of it. Thus, like in "The Renegade", Jackson portrays the

duality of human nature – seemingly kind people are capable of most cruel deeds and

their true selves are hidden behind a seemingly perfect domestic surroundings and kind

smiles. The wife's insanity can be seen in the story's opening – as she is stacking the

dishes in the kitchen, the wife concludes that all men are insane and all women are aware

of that. By shifting her own insanity to someone else, she gives an impression that she is,

in fact, the one who is unstable. Whereas other Jackson's female protagonists hide their

misery behind passivity and tend to control their feelings, the wife in "Got a Letter from

Jimmy" allows sinister thoughts to take her over, gradually evolving into her desire to

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commit murder and bury her husband in the cellar. Given that James Harris is always

associated either with evil tendencies or insanity, in this story his name points to both –

the wife is both mentally unstable and has malicious thoughts. As murderous intents are

placed within a domestic setting, Jackson makes a perfect introduction to "The Lottery"

with this story.

Finally, "The Lottery" (1948), is the last story in the collection. People from a small

town gather on June 27th in order to participate in the annual lottery which is to begin at

10 am. Mr. Summers conducts the lottery along with Mr. Graves. They use the black box

placed on the three legged stool for the lottery. Mr. Summers puts slips of paper inside the

box, although originally wooden pieces were used for this occasion. However, as the

town's population grew, the traditional wooden pieces were replaced by paper. Before the

lottery al the households members are listed. Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson arrives just in time

for the lottery and the ceremony begins. All of the household heads receive slips and Bill

Hutchinson's family is singled out. After that, the members of the Hutchinson family

select one slip of paper. It is revealed that Tessie's piece of paper is the one with the black

dot on it. As the villagers collect the stones, Tessie exclaims that it is not fair and protests,

while all the townspeople, including the members of her family, stone her to death.

Jackson got the idea for "The Lottery" one June morning while she was pushing a

stroller uphill on her way home from grocery shopping. She sat and immediately typed it,

and the published version was almost the same as her draft. Jackson's agent did not really

care for the story but they sent it to New Yorker anyways, so the story was published

despite the fact that the editors were not particularly impressed with it either. When

Harold Ross, the editor of New Yorker at the time, asked Jackson to explain what the

story meant, Jackson refused to comment. She received many angry letters as the majority

of the readers disliked the story at first. Later on, when "The Lottery" was televised, she

started receiving more polite letters, most puzzling of which were the ones in which

people asked if there was such a thing as the lottery in their period and where it was held.

As the requests were piling, Jackson finally decided to give a statement: "Explaining just

what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a

particularly brutal incident rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's

readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in

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their own lives." (1975) The story's setting plays a crucial role in establishing the story's

tone. Given that the plot is set in Vermont, where Jackson grew up, it serves to point to

the author's attitude towards small towns and its close minded residents. The town in "The

Lottery" is seemingly idyllic, full of ordinary people who are kind and supportive of each

other. The irony is that the idyllic scenery actually highlights the brutality and inherent

evil of humans in "The Lottery." As Judd suggests, the domestic sphere is a source of

tremendous discomfort, which contributes to the story's terror. (2016) Furthermore, the

choice of a New England town is relevant because of its history of witch trials and

persecutions. Even the title of the story is ironic, given that the readers expect the winner

not the loser, as the term "lottery" is associated with someone getting a reward or a prize.

The title, thus, points to the fact that the victims (or "the winners") are chosen randomly

and depend on fate or chance. Jackson explicitly attacks social conformity and mindless

obedience to tradition thus managing to portray the pointless violence. The opening lines

of the story portray an idyllic atmosphere with an image of a carefree life in a small town

on a fine June morning: "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh

warmth of a full summer day, the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was

richly green." (291) This exaggerative description of an image juxtaposes the events that

are about to happen, as they are contradictory to the brutality and cruelty which are to take

place. "Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting

and rain, tractors and taxes." (291) Critics do not generally agree on what brings the true

horror to the story – whereas some imply that the horror is caused by the randomness of

execution, others consider the story's turn of events and unexpected outcome derived from

an apparently ideal setting to be the ones that cause the true shock. For instance, Shields

claims that it is "the arbitrary nature of the selection process of who is to be executed" that

haunts the readers and leaves them with feelings of shock and uneasiness. (2004)

However, I suggest that the most horrifying element is the fact that the townspeople

behave perfectly natural, as if the day of the lottery was any other day – they talk about

planting, rain, tractors and taxes. It is the cold reason of humans on the day when they are

about to witness (and participate in) a murder. I have already mentioned Jackson's

tendency to point to the duality of human nature, and with "The Lottery" she manages to

lift it to a whole new level, for in her other stories (such as "The Renegade") characters

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are shown thinking and even talking about murder, but are never actually shown doing it

themselves. Jackson makes a clean social commentary with "The Lottery", as the uses the

fictional form to define and emphasize it. According to Warren, she manages to do so by

establishing a contrast between the matter-of-factness and the cheery atmosphere on one

side, and the pure terror on the other. Combined, they cause a dramatic shock in a reader.

Furthermore, it "indicates that the author's point in general has to do with the awful

doubleness of the human spirit – a doubleness that expresses itself in the blended good

neighborliness and cruelty of the community's action." (1959) Moreover, when analyzing

the story one has to take into consideration the background to "The Lottery" – the World

War 2. Hitler and his followers attempted to persecute Europe's Jews, Gypsies and others

(the scapegoats) so as to purify Germany. Accordingly, Jackson's theme of mindlessly

following tradition emerged. (1985) The readers are taken by the story's events, and their

attitudes have been molded carefully from the very beginning. Jackson gradually creates

an atmosphere and juxtaposes an ideal little town to brutal events. Thus, she manages to

evoke the true shock at the story's ending – modern day people reject uncivilized habits

and rituals of sacrifice which is why the ending surprises them so much. It is important to

note Jackson's clever use of name symbolism in the story. Yarmove suggests that the

prominent names – Summers, Adams, Graves, Warner, Delacroix, Tessie Hutchinson –

tell the readers a lot about what underlies the story. For the season of the lottery is

summer, the symbolism behind Mr. Summers' name is quite obvious. However, it is used

ironically – as summer is something reminiscent of life and joy, Mr. Summers is the one

conducting the brutal ritual hence juxtaposing the concepts of happiness and life. Adams

serves to represent the humanity, as "adam" means "man" in Hebrew, thus encompassing

mankind in general. Mr. Graves is reminiscent of an actual grave and stands as a reminder

of what will happen to Tessie. Old man Warner warns the readers about the primordial

function of the lottery – to ensure fertility. Furthermore, given that he is seventy-seven

years old, his age stands for an ancient magic number of indefiniteness. Delacroix (which

literally means "of the cross") alludes to the pseudo-crucifixion of Tessie. Ironically, Mrs.

Delacroix will be the one to select the largest stone. Tessie's name can be analyzed on

several different levels. Firstly, her last name (Hutchinson) is reminiscent of the New

England Anne Hutchinson who was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638

89    

because of her beliefs and established her own church in Rhode Island. Most of her

family, including Hutchinson herself, died in an Indian massacre. Some consider her to be

a martyr who died for her beliefs. Ironically, Jackson's Tessie is a complete opposite. It

may also be speculated that Tessie is a parody of the most famous Tess in literature (Tess

Durbeyfield) who is an innocent victim. By the end, when Tessie Hutchinson protests her

stoning to death, it is not the cry of an innocent victim (like Hardy's Tess) nor is it a

triumphant statement of a martyr (like Ann Hutchinson). Rather, it is "the peevish last

complaint of a hypocrite who has been hoisted by her own petard." (1994) Tessie's name

can also represent a nickname for "Anastasia", translated literally as "of the resurrection"

(1974). Thus, Tessie Hutchinson displays hypocrisy and weakness. Before the ritual, she

pretends she does not even know that the lottery is about to take place and appears to be

carefree and relaxed. However, as soon as she realizes that her family is endangered, she

begins to protest saying that it is not fair. Griffin analyzes tradition and violence in the

story. She claims that many ancient cultures believed that the crops represented the life

cycle beginning with death. Namely, seeds are buried (thus representing death) after

which with the life forces of the sun and water the seeds grow representing rebirth.

Consequently, ancient people began simulating this resurrection cycle. Moreover, the

"scapegoat" archetype began with people's opinion that by transferring one's sins to a

person or an animal and then sacrificing them, their own sins would be eliminated. Mr.

Summers and Mr. Graces serve to create a balance and share the responsibilities of the

ritual: life brings death whereas death recycles life. (1999) Given that the plot is set in

modern times, it is more than surprising that the people cannot seem to reject the lottery –

they think that rejecting the ritual would affect their lives. Old Man Warner even claims

that there has always been a lottery and, ironically, implies that rejecting it would mean

returning to the uncivilized. The fact that the lottery is outdated is emphasized with the

image of a worn black box and the fact that the town's population overgrew the ritual

(implied by their necessity to dispose of the traditional wood in favor of paper slips). To

the villagers, the stoning is not a murder but a town ritual and, thus, an institution. They

consider the items related to the ritual to be sacred. For instance, the black box represents

an embodiment of the tradition codified in culture and passed on for generations, which is

why they choose not to replace it although it is worn and old. When in group, their level

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of guilt is lowered as the stoning is not associated with one single individual.

Automatically, it is not considered to be a murder, but rather, a ritual. The use of stones

also has the most obvious – biblical significance. Hence, Jackson points to dangers of

blindly following any sort of ritual. By not questioning the reasons behind a certain ritual,

people become blindly obedient and not able to acknowledge the meaninglessness behind

their actions. Nebeker points to dangers of tradition and superstition, as well as the power

of conformity and how all that can result in gruesome consequences: "Man is not at the

mercy of murky, savage id, he is the victim of unexamined and unchanging traditions

which he could easily change if he only realized their implications. Herein is horror."

Moreover, the characters need tradition, as it has always been essential to people because

of their inability to explain the concepts of universe, hence their need to control the forces

around them. (1974) The story's characters do not question the rules. Ironically, some of

the rules changed – those that are not practical anymore. Jackson's notion of family is also

important in "The Lottery" – on the one hand, they stand together in groups representing

the importance of family whereas, on the other hand, the members turn against each other

with ease in order to save themselves. Furthermore, the children are cruel, brutal and

violent in "The Lottery", as Jackson once again associates violent tendencies with

humanity in general, not just adults. At the end, Jackson does not give enough hope to the

readers as it seems that the lottery will never stop. The only optimistic note is the

mentioning of other towns that have given up the lottery. All things considered, the evil of

humans and duality of human nature are represented as inherent and are not, as such,

likely to vanish.

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Conclusion Jackson's legacy and her influence on other writers becomes more and more recognized

every day. The change of attitude can be best exemplified by her readers' reaction to "The

Lottery" – first they were disgusted and shocked, and later they were generally curious and drawn

into the world of the short story. Jackson manages to incorporate elements of traditional Gothic

fiction in order to portray anxieties and fears of the period she lived in. She often tends to

modernize certain Gothic motifs thus bringing her fiction closer to her audience.

Although many would consider some of her stories to be far from Gothic and place them

among simple domestic stories, a deeper analysis proves otherwise. Jackson deliberately uses

domestic surroundings to point to cruelty being present in seemingly idyllic spheres to the same

extent as it is portrayed through horrifying haunted dungeons. She replaces medieval passages

with big city streets and buildings, causing her characters (primarily female) to descend into

madness. She also deals with the issues of racism and people's tendencies to form stereotypes and

ban outsiders thus portraying the true horror of contemporary period. She does not allow her

characters to break from social norms and forces them to conform. If they decline and do not

conform to the norms, Jackson seals their fate by making them mentally unstable and deeply

unhappy. Her stories, hence, speak loudly of the issues of gender, conformity, and fear (both

men's and women's). Namely, Jackson's male characters are mostly afraid of losing their

individuality (like David Tenant) whereas her female characters tend to have deeper issues given

that female roles were strictly limited to those of wives and mothers at that period. Thus, the

collection's female protagonists have plenty of different fears – of loneliness, madness, end of

(their) world, loss of self, intrusion of privacy, and many others.

The most striking element in the collection is definitely a James Harris figure, particularly

because of his original notion of a threatening, evil figure seducing a woman away from her

family and dragging her into death. Namely, even when Jackson's domestic stories seem naive

and light-hearted, James Harris' presence proves otherwise – he is associated with something

malicious and sinister and, as such, threatens the already emotionally fragile heroines. I have not

discussed the possibility of James Harris representing Jackson's husband, Hyman. However, I

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suggest that an analysis that relies more on Jackon's biography would manage to establish links

between stories that feature James Harris and Jackson's marriage with Hyman.

All things considered, Jackson does not provide an optimistic view on the world, neither

does she give hope to the readers that world as such will ever change. Rather, her stories are

means for her readers (and Jackson herself) to escape everyday anxieties and frustrations, for

through her representation of everyday life she provides a getaway from the repressed fears.

Thus, all these elements combined place Shirley Jackson among one of the most influential

contemporary writers of American Gothic fiction.

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References

Primary sources:

Jackson, Shirley. The lottery and other stories. Chivers, 2011.

Secondary sources:

Bloom, Harold. Shirley Jackson: comprehensive research and study guide. Chelsea House, 2001.

Bogert, Edna. “Censorship and "The Lottery".” The English Journal, vol. 74, no. 1, 1985, p. 45.

Bonikowski, Wyatt. “‘Only one antagonist’: The Demon Lover and the Feminine Experience in

the Work of Shirley Jackson.” Gothic Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, Jan. 2013, pp. 66–88.

Botting, Fred. Gothic. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding fiction. Prentice-Hall, 1979.

Fiedler, Leslie A., and Charles B. Harris. Love and death in the American novel. Dalkey Archive

Press, 1997.

Ginsberg, Lesley. “Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe’s ‘The Black Cat." In American Gothic:

New Interventions in a National Narrative, ed. Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy, University of

Iowa Press, 2009.

Gray, Richard John. Southern aberrations: writers of the American South and the problem of

regionalism. Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2000.

Griffin, Amy A. “Jackson's The Lottery.” The Explicator, vol. 58, no. 1, 1999, pp. 44–46.

Hague, Angela. “Faithful Anatomy of Our Times". Reassessing Shirley Jackson.” Frontiers: A

Journal of Women Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2005, pp. 73–96.

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Hattenhauer, Darryl. Shirley Jacksons American gothic. State Univ. of New York Press, 2003.

Hogle, Jerrold E. The Cambridge companion to the modern gothic. Cambridge University Press,

2014.

Judd, Elizabeth. "The Joy and Terror of Shirley Jackson." The American Conservative, 2016, pp.

53-55.

Kerr, Elizabeth Margaret. William Faulkner's gothic domain. 1979.

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