The Women of Shirley Jackson :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Women of Shirley Jackson Throughout her life, Shirley Jackson refused to fit into societys limited creation of a womans role. Her works feature female protagonists who are punished for seeking a more substantial existence than that of the traditional wife or mother. In most cases, these characters are condemned as witches, ostracized by society, and even kil guide for their refusal to conform. From her youth, Jackson was an outsider. Always self-conscious about her obesity and plain appearance, she preferred spending time wholly in her room writing poetry to socializing with other children (Oppenheimer 16). As an adult, she struggled to fulfill her role as a mother without sacrificing her career as a writer. Kathleen Warnock writes Jackson served as chauffeur for her children and hostess for her husbands university colleagues at Bennington Col stagecoache where he was a professor. . . . But she also set aside time each day for her writing. There was eternally the sound of typing, her children wrote, pounding away into the night (10). Jacksons husband, writer and literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, felt threatened by her talent and tried to discourage her by preoccupying her with housework. This, however, unless made Jackson more determined. Her writing became a form of rebellion against her husband (who was allegedly unfaithful) and, ultimately, against a male-dominated society. This element of rebellion in Jacksons works led to its poor reception by contemporary critics and readers alike. According to mythologian Barbara G. Walker, Any unusual ability in a woman instantly raises a charge of witchery (1078). In the flood of mail that followed the publication of The Lottery, Jackson was labeled un-American, perverted, and modern (Sullivan 71). Rumors of supernatural events concerning Jackson began to circulate. According to David Gates, Jackson was widely believed to have broken the leg of publisher Alfred Knopf by sticking pins into a vo odoo doll (67). Bennington College student Elizabeth Frank recalls a rumor that. . . Jackson had turned a certain male might member into a pumpkin (6). Jacksons extensive library of witchcraft as well as the mystique that arose from her agoraphobic tendencies added to this characterization. Her house became a cave, her small social tidy sum a coven, and her many cats familiars. In the words of Jack Sullivan, Jacksons real witchcraft is her fiction (71).