Reassessing Jackson: Assessing a Reassessment of Shirley Jackson

Indiana Jones assesses Hague's assessment of Shirley Jackson

Last class, we talked about Jackson’s short story entitled, ‘The Lottery,” and how (and if) it relates to your life as a college student. When we read the story, we were unfamiliar with Jackson’s life and didn’t know whom her writing was geared towards. In order to inform you about her back story and to help you further formulate or re-think your position after your last reading, I have found an article written by one of my colleagues with information I feel inclined to share with you. Because we have limited time together, I wrote an analysis and summary of the article for your reference and study.

Thanks,
Professor Walton

It is has been said that Shirley Jackson’s works of fiction have been “written out of literary history (Hague 73).” Because of the complexity of her works, many readers have over-looked and dismissed her gothic narratives as “House-wives’ Stories.” Even though it may appear that Jackson’s arguments are inapplicable, and too fantastic or unlikely to be meaningful, Hague argues that the opposite is true.  In the article, Hague argues that Jackson’s “fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation…” are wrongly interpreted as “personal, and even neurotic fantasies” and that to understand Jackson’s stories, including The Lottery, one must look at them in the context of Jackson’s life (Hague 74).

Jackson wrote during the 1960’s, when the women’s rights movement was blossoming after the publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. Jackson was often accused of writing as a stereotypical woman, and letting herself fall into a housewife caste. Although she was working to advance her career through writing, many critics thought that she sold herself as something she was not and did not appreciate it. According to Friedan, women who worked only at home taking care of only domestic work were sequestered into a lonely world. Women lost touch with their sense of reality and identity. Because of this, women during this time period were described as feeling “empty” or were said to have a condition that was undefined or that “had no name.” This era of history is often referred to as the “Age of Anxiety” for these reasons (Hague 75-76).

This emptiness seen in the characters of Jackson’s stories is a common theme in all of her work. In “The Lottery,” the characters obviously feel “empty” enough to let social norm and tradition push them into harming each other. This unique emptiness, caused by the isolation of the small town where the story took place, is the catalyst the causes the horrific stoning-to-death at the end of the story.  When the reader knows where Jackson’s idea of deranged emptiness comes from, it is easier for him or her to extract a message without questioning Jackson’s motives for writing such a morbid story.

Jackson’s attraction to writing about insanity was inspired by overcoming mental illness at the end of her life.  Jackson was diagnosed with “acute anxiety” and agoraphobia (Hague 76). Her feelings influenced her stories and characters; personalities she created often had similar conditions to her own. Because of this, many of the characters that Jackson created dealt with anxiety and fear. This is reflected clearly in the “The Lottery,” when all the members of a small town wait anxiously to learn which member of their community will be stoned to death.

Although Jackson’s works at first seem far-fetched, inapplicable, and too distant to be applied to modern society, her writing style is more easily understood in the context of her life struggle and the time period that she lived in. Her bizarre settings filled with uncomfortable scenarios of unprecedented dementia were used to call attention to the flaws that she saw in her own society. Jackson’s message is sometimes unclear and often unacknowledged because she writes about terror in the world is that is also unseen and unacknowledged. She writes that an “Enemy cannot be confronted because it inhabits a world that lies hidden but dangerously close by (Hague 90).” In this way, her work is an embodiment of her message.

Works Cited
Hague, Angela. “A Faithful Anatomy of Our Times”: Reassessing Shirley Jackson.”
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26.2 (2005): 73-96. Print.