Shirley Jackson

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916 - August 8, 1965) American writer. BA, Syracuse University, 1940. "It was not my first published story, nor my last, but I have been assured over and over that if "The Lottery" had been the only story I ever wrote or published, there would be people who would not forget my name." (Jackson in her essay, "Biography of a Story") Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provoked public outrage when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. It is now considered a classic and commonly found in the curriculum of American schools. The ambiguity of the tale is part of its strength and Jackson herself wrote: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to chock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives." (San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1948) ("The Lottery" was adapted for television by Ellen M. Violett and broadcast in the Cameo Theatre series in 1950.)

But Jackson's body of work -- which has had a profound influence on modern horror -- comprises much more than a single story. Beginning in the 1940s, Jackson wrote "literary" short stories for magazines like The New Yorker as well romantic and "domestic" shorts for well-paying magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day and Mademoiselle. She often wrote humorous, somewhat fictionalized tales of her life as a wife and mother. Most of these were subsequently collected in Raising Demons (1953) and Life Among the Savages (1957). As dichotomous as these two literary veins may at first seem, closer consideration reveals that a "perversion of domestic felicity," as S. T. Joshi has put it, "by mental instability, psychological cruelty, and isolation" is a common thread.

Even more than her short fiction, two of Jackson's six novels firmly established her as a master of dark fiction. The Haunting Of Hill House (1959) is, unquestionably, one of the finest haunted house novels ever written. The story concerns several people brought together to investigate paranormal phenomena in a country house. The energies of the house focus on the odd, lonely Eleanor Vance. Jackson suggests rather than explains, implies rather than reveals -- frightening more by what she does not say rather than what she does and slowly reveals the quiet evil that pervades ordinary life. The publication and subsequent reception of The Haunting Of Hill House brought Jackson critical praise, popular success, sales, and a movie deal that eventually resulted in a film with which she was pleased. (Robert Wise's The Haunting, 1963, is itself a classic.) But the triumph of Hill House was followed by a descent into anxiety, depression, and a sense of persecution. Jackson wrote her next novel during a period of psychosis. The resulting We Have Always Lived In The Castle (1962) is a brilliant psychological study of two sisters ostracized by their community.

Jackson's first two novels, The Road Through The Wall (1948) and The Hangsaman (1950), are mainstream although the former concerns social class cruelties and the latter is a haunting story of a young woman's mental deterioration. The alienated protagonist of The Bird's Nest (1954) has multiple personality disorder. (It was made into a film, LIZZIE, directed by Hugo Haas and starring Eleanor Parker. Released in 1957 it was over-shadowed by the similarly-themed Three Faces Of Eve, which was released shortly afterward.) A third novel, The Sundial (1958) is a satire of apocalyptic religiosity that pays tribute to Gothicism while playing on Cold War fears. A seventh novel, Come Along With Me, concerning a middle-aged woman with psychic abilities, was never completed. Jackson died of cardiac arrest at age 48.

Neither a comprehensive collection nor a "best of" her short work yet exists. Only The Lottery And Other Stories (1949) was published during her lifetime. The Magic Of Shirley Jackson (1966), Come Along With Me: Part Of A Novel, Sixteen Stories, And Three Lectures (1968) and Just An Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories Of Shirley Jackson (1997) were posthumously published.

A generally unsuccessful remake of the 1963 film The Haunting directed by Jan DeBont was released in 1999.