|
|
I would like to express my special thanks to M.A. Phdr. Alexandra Hubáèková for her guidance, valuable comments and suggestions as to the content and style of this diploma project TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 6 Photo of Shirley Jackson ........................... 7 Introduction 8 I. The Biography of Shirley Jackson 10 II. Selected Short Fiction 18 1. Introduction 18 2. “The Daemon Lover” 21 3. “Elizabeth” 26 4. “A Pillar of Salt” 30 5. “The Tooth” 35 III. Selected Short Fiction 45 1. Introduction 45 2. “The Renegade” 46 3. "The Possibility of Evil" 51 4. “One Ordinary day with Peanuts” 57 IV. “The Lottery” 61 1. The Plot 61 2. Themes and Characters 65 3. The Symbols 65 Conclusion 66 Selected Bibliography 67 1. Primary sources 67 2. Secondary sources 67 Appendixes Anotace diplomové práce ABSTRACT This diploma project deals with ... SHIRLEY JACKSON (1916 – 1965) INTRODUCTION For my diploma project I have chosen to analyse the short fiction of Shirley Jackson a quite unknown post-war short story writer. I chose Mrs. Jackson after reading the story “The Lottery” which was an unforgettable experience Shirley Jackson herself admits: ”I have been assured over and over that if it had been the only story I ever wrote or published, there would be people who would not forger my name” (Hall, 125). The main goal of this diploma project is to acquaint the reader with the life of Shirley Jackson and her most famous short stories, to analyse them and to find the uniting themes in the body of her short fiction. ... I hope to achieve my aims by presenting Shirley Jackson’s biography in the first chapter. In the second chapter the reader will find the analysis of four short stories “The Daemon Lover”, “Elizabeth”, “Pillar of salt” and “The Tooth” which deal with the theme of woman who are vulnerable, loose control over their lives and await a man who will save them. They all suffer from a disturbed mind, which is the evil with in them. In the third chapter on the contrary deals with the evil from outside which is hidden in the mask of innocence. The reader will come across another section of short stories, which includes “The Renegade”, “The Possibility of Evil”, and “One Ordinary day, with Peanuts”. Chapter four is purely devoted to the story “The Lottery” where not only the plot and themes are discussed but also some of the symbols will be explained... At the end of this diploma project the reader will be able to refer to the appendixes where all the texts of short stories analysed in this paper are included. Of course this diploma project does not cover the topic of Shirley Jackson’s short fiction to its full extent but it is rather an attempt to capture the main topics and themes in her well-known stories. I have chosen the method of close reading rather than examining the text from the point of view of various schools such as the Marxists, psychoanalytical, sociological or feminists, which have all applied on Shirley Jackson. The method of close reading allows us while briefly recapping the story to point out interesting or crucial places in the text and to explore their meaning in the wider context of the whole story. CHAPTER 1 THE BIOGRAPHY OF SHIRLEY JACKSON Shirley Jackson American novelist and short story writer according to her “Biographical Material” she wrote about herself: “I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can give only a bare chronological outline which contains, naturally, no pertinent facts. I was born in San Francisco in 1919 and spent most of my early life in California. I was married in 1940 to Stanley Edgar Hyman, critic and humanist, and we live in Vermont, in a quiet rural community with fine scenery and comfortably far away from city life. Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. The children are Laurence, Joanne, Sarah, and Carry; my books include three novels, The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, and a collection of short stories, The Lottery. Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children. My books have almost all been published in England, and I have published short stories and miscellaneous prose in many magazines in this country and abroad. A number of the stories have been included in anthologies and performed on television and radio” (“Biographical Material”, Hall 105). Here I would like to present a more detailed biography of Shirley Jackson therefore when analysing her short stories we can be more attentive to what has influenced this author’s writing. Mrs. Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco December 14th 1916 to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson. Two years after Shirley was born, her family moved from San Francisco to Burlingame, California, about thirty miles away. "According to her mother, Shirley began to compose verse almost as soon as she could write it" (Friedman, 18). In 1931 she entered Burlingame High School she wrote poetry and stories, played in the school orchestra, and attended movies regularly. In “All I Can Remember” Shirley wrote about the age when she was sixteen and about how she started writing and her family’s first responses to it: “I read them the entire manuscript [a mystery story], and when I had finished, the conversation went approximately like this: BROTHER: Whaddyou call that? MOTHER: It’s very nice, dear. FATHER: Very nice, very nice. (to my mother) You call the man about the furnace? BROTHER: Only thing is, you ought to get all those people killed. (raucous laughter) Mother: Shirley, in all that time upstairs I hope you remembered to make your bed. [...] I decided never to write another mystery story never, as a matter of fact, to write anything ever again. I had already decide finally that I was never going to be married and certainly would never have children” (Just an Ordinary Day, xiv). We all know that she fortunately she did not keep her rash teenage promise and managed to overcome the indifference of her family and continued writing. In 1936 she suffered a period of mental depression but still managed to write a thousand words a day. “For the next year Shirley worked night and day on her writing. In doing so she established work habits, which she maintained for the rest of her life” (Reagan, Online). In 1937, she enrolled into Syracuse University intending to be a writer she where changed her major from journalism to English. At this university she published her fiction in "The Syracusan", a campus humour magazine of which she was the fiction editor. She graduated from the Syracuse University in 1940 with a B.A in English Literature and immediately after graduation she married Stanley Edgar Hyman whom she met at the university. In 1941 Mrs. Jackson worked for and advertising agency while living in New York. In 1941 Shirley Jackson published her first story “My life with RH Macy” in New Republic in 1941, and by 1943 she had become a fairly regular contributor to the New Yorker publishing “After You, My Dear Alphonse” and about 12 other stories. In 1945 they moved to Vermont where Mr. Hyman gets a teaching job while his wife carried on writing and looking after their children. 1948 was the year when Shirley Jackson achieved her most famous achievement: She published her first novel The Road Through the Wall (which was set in California), and then a short story entitled “The Lottery”. The latter was of more importance in Shirley Jackson’s career. "The Lottery" was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of the New Yorker and it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received"(Friedman, 63): hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by "bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse." (Hall, 128) As Shirley Jackson herself reflects in her essay “Biography of a Story” upon this response: “It had never occurred to me [...] that they [readers] would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the tree-hundred-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly tome, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: ’Dad and I did no care at all for your story in The New Yorker,’ she wrote sternly; ‘it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don’t you write something to cheer people up’”(Hall, 127). The same year the short stories “Charles” and “Fame ” came out as the first of many autobiographical stories. The story “Fame”, is typically autobiographical because the narrator is Shirley Jackson herself and it takes place just before the distribution of her first novel The Road Through the Wall. With irony she shows how the local newspaper is not interested in her novel but wants to know what is happening in their family. After Jackson’s a distressing telephone call with the editor - where she tried to tell her something about new book - on the last page in the column “North Village Notes” appears this announcement: “Mrs. Stanley Hyman has move into the old Thatcher place on Prospect Street. She and her family are visiting Mr. And Mrs. Farrarstraus of New York City this week”(Just an Ordinary day, 431). It is quite ironical that Jackson’s reason for the New York visit was her publication day that no one is interested in. This story illustrates the fact that Jackson did not take her fame seriously and how she considered herself to be an ‘ordinary’ housewife - detached from her fame. In 1949 the Hymans moved to Connecticut where they settled for the rest of their lives. The same year the author published a collection of short stories The Lottery, or with another title The Adventures of James Harris. Two years later her second novel, Hangsaman was ready for publication. It was dedicated to her children. “Critics, a Time magazine staffer and the writer of ‘The Yale Review’, regarded this book as one of the outstanding books of the year“ (Friedman, 29). This was another big success. Then “During the 1950s, while her children were growing up, Jackson published at least forty-four short stories, six articles; two book-length family chronicles; one children’s non-fiction book; and four novels” (Reagan, Online). In 1953 Life Among the Savages fist of two family chronicles is published incorporating several autobiographical including stories such as “Charles” and “The Third Baby’s the Easiest” into a continuous narrative. A year latter The Bird’s Nest a novel about a split personality comes out and receives very good reviews. "Both Hangsaman and The Bird’s Nest are indications of her keen interest in the workings of the mind, and it may have been during this period that she herself first suffered moments of anxiety that became more intense as the years progressed” (Oppenheimer, 60). In 1956 Mrs. Jackson first appeared at the Suffield Writers’ conference. In the same year she also wrote a non-fiction book for teenagers called The Witchcraft in Salem Village. Her husband writes about her witchcraft: “She is an authority on witchcraft and magic, and has a remarkable private library of works in English on the subject, and is perhaps the only contemporary writer who is a practicing amateur witch, specializing in small-scale black magic and fortune-telling with a Tarot deck” (Hall, 104) Next year she published the second family chronicle, Rising Demons, including some family stories. During 1958 she wrote the children’s one-act play "The Bad Children" and a novel called The Sundial dedicated to her agent Bernice Baumgarten. In 1959 a ghost story dedicated to Jackson’s English teacher at Syracuse University The Haunting of Hill House is printed. This novel is a great success and receives excellent reviews. The story “Louisa, Please...” wins the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1961. During these years Jackson’s physical condition worsens she gains weight and she starts suffering asthma and arthritis in the tips of her fingers. What is worse she began to experience attacks of anxiety (Reagan, Online). "Always a nervous and rather tense person, she was now under the care of a psychiatrist. But even during the worst periods, she never stopped working; she used her typewriter as therapy to write pages and pages of anything she pleased to unburden herself of depression into which she sank" (Friedman, 36). In 1962 Shirley finishes after three years the novel We Have Always Live in a Castle and it becomes one of the Time magazine “Ten Best Novels” of the year. But it is also this year that Jackson seeks the help of psychotherapist because of her mental depression. In the year 1965 Mrs. Jackson is working on the novel called Come Along With Me, which critics agree would have probably been her best book. She is selected to receive Arents Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Achievement, Highest honour at Syracuse University, but does not attend the ceremony. During the summer she briefly visits Flannery O’Connor’s Mother in Georgia. "Later, in 1965, daily living was now becoming more bearable for Jackson. Her anxieties were disappearing and her sessions with the psychiatrist were tapering off. The sad fact was that, though the mind was well again, the body was not. On the afternoon of August 8, 1965, Shirley Jackson went upstairs to take her usual nap. However, this time, Jackson did not awake" (Friedman, 40). After Jackson death her and published husband The Magic of Shirley Jackson. This was a collection of 11 stories from The Lottery together with The Bird’s Nest, Life among the Savages and Raising Demons. In 1968 Mr. Hyman edits Come Along with Me: Part of a Novel, Sixteen Stories, and Three Lectures. Most of Jackson's manuscripts are in the Library of Congress. Just an Ordinary day is a collection of unpublished and uncollected short stories, which Shirley Jackson’s children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart edited in 1996 after a box of her manuscripts was found in a barn. In their introduction they reveal: “Several years ago, a carton of cobwebbed files discovered in a Vermont barn more then a quarter century after our mother’s death arrived without notice”(Just an Ordinary day, ix). This collection of short stories was again well received by the critics. Shirley Jackson did not like giving biographical information about herself. The “Biographical Material” that she wrote about her life she ends with this comment: “I like cats and dogs and children and books. I wish I didn’t have to write this” (Hall, 106). CHAPTER 2 SELECTED SHORT FICTION 1. Introduction Shirley Jackson has produced a large number of short stories, which focus on the delicate balance of the human psyche that is violated and produces loneliness, desperation or/and fear. The protagonists who are affected in this way stop to possess logical judgment and are not able to distinguish between the real world and the imagined one. Typical are middle-aged protagonists whose greatest vulnerability is attacked and in consequence they more or less loose control over their lives. All of the protagonists in this section dream of better life but they need a savoir a man who would get it for them. For this chapter I have chosen four stories: “The Daemon Lover”, “Elizabeth”, “Pillar of salt” and “The Tooth”. In three of them: “The Daemon Lover”, “Elizabeth”, and “The Tooth” the man who the main protagonists follow is Jim Harris (in the story “The Tooth” his name is only Jim). This of course is no coincidence even The Lottery and Other Short Stories were once republished with the title The Adventures of James Harris. The character of James Harris is taken from the Child Ballad number 243 from the Francis J. collection, whose name is “House Carpenter” but it is also known as James Harris, “The Daemon Lover”. Jackson included the end of this ballad in the epilogue of The Lottery and Other Short Stories. The ballad tells a story of a carpenter’s wife who voluntarily leaves her family and boards a ship with her lover. This naturally leads to her doom. After four weeks of sailing the ship sinks in the English version and in the Canadian she commits suicide and a curse is put on the sailor for stealing the carpenter’s wife. The British version, which is the one Jackson mentions, ends with a bit of a different moral, after the ship sinks come these two verses: “What hills, what hills are those, my love That are so bright and free Those are the hill of Heaven, my love But not for you and me What hills, what hills, are those, my love That are so dark and low Those are the hills of Hell, my love Where you and I must go” (Child Ballad no. 243 ). And so the carpenter’s wife and James Harris the seducer go to hell. The plot of the ballad corresponds with some of Jackson’s stories. Although the character of James Harris in the Jackson’s stories is presented as a saviour for the unhappy woman lost in their worlds. The stories do not end in the so much wished “lived happily ever after” vein but their ends are rather opened and so they may lead even to hell. We do not know much about the character James Harris only that he was a writer. His descriptions varied which led Donald Barr to the opinion that James Harris “gives a false unity to the book and confuses the meaning of individual stories”(4). It is obvious that the character of James Harris is not consistent but here Hall in his book Shirley Jackson a Study of the Short Fiction comes to the idea that: “The diversity of the description, however, may be credited to the devil’s own shape-shifting nature, as well as to Jackson’s fascination with role playing and complex personalities”(5). With the perspective of James Harris as the incarnated devil we must view his character in Jackson’s stories. The examination of few representative stories reveals a pattern of hopelessness that shows Jackson’s cynical view of the world. Her fictional world, which includes happiness often, comes at the cost of mental decline or it is quickly chased away by the grave realization of the actual existence. 2. “The Daemon Lover ” The prime example is the tale “The Daemon Lover” and it is a warning on the certain disappointment of careless love. After meeting our heroin, which doesn’t have a name, in her plain one room apartment, we are quickly taken in to the story. We become witnesses of the heroin’s rising panic as she begins to realise that James Harris, her recently acquired boyfriend, is not going to come for their wedding, planned only a week before. We as readers watch the heroin of “Daemon lover” as she gets up after a sleepless night. At this point Hall claims that: “The ending of Jackson’s story is foreshadowed in her opening description of the unnamed protagonist:” (Hall, 12) “She had not slept well; from one-thirty, when Jamie left and she went lingeringly to bed, until seven, when she at last allowed herself to get up and make coffee, she had slept fitfully, stirring awake to open her eyes and look into the half-darkness remembering over and over, sleeping again into a feverish dream”(“The Daemon Lover”, 9). Here it obvious that our protagonist is thrown of balance, the delicate balance of her mental state which is violated by a totally unexpected stranger. This is quite typical for Jackson’s stories as it was indicated in the introduction and we will see this feature latter on. Then our heroin dresses in expectation of her lover and thinks about her dilemma which is the choice between a print dress that is “too young” (10) for her 34 years and a blue silk dress. At first she chooses the print dress because it is more exciting and it would be new to Jimmy but wearing this dress now is a bit “rushing the season”(11) and then she thinks: “This is my wedding day, I can dress as I please”(11).
|
