Shirley Jackson Impact On Society
Shirley Jackson's stories and books arose out of the complex, sad, and joyous magic of her life. Often her stories were based on her own family or strange little customary romances, well suited for the magazines she wrote for. Jackson's restrictive upbringing created a struggle within her to both fulfill and deny the ways of her mother to whom appearance and social acceptance was all important. She was an odd, plain girl rejecting the gracious country-club lifestyle of her family, preferring to keep to herself for most of her life.
Born on the 14th of December, 1916 in San Francisco, CA, Shirley Jackson struggled throughout her life with a conflict between her individuality and society's requirement that she adhere to its norms and standards. She saw a second level of human nature, an inner identity lurking beneath the one which outwardly conforms within society's expectations. She did not feel completely comfortable in the society around her, preferring to sit in her room and write poetry rather than play with the other children in her neighborhood (Oppenheimer 16) …show more content…
Her family moved to Rochester, NY in 1933.
Jackson graduated with a BA in English from Syracuse University and in 1940 she married Stanley Edgar Hyman. They moved to a secluded shack in New Hampshire where both focused on their writing. In 1945 they moved to North Bennington, Vermont where she taught at Bennington College. The mother of four children, her life was as much baking cupcakes as making up stories. She was a loving and "good" but quirky mother, although not a tidy one, often sending the kids to school in dirty clothes and uncombed
hair.
Shirley Jackson was a mom who cooked, washed, kept the hectic schedule of Little League and music lessons, yet wrote in an age when moms didn't work "regular jobs," let alone do something as odd as write. She was a woman who lived in a small town in Vermont, but was always an outsider.
Shirley Jackson was a large messy woman given to wearing red and purple, wore no makeup and pulled her stringy hair back with rubber bands. She and her husband argued, smoked, drank to excess, and took prescription drugs uppers and downers on a daily basis. Jackson's physical and mental ailments finally got to a point where she was unable to go into the town of Bennington for three months. She sought help through psychotherapy and eventually found the strength to fight her fears, and after a lot of struggling, she survived to begin the novel, "Come Along With Me". It reflected the newer, lighter world that Jackson had created as a result of her psychotherapy. The story's main character, Angela Motorman, was the same age as Shirley Jackson (44) and her size (heavy). The character dabbled in the supernatural with her psychic ability, an ability Jackson always claimed and others acknowledged. The story moves along with energy, with and triumphal air, but was never finished. As her mental health improved, her physical health deteriorated.
In the short stories, "The Lottery", and "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" (which was one of her most brilliant works), it is obvious how she liked to write about fear. In a letter to poet Howard Nemerov, she wrote:
"I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from these. I delight in what I fear. It is not about tow women, it is about my being afraid and afraid to say so, so much afraid that a name in a book can turn me inside out".
By the time "Castle" was finished, she had lost her delight in her fears and succumbed to them, retreating from the world.
Jackson's collection includes the variety of stories showing the light domestic pieces and lighter romances along with her dark fiction. But Jackson has always been noted for her truly terrifying tales. She instilled fear by taking the rational and inserting the irrational., by having the unfamiliar intrude into the familiar. Her best known work, "The Lottery," still disturbs us deeply even though it has been required reading in American schools for at least two generations. Shirley Jackson also wrote two books with a fictionalized version of her marriage and the experience of raising four children. They were titled "Life Among The Savages" and "Raising Demons". These stories pioneered the "True-to-Life Funny Housewife Stories".
"In her art as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents .She was unique." Newsweek
The Lottery is a memorable and terrifying masterpiece. It is a strange story, one that creates a level of fear yet one finds it hard to accept what seems like just plain stupidity of the characters. The setting for the story takes place in a small village portrayed by Jackson to be one of peacefulness. It begins happily on a clear and sunny day, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (Jackson 83-84). It begins as a perfect day, with little boys running around "building a great pile of stones in one corner of the square" (Jackson 84). She describes the children coming and breaking into "boisterous play" (Jackson 84). The setting creates an image in the mind of a typical town on a normal summer day. It is morning in the early summer. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a day is like in this small town.
Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin are the village's most important men. With a successful coal business, Mr. Summers can be viewed as the leader of this closely knit community where men dominate the women. The women are apparently satisfied with their position in the social ladder. Jackson describes the women in town as "exchanging bits of gossip" (Jackson 84) which is common, thus creating the mood for the reader of small-town-residents on a normal summer morning.
Except for Mr. and Mrs. Adam's words to Old Man Warner, there is no notion of ending the lottery. It is an ingrained ritual, and the villagers regard industrious labor to be magical protection against being chosen, as indicated by the Old Man Warner, never selected during his 77 years. Summers, whose opinion takes precedence, doesn't feel the need to oppose the lottery, and the villagers are all inclined to continue the tradition.
On a June morning in the town square, amidst laughter and gossip, families gather for the traditional drawing from the black box, which holds little slips of paper. The introduction of the black box is the obvious key turning point in the story. It symbolizes a wrongful act to the villagers, changing the mood from peaceful to threatening. Tessie Hutchinson is a housewife deprived of her freedom, feeling forced to submit to a husband who gains his power over her by virtue of his place in the work place. Tessie, however, rebels against her role, and such rebellion is just what the orderly functioning of her society cannot stand. Tessie explains to Mr. Summers that she arrived late to the lottery because she was doing her dishes and forgot what day it was. Tessie Hutchinson assents to the idea of the lottery until she receives a slip of paper with a black mark on it. She screams, "It isn't fair." Tessie's sudden change of heart upon having her own name chosen serves to highlight the hypocrisy of a society in which violence is accepted until it becomes personal. The villagers then stone her to death as a ritual sacrifice despite her protests about the unfairness of the drawing.
The impact of this unexpected ending is intensified by Shirley Jackson's detached narrative style, the civility with which the cruelty is carried out by the villagers, and the serene setting in which the story takes place. The villagers have made the bloody ritual a deception for their selfishness of wanting a scapegoat. Jackson shows that children, who do not understand the difference between right and wrong, have not yet been taught with society's values and cannot express the cruelty of human nature.
The Lottery was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. Readers reacted as if a bomb had exploded in their living rooms. The New Yorker received hundreds of letters and telephone calls from readers expressing disgust, consternation, and curiosity, some even canceling their subscriptions. People were criticizing it and characterizing it by "bewilderment, speculation, old-fashioned abuse."("A Reading" 1). In the July 22, 1948 issue of the Francisco Chronicle, Jackson broke down and said the following in response to persistent queries from her readers of her intentions: "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 shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives." (A Reading" 1). She definitely shocked her readers with her response. She received letters concerning "The Lottery" until the time of her death. Most critics view the story as a modern-day parable or fable which addressed a variety of themes, including her dark side of human nature, the subjugation of women, the danger of ritualized behavior, and the potential for cruelty when the individual submits to the tyranny of the status quo. But more than anything it is just a story written by a gifted and contradictory woman who understood how caring people could also throw stones.
The often volatile lifestyle and diverse personality of Shirley Jackson contributed to her early death, dying of a heart at a young age of 48. She was often described as the New England witch and referred to as a sorcerer because sorcery is the process of manipulating a person's beliefs. After her death, her husband released a volume of her work titled "Come Along With Me". Some of her major works are: 1949 The Lottery, 1953 Life Among the Savages, 1957 Raising Demons, 1959 The Haunting of Hill House, 1962 We Have Always Lived In The Castle. She had won awards: 1959 National Book Award nomination for "We Have Always Lived In The Castle", 1966 Mystery Writers of American Edgar Award for Best Short Story "The Possibility of Evil" Saturday Evening Post 12/18/65, and1961 Edgar Allen Poe Award "Louisia, Please".
Born on the 14th of December, 1916 in San Francisco, CA, Shirley Jackson struggled throughout her life with a conflict between her individuality and society's requirement that she adhere to its norms and standards. She saw a second level of human nature, an inner identity lurking beneath the one which outwardly conforms within society's expectations. She did not feel completely comfortable in the society around her, preferring to sit in her room and write poetry rather than play with the other children in her neighborhood (Oppenheimer 16) …show more content…
Her family moved to Rochester, NY in 1933.
Jackson graduated with a BA in English from Syracuse University and in 1940 she married Stanley Edgar Hyman. They moved to a secluded shack in New Hampshire where both focused on their writing. In 1945 they moved to North Bennington, Vermont where she taught at Bennington College. The mother of four children, her life was as much baking cupcakes as making up stories. She was a loving and "good" but quirky mother, although not a tidy one, often sending the kids to school in dirty clothes and uncombed
hair.
Shirley Jackson was a mom who cooked, washed, kept the hectic schedule of Little League and music lessons, yet wrote in an age when moms didn't work "regular jobs," let alone do something as odd as write. She was a woman who lived in a small town in Vermont, but was always an outsider.
Shirley Jackson was a large messy woman given to wearing red and purple, wore no makeup and pulled her stringy hair back with rubber bands. She and her husband argued, smoked, drank to excess, and took prescription drugs uppers and downers on a daily basis. Jackson's physical and mental ailments finally got to a point where she was unable to go into the town of Bennington for three months. She sought help through psychotherapy and eventually found the strength to fight her fears, and after a lot of struggling, she survived to begin the novel, "Come Along With Me". It reflected the newer, lighter world that Jackson had created as a result of her psychotherapy. The story's main character, Angela Motorman, was the same age as Shirley Jackson (44) and her size (heavy). The character dabbled in the supernatural with her psychic ability, an ability Jackson always claimed and others acknowledged. The story moves along with energy, with and triumphal air, but was never finished. As her mental health improved, her physical health deteriorated.
In the short stories, "The Lottery", and "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" (which was one of her most brilliant works), it is obvious how she liked to write about fear. In a letter to poet Howard Nemerov, she wrote:
"I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from these. I delight in what I fear. It is not about tow women, it is about my being afraid and afraid to say so, so much afraid that a name in a book can turn me inside out".
By the time "Castle" was finished, she had lost her delight in her fears and succumbed to them, retreating from the world.
Jackson's collection includes the variety of stories showing the light domestic pieces and lighter romances along with her dark fiction. But Jackson has always been noted for her truly terrifying tales. She instilled fear by taking the rational and inserting the irrational., by having the unfamiliar intrude into the familiar. Her best known work, "The Lottery," still disturbs us deeply even though it has been required reading in American schools for at least two generations. Shirley Jackson also wrote two books with a fictionalized version of her marriage and the experience of raising four children. They were titled "Life Among The Savages" and "Raising Demons". These stories pioneered the "True-to-Life Funny Housewife Stories".
"In her art as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents .She was unique." Newsweek
The Lottery is a memorable and terrifying masterpiece. It is a strange story, one that creates a level of fear yet one finds it hard to accept what seems like just plain stupidity of the characters. The setting for the story takes place in a small village portrayed by Jackson to be one of peacefulness. It begins happily on a clear and sunny day, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (Jackson 83-84). It begins as a perfect day, with little boys running around "building a great pile of stones in one corner of the square" (Jackson 84). She describes the children coming and breaking into "boisterous play" (Jackson 84). The setting creates an image in the mind of a typical town on a normal summer day. It is morning in the early summer. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a day is like in this small town.
Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin are the village's most important men. With a successful coal business, Mr. Summers can be viewed as the leader of this closely knit community where men dominate the women. The women are apparently satisfied with their position in the social ladder. Jackson describes the women in town as "exchanging bits of gossip" (Jackson 84) which is common, thus creating the mood for the reader of small-town-residents on a normal summer morning.
Except for Mr. and Mrs. Adam's words to Old Man Warner, there is no notion of ending the lottery. It is an ingrained ritual, and the villagers regard industrious labor to be magical protection against being chosen, as indicated by the Old Man Warner, never selected during his 77 years. Summers, whose opinion takes precedence, doesn't feel the need to oppose the lottery, and the villagers are all inclined to continue the tradition.
On a June morning in the town square, amidst laughter and gossip, families gather for the traditional drawing from the black box, which holds little slips of paper. The introduction of the black box is the obvious key turning point in the story. It symbolizes a wrongful act to the villagers, changing the mood from peaceful to threatening. Tessie Hutchinson is a housewife deprived of her freedom, feeling forced to submit to a husband who gains his power over her by virtue of his place in the work place. Tessie, however, rebels against her role, and such rebellion is just what the orderly functioning of her society cannot stand. Tessie explains to Mr. Summers that she arrived late to the lottery because she was doing her dishes and forgot what day it was. Tessie Hutchinson assents to the idea of the lottery until she receives a slip of paper with a black mark on it. She screams, "It isn't fair." Tessie's sudden change of heart upon having her own name chosen serves to highlight the hypocrisy of a society in which violence is accepted until it becomes personal. The villagers then stone her to death as a ritual sacrifice despite her protests about the unfairness of the drawing.
The impact of this unexpected ending is intensified by Shirley Jackson's detached narrative style, the civility with which the cruelty is carried out by the villagers, and the serene setting in which the story takes place. The villagers have made the bloody ritual a deception for their selfishness of wanting a scapegoat. Jackson shows that children, who do not understand the difference between right and wrong, have not yet been taught with society's values and cannot express the cruelty of human nature.
The Lottery was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. Readers reacted as if a bomb had exploded in their living rooms. The New Yorker received hundreds of letters and telephone calls from readers expressing disgust, consternation, and curiosity, some even canceling their subscriptions. People were criticizing it and characterizing it by "bewilderment, speculation, old-fashioned abuse."("A Reading" 1). In the July 22, 1948 issue of the Francisco Chronicle, Jackson broke down and said the following in response to persistent queries from her readers of her intentions: "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 shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives." (A Reading" 1). She definitely shocked her readers with her response. She received letters concerning "The Lottery" until the time of her death. Most critics view the story as a modern-day parable or fable which addressed a variety of themes, including her dark side of human nature, the subjugation of women, the danger of ritualized behavior, and the potential for cruelty when the individual submits to the tyranny of the status quo. But more than anything it is just a story written by a gifted and contradictory woman who understood how caring people could also throw stones.
The often volatile lifestyle and diverse personality of Shirley Jackson contributed to her early death, dying of a heart at a young age of 48. She was often described as the New England witch and referred to as a sorcerer because sorcery is the process of manipulating a person's beliefs. After her death, her husband released a volume of her work titled "Come Along With Me". Some of her major works are: 1949 The Lottery, 1953 Life Among the Savages, 1957 Raising Demons, 1959 The Haunting of Hill House, 1962 We Have Always Lived In The Castle. She had won awards: 1959 National Book Award nomination for "We Have Always Lived In The Castle", 1966 Mystery Writers of American Edgar Award for Best Short Story "The Possibility of Evil" Saturday Evening Post 12/18/65, and1961 Edgar Allen Poe Award "Louisia, Please".