Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Most Americans, especially if they went to high school, know Shirley Jackson for her story "The Lottery," one of the most famous short stories in 20th century American literature. But did you also know she wrote eight novels (including one of the best ghost novels ever written, The Haunting of Hill House), and wrote popular domestic comedies about her four children, a precursor to Erma Bombeck? She also had written in her biography on a book jacket that she was a practicing witch.

Jackson, whose centennial was last year, receives a scintillating biography, subtitled A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. Based on her correspondence, Franklin has pieced together a full portrait of a writer who remains underrated, perhaps because she was not glamorous and died at the age of 48.

"Jackson’s brand of literary suspense is part of a vibrant and distinguished tradition that can be traced back to the
American Gothic work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James. Her unique contribution to this genre is her primary focus on women’s lives," writes Franklin. Indeed, almost all of her work is seen from a female point of view, and are about women who feel like outsiders, as she did. She was born in California, but moved to Rochester, New York, as a teenager. She was awkward and overweight. After a short stint at the University of Rochester, she transferred to Syracuse University, where her writing talent started to blossom. She also met Stanley Hyman.

"Stanley closed the magazine demanding to know who Shirley Jackson was. He had decided, he said, to marry her." Hyman was a Jew from Brooklyn, and would go on to be a well-known critic and academic. He would also be far less than a perfect husband. He had frequent affairs. "Stanley had already made it clear that her recriminations were useless. The more she expressed her jealousy, the
less he paid attention." Yet, "she already believed that she could only love a man whom she found superior to her in every way."

Despite Hyman's successes, he would get lost in her shadow, as she sold many stories during the 1940s, mostly to The New Yorker (Hyman would be an occasional contributor for years). "The Lottery" would appear in that periodical in 1948, and would earn more mail that any other story they ran, most of it hateful. The story is about a ritual performed in a bucolic town square that has someone being stoned to death to please God and make sure the crops come in. People had never read anything like it.

Jackson would go on to write eight novels. Her last two are the most famous, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was published in 1962. After that she struggled with agoraphobia and could not write, but had begun writing a new novel when she died of a heart attack.

Jackson and Hyman were part of the literati, despite living most of their married lives in North Bennington, Vermont, where Hyman was a professor. They were good friends with Richard Wright and Howard Nemerov, and enjoyed parties, eating and drinking. Jackson had four children, though she loathed housework. This led to two books, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, that were comic essays about her family. Many people couldn't reconcile the writer who explored the dark parts of the soul with the light touch of her domestic books. She also wrote a book, fittingly, on the Salem witch trials, which earned her quite a bit of money. Her view of witchcraft, as it is today generally accepted, is that it represents female power and the male fear of it.

Franklin describes Jackson as someone besieged, either by Hyman or her mother, who after Jackson receive a good review in Time wrote to her how bad she looked in the photo. Jackson wrote a scorching retort, but never sent it. "Even at this point in her career, with six published novels and two popular memoirs, Jackson still felt she had to prove her worth to her parents. She never missed an opportunity to emphasize how successful she had become, reporting back to them on just about every lecture, reading, and conference."

This is a terrific biography, even if you haven't read any of Jackson's works. It is almost a dual biography of Hyman, who gets his own chapter, but it would be hard to separate them. I must say, though, that I still don't know who Jackson really was, emotionally speaking. I don't think this is a fault of Franklin, but that despite her letters and unfinished material, Jackson was a hard nut to crack. I suppose, given the mysterious nature of her writing, that that is appropriate.