GUSTAVO VARGAS COHEN SHIRLEY JACKSON’S LEGACY: A CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE LITERARY RECEPTION PORTO ALEGRE 2012 2 UNIVERIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL INSTITUTO DE LETRAS PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS LEM – LITERATURAS DE LÍNGUA INGLESA LINHA DE PESQUISA: LITERATURA, IMAGINÁRIO E HISTÓRIA SHIRLEY JACKSON’S LEGACY: A CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE LITERARY RECEPTION GUSTAVO VARGAS COHEN ORIENTADORA: PROFa. DRa. SANDRA SIRANGELO MAGGIO Tese de doutoramento submetida ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul como requisito parcial para a obtenção do grau de Doutor em Letras. PORTO ALEGRE Julho de 2012 3 4 To my parents, Jacob e Zoé who taught me independence in place of ordered conformity 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Much gratitude to my advisor, Sandra Sirangelo Maggio, whose support has been and always will be essential, and to the members of the evaluation committee, Claúdio Vescia Zanini, Márcia Ivana de Lima e Silva and Helenita Rosa Franco. Your advice and assistance are deeply appreciated. To CAPES, for funding this enterprise. 6 ―Shirley Jackson was a very scary lady, indeed‖ -Denise Mathisse Hill, The Daily ―…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 there... I delight in what I fear. -Shirley Jackson, from an unsent letter to poet Howard Nemerov. ―She was a rebellious young woman who was a disappointment to her mother, and later in life was a reclusive slightly mad genius, plagued by vices of excess, such as smoking and drinking, ala Edgar Allan Poe, which led to her premature death. When you read her stories, you can't help but believe she is either a genius, or a madwoman. I believe she was both.‖ -biographer Judy oppenheimer, Private Demons 7 RESUMO A invisibilidade de Shirley Jackson e seu status de escritora esquecida são investigados nesta tese. Para tanto, reclamações da escassez de críticas avaliativas de seus trabalhos são estudadas no intuito de determinar o quanto estes rótulos danosos realmente refletem seu reconhecimento historicamente pela crítica especializada/acadêmica, pela mídia e pelo público leitor. Exemplos de atividade cultural intensa relativa à sua literatura são oferecidos como contraponto para expor as incongruências que contaminam grande parte de sua historiografia literária. O escopo deste estudo exploratório perfaz um amplo corpo de críticas a respeito dos trabalhos de Jackson desde os anos 1940 até o presente. Dentre as metas desta tese estão a investigação destas inconsistências e a oferta de insights em relação aos fatores que potencialmente as causam. Além disso, uma crítica ainda não realizada é proposta, uma que coloca a autora no centro do empreendimento analítico; em outras palavras, que usa o próprio material ficcional de Jackson como base teórica contra qual examinar sua ficção. Uma seleção de quatro contos compõe o corpus desta pesquisa, são eles ―The Intoxicated‖, ―The Daemon Lover‖, ―Like Mother Used to Make‖ e ―The Villager‖, todos publicados na seminal coleção The Lottery and Other Stories de 1948. Discussões acerca das conexões intertextuais que une os quatro contos são conduzidas com o objetivo de explicitar o quão penetrantes e influentes estes elementos temáticos comuns podem ser, especialmente no que toca os temas que formam o que aqui é chamado de Shirley Jackson Lore. Palavras-chave: Shirley Jackson; The Lottery and Other Stories; Historiografia literária; Recepção literária; Crítica literária. 8 ABSTRACT Shirley Jackson‘s alleged invisibility and status as a forgotten writer are investigated in this thesis. Thus, complaints of a shortage of critical assessment regarding her works were studied in order to determine how these detrimental labels actually reflect her recognition historically by specialized/academic critics, media and reading public. Instances of lively artistic and cultural activity stemming from her literature are offered as counterpoints that expose much of the incongruence that contaminates her literary historiography. The scope of this exploratory study spans a wide-ranging body of criticism about Jackson‘s works from the 1940s to the present. Among the aims of this thesis are the investigation of these disputable inconsistencies and the offering of insights into the potential factors that have caused them. Moreover, it tentatively proposes the critique that does not yet exist, that which places the very author at the center of the critical-source enterprise; in other words, one that uses Jackson‘s own fictional material as scientific-support and background against which to examine her fiction. A selection of four short stories compose the corpus of this research, namely ―The Intoxicated‖, ―The Daemon Lover‖, ―Like Mother Used to Make‖ and ―The Villager‖, all published in the cardinal 1948 short fiction collection The Lottery and Other Stories. Discussions of the restricted intertextual connections that binds the four stories are conducted so as to make conspicuous how pervasive and influential the essential common thematic elements spread all over her oeuvre can be, especially in what concerns the themes that form what is here called the Shirley Jackson Lore. Keywords: Shirley Jackson; The Lottery and Other Stories; Literary historiography; Literary reception; literary criticism. 9 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..……...10 1. NOTES ON SHIRLEY JACKSON’S HAUNTED UNIVERSE………….......…....16 1.1. A Woman and a Writer: The Dual Role……………………………………..……..16 1.2. A Forgotten Writer? ……………………….………….……………….……..……..26 1.3. Not That Forgotten: The Testament of the Present …………….…………..…..…28 2. THE CRITICAL HERITAGE…………………………….…..……...………...…….38 2.1. Scant Critical Assessment………………………………………….…….…..………39 2.2. The Unexpected Phenomenon…………………….………………………..………..65 2.3. A Pattern Emerges: The Search for Thematic Unity………………….……...........76 3. THE UNTAPPED LEGACY………..…………………………………..………..…...87 3.1. “The Intoxicated” ………….…..…………..…………………………...…….……....88 3.2. “The Daemon Lover”………………………………………………...………...….…93 3.3. “Like Mother Used to Make”…………………………………………..…….……..106 3.4. “The Villager”………………………………………………………….….............…118 CONCLUSION ………………...................……………………………………….….….127 REFERENCES……………….…………….…………………………..………….……..132 APPENDICES ………………….………….……………………………………..…...….139 ANNEXES……………………………………………………………………..………….158 10 INTRODUCTION On July 14th 2010, senior writer for Salon magazine Laura Miller entitled an article of hers with an instigating question: ―Is Shirley Jackson a great American writer?‖ – though this is certainly too complex a question for a simple answer, it is also a good starting point for an investigation. Miller subtitled her text: ―the author of The Lottery is still not getting the respect she deserves‖ (MILLER, 2010, p. 1), which kindles the debate concerning the current status of Jackson‘s literary reception as a whole. Upon studying the life and works of American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) one may notice the presence of seemingly ambiguous aspects to the literary history that regards her career at large. One of these inconsistencies, involving mainly her fiction and its critique, is most noteworthy. This inconsistency is formed by: a) the complaint of a shortage of critical assessment concerning her works – which should supposedly reflect her historically bland recognition by the public, the Academy and the media, and should consequently feed her historically alleged status as a forsaken writer; and, conversely, b) today, there seems to exist a lively artistic and cultural activity stemming from and surrounding her literature – including multimedia adaptations1 of her works (to television, theater, cinema, the internet, etc.) as well as intense use of her literature in many areas within the academic world in fields as diverse as Economy and the Health Sciences and including, naturally, the humanities2. This particular incongruity constitutes one of the major (yet ambiguous) features that holistically describe Jackson‘s reception throughout history (counting from the 1940s to the present). In other words, that same forgotten writer whom Miller mentions and whom few seem to give credit to is still, in a sense, very much alive and well regarded as well as present in the minds and lives of many. 1 For examples, see Section 1.3, page 29. 2 For examples, see Section 1.3, page 29-30. 11 As far as the contents of her literary reception per se are concerned, some critics praise her works as notable classics which are well worthy of being admitted to the celebrated literary Canon, others censure them, either by questioning their quality as canonical or by declaring them conspicuous and superficial. That, in itself, is not an inconsistency, since writers are always inevitably objects of disputable critical input regarding their work, nevertheless, Jackson‘s fitful reception is deservingly worthy of investigation. The aims of this thesis are, thus, to investigate these historically disputable inconsistencies, to offer insight into the potential factors that have caused them, as well as to suggest what critics might have missed in the body of critical appraisal that may account for part of the negative sides of the aforementioned flickering reception. These aims invite a theoretical approach that acknowledges both historical and textual contexts. The text-oriented attitude applied in the present investigation implied the provision, in varying amounts, of close readings of