Overview

Shirley Jackson and Domesticity takes on American horror writer Shirley Jackson’s domestic narratives – those fictionalized in her novels and short stories as well as the ones captured in her memoirs – to explore the extraordinary and often supernatural ways domestic practices and the ecology of the home influence Jackson’s storytelling. Examining various areas of homemaking – child-rearing and reproduction, housekeeping, architecture and spatiality, the housewife mythos – through the theoretical frameworks of gothic, queer, gender, supernatural, humor, and architectural studies, this collection contextualizes Jackson’s archive in a Cold War framework and assesses the impact of the work of a writer seeking to question the status quo of her time and culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Prof Jill E. Anderson (Tennessee State University, USA) ,  Prof Melanie R. Anderson (Delta State University, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic USA
Weight:   0.367kg
ISBN:  

9781501370014

ISBN 10:   1501370014
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   30 December 2021
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Melanie R. Anderson (Delta State University, USA) 1. Hideous Doughnuts and Haunted Housewives: Gothic Undercurrents in Shirley Jackson's Domestic Humor Bernice M. Murphy (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) 2. Enemies Foreign and Domestic: Shirley Jackson’s New Yorker Stories Ashley Lawson (West Virginia Wesleyan College, USA) 3. “You Didn’t Look Like You Belonged in This House”: Shirley Jackson’s Fragile Domesticities Michael Dalpe, Jr. (College of New Jersey, USA) 4. “Sharp Points Closing in on Her Throat”: The Domestic Gothic in Shirley Jackson’s Short Fiction L.N. Rosales (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA) 5. Endless House, Interminable Dream: Shirley Jackson’s Domestic Architecture and the Matrophobic Gothic Luke Reid (Dawson College, Canada) 6. Casting a Literary Spell: The Domestic Witchcraft of Shirley Jackson Alissa Burger (Culver-Stockton College, USA) 7. Homemaking for the Apocalypse: Queer Failures and Bunker Mentality in The Sundial Jill E. Anderson (Tennessee State University, USA) 8. Domestic Apocalypse in Shirley Jackson's The Sundial Christiane E. Farnan (Siena College, USA) 9. “I May Go Mad, but At Least I Look Like a Lady”: The Insanity of True Womanhood in Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial Julie Baker (Independent Scholar, USA) 10. Insisting on the Moon: Shirley Jackson and the Queer Future Emily Banks (Emory University, USA) 11. Shirley Jackson’s Merricat Story: Conjugal Narcissism in We Have Always Lived in the Castle Richard Pascal (Australian National University, Australia) 12. My House Is My Castle: On the Mutually Enabling Persistence of Familial Devotion and Defunct Economies in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle Allison Douglass (Graduate Center, CUNY, USA) 13. Flipping Hill House: The Netflix Revision of Shirley Jackson's Landmark Novel Jessica McCort (Point Park University, USA) Index

Reviews

Shirley Jackson and Domesticity makes compelling arguments about role of gender and domesticity within the work of one of the 20th century's most indelible writers. A thoroughly entertaining and insightful collection, this book leaves me eager to revisit and more deeply explore Jackson's stories and essays. * Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) and The Cabin at the End of the World (2018) * In these thoughtful essays, Shirley Jackson's uncanny narratives emerge as canny reflections on mid-century social concerns. Thus, her 'domestic gothic' includes nuclear threat, suburban dislocation, fraught gender dynamics, and other postwar anxieties shadowing the home and the woman who is so often trapped inside. * Joan Wylie Hall, Senior Lecturer of English, University of Mississippi, USA, and author of Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction (1993) * Shirley Jackson and Domesticity is a welcome and much-needed contribution to the critical conversation on Shirley Jackson's fiction and the cultural and political milieu in which she was writing. This wide-ranging collection is particularly laudable for the close attention it gives to Jackson's frequently overlooked short fiction, her quasi-autobiographical 'family chronicles' (often dismissed as overly optimistic and lacking depth), and The Sundial, a delightfully catty response to Cold War-era apocalyptic fears. By highlighting the continuities as well as the disjunctions with Jackson's wide-ranging oeuvre, the volume undertakes the important work of ensuring that 'The Lottery' and her most famous novels are placed side by side with her more neglected works, and that the latter are given the attention and rigorous analysis that they have long deserved. * Dara Downey, Visiting Lecturer/Researcher in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and author of American Women's Ghost Stories in the Gilded Age (2014) *

Author Information

Jill E. Anderson is Associate Professor in English at Tennessee State University, USA. Melanie R. Anderson is Assistant Professor of English at Delta State University, USA. She is the author of Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison (2013) and co-editor of The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film: Spectral Identities (2013) and Shirley Jackson, Influences and Confluences (2016).

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