Shirley Jackson's haunted homes
Shirley Jackson's haunted homes
themes to read for in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" and "The Haunting of Hill House" this october
Hello, dear book club friends.
This week, if you’re following the fall syllabus, we are embarking upon two of Shirley Jackson’s best-known novels, and the ones you’re probably reading all about, all over Substack, this autumn: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was Jackson’s final novel, published in 1962 (she passed away in 1965) and The Haunting of Hill House, which was published just a few years earlier, in 1959.
I first read Shirley Jackson, as perhaps many of you did, in high school when I was assigned to read “The Lottery,” the same short story that later inspired Suzanne Collins’ brilliant series, The Hunger Games. If that’s all you’ve read of Jackson’s work, then you’re in for a sheer delight as you embark on one or both of the novels I’ve selected for our October read-a-long.
Today, I’m sharing a little bit about my history with each one, along with a few themes you may want to watch or track as you read. As usual, I am being very careful with my thematic recommendations not to reveal any big spoilers by giving away key signals or imagery to watch for; of course, as you read, I’m sure you’ll pick up on all kinds of motifs and patterns. I hope you’ll share them with the group in the comments!
Next week, I’ll share some in-process thoughts on my reading experience of the two novels, which I am attempting to read at the same time. I’m switching between them every few days, so I can see what’s happening in each one, and how they might inform or deepen one another through a parallel reading. (We’ll see how it goes. I’m eager to see if one of them captures my attention or heart more than the other…!)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
I first read this novel in my MA program in a literature course on “The Uncanny,” which was a combined class for masters students in literature and those in the MFA program. We’d been attuning ourselves to how the uncanny is crafted in stories all semester long, and when we got to Jackson’s novel, I remember feeling completely baffled by Jackson’s talent.
How on earth can she craft such a fantastic mystery, and keep us so enthralled yet in the dark, for the entire story? You start to know what’s coming, but then you feel like you didn’t know it was coming, at the same time. You think you know what’s happening, and then it happens and you’re suddenly not sure. Something about Jackson’s prose invites you to second-guess yourself. To get lost in the addled mindset of a young woman who seems to have no idea that she is addled.
Themes to watch for:
The home/where they live: This is a classic haunted house story—so watch for anything to do with the house.
Just like we watched for in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” watch for how the house, the space, the architecture, the furniture, the atmosphere of “home” gets described. Notice also the perspective(s) from which we learn key details about the home.
Familial relationships: This is another common theme with Gilman’s story. Watch for the family relationships in the story. How are they described? What do they feel like? Where do you find elements like trust and care? Where do you find things like disdain or wariness?
Mystery: This is a mystery novel, at its heart. So watch for the familiar moves or tropes of your favorite mystery novels (think: Agatha Christie).
Common mystery tropes include: remote or abandoned locations, locked rooms or secret spaces, red herrings, weapons, letters and diaries, unreliable narrators, memories and amnesia or competing perspectives of the same event, and isolation.
The Haunting of Hill House
I have never actually finished reading this novel the whole way through. Gasp! I began it a few years ago, in the autumn, and let me be so honest: I got scared. I put it down one night, and picked up Coraline and found my solace in that little terror of a novella instead.
My husband adores this novel and reads it every Halloween. We also always watch the film adaptation in the days leading up to Halloween, which is a fun and scary watch but really doesn’t seem to capture the spirit of what Jackson is doing in the novel (at least, from what I can tell so far). It does have Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor, Liam Neeson and Owen Wilson, though. So. Big applause for that 90s dream cast!
I am more than excited to finally read it in full over the next couple of weeks.
Themes to watch for:
The Gothic: this novel is a classic of Gothic horror fiction. The Gothic erupted onto the literary scene in 1764 when a guy named Horace Walpole published a horrifying story, The Castle of Otranto and combined two beloved genres: the medieval romance and the modern novel. (I read it in college for a course on the origins of the novel and my mind was blown.)
Frankenstein, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, pretty much anything by Edgar Allen Poe, Northanger Abbey, The Shining: all of these are “Gothic” fiction, as is Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
So keep your eyes keen for common Gothic tropes, which include:
Death: actual dead bodies, the threat of death or annihilation, or more broadly the death of certain ideals, dreams, or ways of living
Romance: usually very passionate and very tragic (think: Rebecca)
Damsels in distress: a classic motif in Gothic fiction (think Jane Eyre) is the lonely, wandering, lost woman who is weak or otherwise endangered and needs someone (usually a big strong sexy man on horseback or in a gypsy costume IYKYK) to come save her
Haunted houses: in Gothic fiction, houses and settings become entire characters unto themselves (think “The Yellow Wall-Paper”). Watch for moments when Hill House itself is personified or made human, and notice the effect that has on you and on the characters in the story
The supernatural: Real, imagined, or somewhere in-between, there are always haunts, monsters, and meanies in the pages of a Gothic novel
Dreams or nightmares are a classic trope of the Gothic
Feeling extreme emotions: from fear and dread to the sublime and sexy — you might call it all a bit melodramatic, in the most intoxicating way
Fortunes, or other magical elements, like generational curses (think: Practical Magic), that foresee the future or heavily foreshadow the plot
False realities: Watch for friction between what is real and what is not real; what is possible and what’s impossible; what is happening and what is not happening. Gothic fiction teases this line more than perhaps any other genre.
Jackson’s “graceful economy” of language
“The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable,” writes A.M. Homes in her introduction to a collection of Jackson’s short stories. “Jackson writes with a stunning simplicity; there is a graceful economy to her prose as she charts the smallest of movements….[She] works with precision; she sees things as if she’s zoomed in and has got life under a magnifying glass. And it’s not just any glass, but one with a curved owlish lens, so that perhaps we see and know a little more than usual” (emphasis mine).
Last year, I shared my close reading of each of the first lines of these two magnificent novels. I have removed the paywall and brought the piece back out from behind the paywall (yay!) so everyone can access the essay and follow my analysis there.
In the essay, I provide additional frameworks or considerations you may want to include in your close reading of the novel(s), as well as more insights into Jackson’s biography and related readings to consider for your to-be-read list, should you crave more of her words.
My framework includes key questions about:
Setting - I’m curious about the positioning of the text. Do we know where we are? Do we have a clear sense of place, either in physical reality or in our sense of time?
Voice - Whose voice, and therefore stance and perspective, are we reading? What do we learn about our teller from the opening paragraph?
Promises - What expectations, or promises, are made by this first paragraph? Do I have a sense of what will happen next?
Here’s an excerpt from the piece, to whet your whistle. A link to continue reading is included below:
To closely read the first paragraphs of Jackson’s spooky classics, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is to tune into a masterful frequency, where the vibrations and textures of every single word—every syllable—work together to create a fantastic microcosm of the world we’re entering.
(I’m reminded of the stellar little miniature town, tediously built and tended to by Adam Maitland in Beetlejuice, the place where the titular haunt lives and rules over his tiny, artificial world. That’s another story about another haunted house, in which the lovely irony is that the living haunt the dead.)
In Jackson’s novels, we’re treated to adroit first paragraphs that work a bit like Adam’s miniature town does in Beetlejuice: they establish a general map of what’s to come. And yet, like every good ghost story, they also introduce that impossible, untouchable mystery that convinces you to keep exploring, even as your gut tells you it’s time to run like hell.
***
You can also access my close reading of Jackson’s first lines here:
I love both of these books - I just re-listened to Hill House on audio (read by David Warner) and it gave me chills, as it does every single time I return to it. It never loses its dark charm.
I'm interested to see what you make of The Haunting of Hill House, Haley.
I haven't read 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' - I have that pleasure ahead of me!
I am also baffled by Jackson's talent. She is both disarmingly charming and coolly unsettling. She puts things off balance but just slightly - like setting you off walking on uneven legs - the tilt is almost unnoticeable but abruptly you find you've walked into unfamiliar surrounds - all this time you were veering off to one side without knowing it!