Anderson, Jill E. (Hrsg.): Shirley Jackson and Domesticity

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.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.