Shirley Jackson: The Life And Biography Of Shirley Jackson

Born in San Francisco, in the year of 1916, Shirley Jackson had an inauspicious entrance to the world, despite the chilling nature of her writing. She moved two years after she was born to Burlingame, California, where she resided for most of her childhood. When she was 17, she began to attend the University of Rochester, she only spent a year there, as after a time of questioning her friend’s loyalty and long periods of unhappiness, she left the school for a year, practicing writing almost religiously, with a minimum of one thousand words every day. In 1937, she entered Syracuse University, at first pursuing a degree in journalism before transferring to the English department.
She published her first story “Janice” in 1937 as she attended Syracuse University, and after winning a poetry contest, she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. She spent several years editing the campus humor magazine, “The Syracusan.” Eventually, they eliminated her position, so with the English Club’s sponsorship, she and her future husband Stanley planned and started a magazine of their own, “The Spectre” and despite the English department’s disapproval, a single teacher, Leonard Brown, kept them afloat. She later credited Brown with being her mentor, and dedicated the novel “The Haunting of Hill House” to him. The school still showed its disapproval, and did not grant her the Arents Pioneer Award, their greatest literary award, to her until twenty-five years after her death, when it was awarded in absentia, due to her obvious inability to attend.
In 1940, after their graduation, Shirley married Stanley, and she survived by working odd jobs, writing whenever she had time. Her first novel, “The Road Through The Wall” was published in 1948, in ...

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...ts being almost the most bloodthirsty character in the story, something I missed entirely is how she calls on others to be included in her family so she has a less chance to be killed. He goes so far as to state something that I now agree with wholeheartedly, “her last cries are those of a hypocrite hoisted by her own petard.” She is not the good guy, or any kind of Christ figure, she is simply a figure showing how cold and heartless the town is. They do their best to avoid being targeted, at any cost.
The symbolism in the story is quite astounding, the sheer amount of information Jackson crammed into the little story is worthy of a medal in its own right. The Christian symbolism noted primarily by Martine, and the analysis of the characters and their actions by Tew both were well put together. They expanded on some areas I hit and found ones I did not even notice.