13 Words

After years of planning to get a collection of Shirley Jackson’s work I finally gave in last year.  I got the Library of America collection. It’s about 800 pages containing the short story collection The Lottery; or, The Adventures of James Harris, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and other stories.  I am an unabashed slow reader.  I can, somehow, be at once transfixed and unmotivated.  I leisurely thumb through the pages at a pedestrian rate, taking in the words as they fill not my head, but my person.  It can take me 3 months to read 200 pages.  But then I hit my stride and knock as much out in a day.  I’m still reading the book.  Next up on my reading list?  The ambitious tome Joseph and His Brothers by the influential German writer Thomas Mann.  

Anyway, I just started the Haunting of Hill house, the second section.  The first section, The Lottery, is a collection of stories, many of which share a character in Mr. James Harris.  The second story was his first appearance and holds the subject of this essay.  Many of Jackson’s stories are considered to be “slice of life”.  Not much actually happens in terms of events.  She mostly tells all too familiar tales about trivial and petty day-to-day interactions, usually between housewives.  Hypocrisy and dark truth are made blatant.  You can relate to them because you take part in tit-for-tat micro aggressive behavior daily.  You just don’t realize it because it’s normal.  When Jackson spells it out it’s like, “Wow!  I do that too!”  It’s been 80 years from the time of her writings and nothing changes.  It’s human nature in any era.

And so, the heroin in the second story, The Daemon Lover “worked quickly to avoid thinking consciously of why she was changing the sheets.”  Wait, what?  That’s what I thought too.  Those were the lone words underlined in my used copy of the book.  But why?  Let me backtrack and contradict the description I just gave in the last half of the previous paragraph.  This isn’t a slice-of-life story.  Along with the titular story The Lottery, this is a gloomy fantasy where plenty actually takes place.  Unlike the collection’s namesake however, it isn’t presented as normal.  A bride-to-be is in desperate search for her newly missing future groom.  And nobody seems to know him except her.  And does she even really know him?  I won’t give a full summary of the story, it’s 15 pages.  Buy the book or go here and read it real quick. This story brings light to another theme of the collection.  The expectations society places on women, and how severe paternal, nay, patriarchal constraints bind them.  However one, feminist or not, may see the role of women in today’s United States, it is important to remember that these stories are 40’s and 50’s Americana.  I will admit having difficulty relating at times to a post-war woman, being a male during the time of the Pussyhat, #timesup, and me too movement.  But Jackson clearly illustrates her frustrations and experience.  You just have to empathasize to the blight of mid-1900’s women.

Why were the words underlined?  What do they mean?  The motivation of the book’s previous owner is undoubtedly a mystery.   I can only infer reasons based on my own imagination.  Anything is merely speculation.  So, what does that partial passage mean?  Like many of the stories, this one takes place in a city.  The home of the protagonist (an unnamed woman in her 30’s) is a small apartment, also a common setting.  Many of our main characters sleep on a studio bed, or sofa bed.  This all gives an extra sense of intimacy and middle-class life. 

This is a huge day for our protagonist.  She is busy cleaning her apartment on the day of her wedding.  Presumably Mr. Harris, who lives elsewhere, will move into her place after their nuptials.  Everything has to be perfect.  So much pressure!  In fact, she realized with “sudden horror” that she hadn’t even changed those damn sheets on her studio bed!  But why did she want to “avoid thinking consciously” about why she was doing that?  I mean she was about to be validated.  As made clear in the story, a single childless woman of her age in that time is next to useless.  An outcast, a tragedy.  Rejoice!  She is about to have value thanks to Mr. Harris!  But she was stuck in her chains.  Even on her wedding day she had to clean house.  Or is this line important because of what follows?  Which is nothing.  Mr. Harris never shows up.  Did she know he wouldn’t come? 

Was he imaginary?  Was she delusional?  The author never makes it indisputable either way.  It is open to the reader to solve this riddle.  Was Mr. Harris even freaking real?

So, did she change the sheets mindlessly to not confront her mania?  Or it could just be flowery prose from Shirley Jackson.  That last sentence is a cop out.  We must assume every word has a purpose.  She changed the sheets because all had to be perfect.  It was her big day and everything in her world will revolve around her husband.  She must please Mr. Harris.  She was a nervous wreck and was having a manic episode.  Obviously, she knew why she changed the sheets.  She needed to calm down.  To me at least, that’s the point of that underlined section.  Her entire life depended on making everything that she could control impeccable.  Yet she had to step back.  Giving off an aura of nerves could send a signal of doubt to her groom.  Hard as it may be, she had to control her emotions (even today women are labeled “emotional”).

Nothing else.  800 pages.  About a quarter million words in the book.  13 underlined. My theory on what those 13 words mean is not enough alone to explain why.  Those words are in no way a central point to the story, let alone the collection, let alone the book.  Maybe you can twist it to be “a condemnation on contemporary women not confronting their problems”.  But that’s a leap.  Years ago I underlined every phrase I thought interesting in my copy of A People’s History of the United States of America.  Probably 90% of that book was underlined.  This is the inverse of that.  Only it makes less sense.

Maybe the underliner has some sort of personal reason for relating to that section.  Perhaps she (I’m assuming “she” based on the likely audience for Shirley Jackson) zones out during routines, just drones along lost in thought trying to distract herself from life.  She finds refuge in reading.  The pages are her escape.

Dichotomy. The protagonist was losing her identity.  We know currently she is "less than".  Following marriage she will be nearly complete (motherhood finishes the circle), but she will be "more than".  At the same time, her identity, as damaged as it is, is all she has.  Upgrade or no upgrade, changing who you are is still a big change, sure to cause stress.  Can the culprit with the pen relate to said dilemma?  She is anxious but does what needs to be done and does what she needs to to face it.

A reasonable person may conclude she ran out of ink and lacked the funds to purchase a new pen.  She spent her last $30 on her Library of America copy of Shirley Jackson’s life work.  As illustrated by the fact she sold her book.  Okay, maybe that conclusion is not so reasonable.

Life happens.  Or rather, death happens.  The reader made it 1/3 down on page 11 of the book and her eyes closed never to reopen.  This book was sold to a book store by her grieving family, none so sentimental as to want to hold onto the last thoughts of their family matriarch.  That’s dark, even for Shirley Jackson.

Whoever the reader was, she decided she couldn’t stomach more than two or three stories where “not much happens.”  She had looked forward to stories like The Lottery and was disappointed quickly (like those that bought a Filter album in the 90’s, a record filled with songs that sound nothing like the hit single).  She sold it in disgust.

Perhaps she was assigned the task of reading a short story and finding a theme. Years later with school well behind her she moved out and didn’t have space for old books. She sold it, with just 13 words underlined.  And just like that, the only clues for yours truly to decipher in a wild goose chase.  But just like Jackson’s writings, and as evidenced in my Darth Vader and the Silver Spoon post, I am intrigued to an extent by the mundane in the sense that it’s more relatable than super hero stories or tales of the supernatural.

A concrete reason will always elude me.  There are so many more theories I could postulate, it’s certainly a fun exercise.  To figure out the motivation behind such an arbitrary act.  Countless scenarios, angles, and variations are possible.  Nothing to go on.  All you have are interpretations, prejudices, personal experience and a lust for a good story.  Hopefully one where stuff happens.