Shirley Jackson: celebrating 75 years of taut, ambiguous, disturbing stories

In June 1948, readers of The New Yorker magazine were confronted by one of the most disturbing short stories of the 20th century. The Lottery, written by a young writer named Shirley Jackson opens with a description of a deceptively idyllic rural community.

It is a “clear and sunny” morning in June, and villagers cheerfully gather in their local square for the annual drawing of lots from which no one can be excluded. The story climaxes with an unforgettable act of violence which is all the more shocking because it is merely a matter of tradition.

The story was an immediate sensation, but the experience was not an entirely positive one for Jackson. As she recounted in her essay Biography of a Story (1960), she received hundreds of letters from the public, many angry, others puzzled, and some from readers who actually wanted to see one of these (entirely fictional) lotteries unfold themselves. Jackson knew even then that she would forever be linked with The Lottery.

The tale’s impact was such that it has arguably overshadowed the legacy of Jackson’s remarkable debut collection, The Lottery and Other Stories (1949), which celebrates 75 years this year.

The Lottery and Other Stories

First published in April 1949, The Lottery and Other Stories remains a powerful reminder of Jackson’s distinctive literary vision. The stories also dramatise themes and anxieties found in many of her later works.

Although later associated with New England, Jackson was born in Northern California. She lived there until she was 16, when her wealthy father moved the family to Rochester, New York. She soon set her sights on becoming a professional writer and helped to establish a literary magazine called Spectre while still at Syracuse University (where she met her husband, the academic and critic Stanley Edgar Hyman).

On the surface, Jackson’s materially comfortable upbringing seems at odds with her often disturbing fiction. However, biographers have suggested that she had a strained relationship with her mother (domineering maternal figures often appear in her work) and that Jackson felt like she did not fit in.

Even in her earliest surviving writings one can see evidence of an original and perceptive creative intelligence. As The Lottery and Other Stories suggests, she was able to infuse seemingly everyday interactions with elements of the macabre and the fantastic.

Unhappy, frustrated and dissatisfied women often figure in Jackson’s stories. There is an allied preoccupation with feelings of jealously, loneliness and domestic entrapment. This anticipates ideas more famously explored in her novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962).

Jackson’s ability to depict disturbingly frank children and teenagers is well displayed in The Witch (about an encounter between a small boy and a gleefully morbid old man) and in the collection’s subtly apocalyptic opening story, The Intoxicated.

Her tonal versatility is underlined in the story Charles, based upon a humorous incident involving Jackson’s young son. It is a charming comic tale, but it also has a twist as jarring as those found in some of her more overtly Gothic works.

Another highlight is The Tooth, in which a young housewife reluctantly travels through the night to attend an urgent dental appointment in the city. A combination of exhaustion, anxiety and painkillers mean that she gradually becomes vividly detached from everyday reality.

The story underlines Jackson’s ability to immerse the reader in the mindset of an increasingly unmoored – but perhaps also increasingly liberated – protagonist. The Lottery and Other Stories also has an intriguing recurring character: a slyly updated version of the folkloric figure of the “demon lover”, here embodied in the form of a devilishly untrustworthy man in a blue suit named James Harris.

A trickster figure who appears in various guises, Harris is a dangerously alluring “strange man” in The Tooth but has perhaps most impact in the The Daemon Lover, in which he is the (never seen) fiancé who cruelly jilts his already chronically insecure bride-to-be.

The Jackson Renaissance

Following Jackson’s sudden death in 1965 at the age of only 48, it gradually became clear that despite the remarkable scope of her literary achievements – which by then encompassed six published novels, numerous stories and magazine articles, two family memoirs and several children’s books – her work was not being granted the attention it deserved.

When she was discussed, it was generally in relation only to The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, which substantially influenced the next generation of horror writers, most famously Stephen King. It remains her most frequently adapted work: there were films in 1963 and 1999 (both entitled The Haunting) and it inspired the hit 2018 Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House.

For a variety of reasons – chiefly the fact that a predominately male literary establishment didn’t know how to view an author whose defiantly authentic persona and hard to neatly categorise work both resisted conventional critical classification. Jackson was, for several decades, overlooked or granted only qualified praise.

However, over the past decade and a half, she has experienced an extraordinary revival. Jackson’s renaissance reflects the efforts of her literary estate and of her four children, who remain tireless promoters of their mother’s literary legacy. Other significant developments include Ruth Franklin’s acclaimed 2016 biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.

Her reputation has also been substantially boosted by the interest in her work expressed by contemporary authors, among them the likes of Paul Tremblay, Carmen Maria Machado and Daisy Johnson. Additionally, a new generation of academic scholars is transforming the landscape of Jackson studies: since 2016, four essay collections and a journal dedicated to her work have appeared.

A fictionalised version of Jackson also takes centre stage in the intense psychological drama, Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker in 2020.

Three quarters of a century on, The Lottery and Other Stories remains the perfect showcase for one of the 20th century’s most original, and now, most justly celebrated, authors.

Bernice M. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.