My paper aims to read Shirley Jackson’s classical modern gothic as the writer’s critique to the rearrangement of gender roles in postwar America social reality where women were restricted to a private domestic sphere for the sake of the veterans who wanted their jobs, feminine services and a sweet home fantasy back. In her autobiographical essays which are collected under the title of, Shirley Jackson often depicts how her career as a writer failed to be registered as a significant social identity while the one as a homemaker is forced onto her regardless of her own will. Eleanor Vance, the deranged protagonist of in many ways represents the female anger and anxiety which arose from the aspiration to be someone else than a homemaker and the horror of insecurity which women had to face when they managed to free themselves from the domestic boundaries. Focusing on the psychic turbulence of Eleanor Vance who wishes to run away from the suffocation of the conventional home but feels overwhelming fear about the social insecurity which an unmarried woman had to endure, this paper will analyze the way Jackson dramatizes the violence of the postwar American society on females to satisfy its nostalgic dream for "home, sweet home".

Authors:
Jung Eun Seo, Korea National University of Transportation, South Korea

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Jung Eun Seo is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Korea National University of Transportation in South Korea

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