Joyce Carol Oates on Shirley Jackson: “She seems almost literally to have had two personalities,” the “poetic madness” of heroine in “The Bird’s Nest”

“Jackson can be very funny in her “housewife” mode—see her domestic

sketches: “Charles” or “The Third Baby’s the Easiest,” or “The Night We All Had Grippe.” She later revised these and included them in her bestselling memoir of family life. In her darker mode—in stories like “The Daemon Lover,” “The Possibility of Evil,” or “The Summer People”—her humor is not so very evident. She seems almost literally to have had two personalities—in one quite large body—the one aiming for a popular readership of primarily women by way of the women’s magazines—the other the “Gothic” writer who perhaps wrote to please her own criteria, and did not aim for any particular magazine market” (1).

“…a ‘poetic’ madness like the madness of the young heroine of Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest, whose subdued personality harbors several selves…” (2).

1. Joyce Carol Oates. The Library of America interviews Joyce Carol Oates about Shirley Jackson. https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/LOA_Oates_on_Jackson.pdf

2. Joyce Carol Oates. “The Witchcraft of Shirley Jackson.” The New York Review of Books, October 8, 2009. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/10/08/the-witchcraft-of-shirley-jackson/