Blowing Up the Nuclear Family: Shirley Jackson’s Queer Girls in Postwar US Culture
ABSTRACT: This paper intends to analyze the representation of girlhood as a liminal space in three novels by Shirley Jackson: «The Bird’s Nest» (1954), «The Haunting of Hill House» (1959) and «We Have Always Lived in the Castle» (1962). Bearing in mind how nuclear fears and national identity are con...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) |
| Repositorio: | Docta Complutense |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/93678 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/93678 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 821.111(73) Jackson, Shirley7bir.07 821.111(73) Jackson, Shirley7hau.07 821.111(73) Jackson, Shirley7weh.07 Shirley Jackson Postwar US fiction Nuclear power Gender studies Girlhood studies Ficción estadounidense de la posguerra Energía nuclear Estudios de género Adolescencia femenina Filología inglesa Literatura Prosa Escritores 6202 Teoría, Análisis y Crítica Literarias 5505.10 Filología |
| Sumario: | ABSTRACT: This paper intends to analyze the representation of girlhood as a liminal space in three novels by Shirley Jackson: «The Bird’s Nest» (1954), «The Haunting of Hill House» (1959) and «We Have Always Lived in the Castle» (1962). Bearing in mind how nuclear fears and national identity are configured around the ideal of a safe domestic space in US postwar culture, the paper explores cultural anxieties about teenage girls who refuse to conform to normative femininity, following Teresa de Lauretis’s conception of women’s coming-of-age as “consenting to femininity” (1984). I will argue that Jackson criticizes the rigid possibilities for women at this time, and I will show how her representations of deviant femininity refuse and subvert the discourse of the nuclear family and, therefore, of the nation. |
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