Still, they taste a bit of blood

For headstrong women who know their own desires, growing up in conventional society sometimes feels like inhabiting a haunted house. At first, there is so much promise, mysterious and tantalizing. As you pull open that heavy wooden door with the gargoyle knocker, you feel flattered by its intimidating proportions—you are necessary and important, maybe for the first time ever. But soon you catch fleeting glimpses of dark spirits who whisper in douche-bro baritones that you don’t belong and never will. You develop a recurring suspicion that you’re merely a pawn in some elaborate game, that even if you’re brave you can never be a real player. The floor shifts under your feet, the walls shake, you awake at midnight to heavy breathing. SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT is scrawled across the wall in blood. You tell your story the next morning, but no one believes you. Did you imagine the whole thing? Is some unearthly force trying to make you feel weak and lost? Or are you just losing your mind?

This kind of suspenseful badgering, with its malevolent and condescending patriarchal undertones, pervades Shirley Jackson’s work. In the novels and many of the stories she wrote in the middle of the 20th century, the polite banter of seemingly innocent common folk develops into outright mockery, subterfuge, or even violence. When confronted by an unexpectedly hostile world, Jackson’s female protagonists experience a climactic rush of bafflement and betrayal that inevitably spills over into a more private realm of second-guessing, self-doubt, and paranoia. Jackson relished untangling the process by which women lose themselves.

Death and Life

the fans: but what if there was no sexual abuse

You're one of us You're a part of the night You're one of us Say goodbye to the light