"Frightened by a Word": Shirley Jackson and the Lesbian Gothic

Abstract

By having no last name, Tony is thereby somewhat outside, not merely of the gender system but also the society. [...]her configuration in society presents possibilities outside of gender constructions. Theo has no last name: "I'm Theodora. [...]Theo is open and concrete, not veiled and ghostly.\n When hailed by interpellation during her early subject formation, Eleanor misrecognised her place in ideology, and the ghostly voice of the disembodied child reminds her of that fact. [...]the archaeology of the subject in The Haunting of Hill House recalls the archaeology of the subject in The Bird's Nest, the protagonist of which is a multiple personality who has misheard the call multiple times.

Colin Haines, "Frightened by a Word": Shirley Jackson and the Lesbian Gothic

(Uppsala: Uppsala UP, 2007)

Haines has a big task in store. He aims not only to theorise deeply but also to read closely three of Shirley Jackson's novels, Hangsaman (1952), The Haunting of Hill House (1959), and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1963). He theorises them primarily in terms of the queer theory of Judith Butler and the psychoanalytic feminism of Julia Kristeva, especially their arguments regarding the abject. As Haines shows, Butler emphasises the abject's origins and concreteness. The subject rejects what originates in the body, then transvalues it into the not-self, then denies its origins, and finally projects it onto the other. By contrast, Kristeva emphasises not the concrete origins in the subject, but the abstract resolution - the subject's need to find an object that deserves to get the garbage. Haines also sagaciously theorises Sigmund Freud, Claude Uevi-Strauss, and Uouis Althusser.

Two critics central to his method are Terry Castle and Pauline Palmer. Drawing on Palmer, Haines addresses the sign "lesbian" as not only representation but also configuration. In other words, he elucidates the word both as an image in representation, and as a position in its discursive context - as a note in the social arrangement and literary text. For example, an important aspect of textual configuration he emphasises is focalization. If a character under the sign of "lesbian" (implicitly or explicitly) is the narrator, or even just a third-person narrator's point-of-view character, then the signifier "lesbian" tends to move from the abject to the subject, thus enabling the reader to sympathise and identify with the abject. He elucidates the extent to which social discourse as a whole and literary discourse in particular have represented and configured lesbianism tangentially, obliquely. Discourse had to reject lesbianism in order to admit it. So traditionally, the image was usually masked - veiled not simply in gossamer but in double crepe. In literature, the taboo image escaped the prison house of language most often in the taboo form of Gothic. It was in Gothic that the vaporous "lesbian" condensed into the cloudy figure of a ghost.

In the Uacanian terms Haines uses, social and literary representations of "lesbian" as abject have tended to endorse the heterosexual Symbolic of the Uaw of the Father. But Haines goes beyond Castle and Palmer by demonstrating that this interplay of representation and configuration is undecidable because resignifying "lesbian" does not necessarily give that sign a positive valence. Neither the attempt to valorise "lesbian" nor the attempt to parody it is necessarily subversive. For example, a lesbian character as authorial delegate can endorse the Uaw. So can a parodie lesbian who attempts to flaunt the Uaw by exaggerating the emblems of the Uaw's abject with such costumes as the Amazon, the gym teacher, the diesel dyke, or the bar dyke. The reason, Haines argues, is that it is neither the intent of the author's nor the logic of the text's conventions, but the audience that determines if there is a subversive effect. Resisting totalisation and closure, Haines does not try to resolve arguments over of intention, implied readers, reading communities, and pragmatism. He does not try to settle the issue by choosing one camp and then talking up his pick. The pit of contention is where he leaves it. With the sign "lesbian" theorised in terms of Butler and Kristeva on the abject, he then discusses their theorising about horror and terror as he will apply them to the Gothic. Simply put, horror both precedes and causes terror. Horror is the threatening undecidabilty that terror tries to dispel. And it tries to dispel the horror by making it abject, inverting it from here and now and I, to there and then and it.

In his reading of Hangsaman, Haines considers the extent to which this novel destabilises heterosexual literary conventions. He points out that as an image of representation, Tony is apparitional, ghostly, derealised, and in that regard, not much of a transgression against heterosexual discourse. Similarly, Mrs. Waite's attempt to resist Mr. Waite infantilizes Natalie by putting her into the pre-Oedipal position in such a way that Natalie is as derealised as Tony. On the other hand, Hcmgsamcm does disturb the ideology of heterosexuality in two ways. In a tour de force recuperation of Levi Strauss, Haines discusses how gendering in kinship systems facilitates economic circulation. The exchange of women into their husbands' families arises in conjunction with economic exchange. By having no last name, Tony is thereby somewhat outside, not merely of the gender system but also the society. Thus her configuration in society presents possibilities outside of gender constructions. In addition, when Natalie abjects Tony, both the representation and configuration undermine gender constructions. On the surface, Natalie is making the lesbian abject. But under the veil of the apparitional, Natalie is rejecting the Father insofar as Tony is the last link in the metonymical chain stretching back to Natalie's molestation at the hands of Mr. Waite's friend. In addition, this development in the representational image is the plot's turning point, and as such the implicit abjecting of the Father holds an important place in the novel's configuration.

Tony's dual function as both underwriting the Law of the Father as well as erasing it is possible because the feminised, the secondary, can sometimes police discourse in service of the Law of the Father. As Haines points out, the female college students perform their interpellation through surveillance and interrogation of the new initiates. Haines reminds us that for Althusser, the machines most responsible for interpellation are the school and the family.

A similar erasure of the patronymic surname occurs in The Haunting of Hill House. Theo has no last name: "I'm Theodora. Just Theodora." Moreover, Theo is open and concrete, not veiled and ghostly. Haines discerns that the ghostly abject is the pre-Oedipal child that Eleanor was before her interpellation into the service of the Father, which culminated when she became her mother's servant. With the discernment of a detective working a cold case that has been gone over many times by previous investigators, Haines discovers that when Eleanor says, "I will not hurt a child," the child implicitly says that Eleanor has already hurt her. Explaining his reading in terms of Butler's revision of Althusser, Haines notes that the call to interpellation is sometimes answered imperfectly. When hailed by interpellation during her early subject formation, Eleanor misrecognised her place in ideology, and the ghostly voice of the disembodied child reminds her of that fact. Thus the archaeology of the subject in The Haunting of Hill House recalls the archaeology of the subject in The Bird's Nest, the protagonist of which is a multiple personality who has misheard the call multiple times.

Haines finds that while We Have Always Lived in the Castle is similarly conflicted, it subverts constructions of lesbianism even more than does The Haunting of Hill House. We Have Always Lived in the Castle not only represents lesbianism as a concrete image, but also configures the lesbian as both protagonist and first-person narrator. Merricat is not just the butt of irony but also creates it, for example when she offers sugar to the ladies who have come for tea. In addition, she tricks the townsfolk by maintaining the fiction that it was Constance who did the poisoning. Correcting Palmer's implication that a first-person narrator is the authorial delegate, Haines points out that a reader's identification with any narrator is partial and conflicted. With Merricat as the focaliser, the reader's position is much closer to the position of the abject. While this proximity will engage some readers, it will horrify others. In addition, We Have Always Lived in the Castle satirises the heterosexual plot resolution with its configuration of two women as the heirs to the Father's estate. The novel further satirises the law of the Father by making comic fools of Uncle Julian and Cousin Charles.

Haines offers a perspicacious application of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" to both sisters. If melancholia is failed mourning - the inability to accept and adjust to death or other loss - then the melancholic idealises the lost object (be it person, belief, fetishized commodity, and so on). Compounding the problem, the idealised lost object reproaches the melancholic, because the melancholic cannot live up to the lost object as perfect example. Ironically, the melancholic's self-accusations are introjections of the depressive's denials of what the lost object really was. Haines considers the possibility that Merricat is not melancholic because it is not her parents that she wants to preserve, but rather the just deserts they withheld from her. By killing them, she takes over their agency and sets the situation aright. By using their clothing, household utensils, and personal effects in her magic rituals, she makes their power work for her - she makes happen what they prevented: her coronation as princess of all that she surveyed. She acts the way they should have. In so doing, she makes them atone for mistreating her, then absolves them, and then rehabilitates them.

Constructive criticism? Well, the only thing that is definitely a fault is the lack of an index. Other than that, only quibbles. Haines has cast his net deeply and come up with an impressive catch.

DARRYL HATTENHAUER