A pretty sight, I thought, a lady with a book and a blue guitar.[1]I always intended to post this piece to coincide with Halloween 2025, but last year the darkness that snaps at my heels found me running a little slower than usual—the seasons and the year have … Continue reading
I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books, looking for a minute at the soft hinted sage in the branches against the sky and waiting for an open door.
A pretty sight, I thought, a lady with a book and a blue guitar.[2]While her husband Stanley Hyman played, I don’t think Shirley ever owned a blue guitar. The blue guitar reference here is made in subtle homage to educational and feminist philosopher Maxine … Continue reading
I can’t help it when people are frightened. I always want to frighten them more.[3]These words are spoken by Merricat, Mary Katherine Blackwood, the main character in We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962, p. 39). The Blackwood family have just said goodbye to Helen Clarke and … Continue reading
Oh, cup of stars,[4]I don’t own a cup of stars, but I wish I did. The reference to the “cup of stars” comes from Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and is tied to Eleanor Vance’s … Continue reading where were you when I needed you? My dream followed me right the hell out of a small nap yesterday afternoon into a prodigious nightmare![5]This phrase is taken from a letter Shirley wrote to her husband Stanley Hyman during the Christmas vacation of 1939 (see The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 2021, p. 80.) This flippant yet poignant style … Continue reading
I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books, looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and waiting for an open door.[6]In the beginning of Shirley’s novel We have Always Lived in the Castle, readers follow the main protagonist Merricat as she reads books and returns to them library (2009, p. 3). I see myself in … Continue reading
I don’t want to, I said, but I struck him and recited the Lord’s prayer.[7]One of my favourite Shirley Jackson short stories is “What a thought” which is published in the collection Just an Ordinary Day (1997, pp. 210-213). I remember turning to read this piece because … Continue reading
Was I afraid, was this it, was it fear?
Oh, cup of stars, where were you when I needed you? My dream followed me right the hell out of a small nap yesterday afternoon into a prodigious nightmare!
But never mind, I have red shoes,[8]In The Haunting of Hill House, Eleanor’s red shoes (p. 41, 83) are a striking detail—she buys them impulsively, symbolizing her desire for freedom, sensuality, and self-expression beyond her … Continue reading and tomorrow I will wake up, and I will still be here.[9]Eleanor’s red shoes symbolise her yearning for freedom and self transformation, but the line “I will still be here” (p. 83) reveals her fear that even acts of transgression cannot truly free … Continue reading
And I will stand and watch the stomachs of those without hearts heave as though they had eaten castor beans.
Yet, was I afraid, was this it? No, I will not fear!
Today, I shall dye the mashed potatoes green.[10]There is no written account from Shirley herself of dying mashed potatoes green, but Ruth Franklin (A Rather Haunted Life, 2016, p. 178) tells us that her friend Jesse Zel Lurie spoke of witnessing … Continue reading
I’m going to get back all the books I ever lost, if I can find enough skulls.[11]Throughout the oeuvre of Shirley Jackson’s writing and writing about her, there are glimpses of a lingering fascination with skulls. While at Syracuse University in 1939, she wore a bracelet with … Continue reading
And I will stand and watch the stomachs of those without hearts heave as though they had eaten castor beans.
It would be such a perfectly bruised and purple horror story[12]The line “perfect horror story” was written by Shirley in a letter to Stanley across Christmas vacation in 1939 (The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 2021, p. 80). In this letter, Shirley shared with … Continue reading in a world that stabs as it dulls.
A pretty sight, I thought, a lady with a book and a blue guitar.
I’m going to get back all the books I ever lost, if I can find enough skulls.
A pretty sight, I thought, a lady with a book and a blue guitar.
“I have always loved to…use fear, to take it, to comprehend it, and make it work” – Shirley Jackson[13]See Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, (2016), W. W. Norton & Company, p. 7.
References
| ↑1 | I always intended to post this piece to coincide with Halloween 2025, but last year the darkness that snaps at my heels found me running a little slower than usual—the seasons and the year have already changed. “Skulls and other pretty things” is written in homage to Shirley Jackson. I love how she mixes horror with humour in ways that are both disturbing and delightful, while her words gently trace the contours of what it means to be a woman in all its light and darkness. The lines of this terzanelle are drawn from words spoken by the outcast, timid yet fiercely independent Eleanor Vance in The Haunting of Hill House; deep held desires murmured by the protective, violent, and dark Mary Katherine Blackwood in We have Always Lived in the Castle; the cruel yet disturbingly passive lines thrown along with sacrificial stones by the villagers in The Lottery; thoughts shared by Shirley in letters to family and friends; and, words of my own that slipped into the skin of hers and joined the dance macabre. There’s a touch of “Virginia Werewolf” in all of us as writers—something wild and watchful, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting for a crack in the glamour we cling to so tightly, ready to bare its teeth and speak. And so here she is, my lupine other, howling through wilderness and time, as the moon bears witness. Fear has no place here; only endless worlds alive with feeling aching to be known. |
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| ↑2 | While her husband Stanley Hyman played, I don’t think Shirley ever owned a blue guitar. The blue guitar reference here is made in subtle homage to educational and feminist philosopher Maxine Greene. Like Shirley, Maxine believed in the necessity of paying attention to the extra-ordinariness of the everyday. She insisted that we all have eyes and ears, but for some reason in the busyness of life, move through each day perceptually dead. Maxine insisted we needed to become “wide awake” to those things which catch our attention (p. 71). Riffing off Wallace Stevens poem, a blue guitar becomes one of those some things for Maxine—a surprise which opens up new ways of being in the world. |
| ↑3 | These words are spoken by Merricat, Mary Katherine Blackwood, the main character in We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962, p. 39). The Blackwood family have just said goodbye to Helen Clarke and Mrs Wright who had joined Merricat, her sister Constance and Uncle Julian for afternoon tea. During their visit, Helen Clarke and Mrs Wright press the sisters about the arsenic poisoning that killed four members of the Blackwood family, and their questions intrude on the fragile, insular world where Merricat, Constance, and Uncle Julian now live in isolation. Sensing the women’s growing discomfort, Merricat reads it as a threat to their safety and stability. Merricat’s words shows that fear is one of the few forms of power she feels she can exert, allowing her to reassert control when outsiders intrude on her protected world, and it reveals her instinctive, defensive impulse to push them away by unsettling them rather than accommodating them. I am not sure that fear is a feeling I want to evoke for readers in my own writing but I don’t think there is anything wrong with a little bit of discomfort every now and then is there? |
| ↑4 | I don’t own a cup of stars, but I wish I did. The reference to the “cup of stars” comes from Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and is tied to Eleanor Vance’s character and her longing for autonomy and authenticity. Early in the book, Eleanor recalls a childhood memory: when she was a little girl, she wanted to drink from a special cup decorated with stars. Her mother insisted she use an ordinary cup, but Eleanor silently vowed that she would never give in—that she would always demand her “cup of stars.” This becomes a symbolic moment for Eleanor, representing her desire to claim joy, individuality, and freedom rather than conform to others’ expectations. And that is a sense-ability I am desperately and radically trying to hold onto in my academic writing work. |
| ↑5 | This phrase is taken from a letter Shirley wrote to her husband Stanley Hyman during the Christmas vacation of 1939 (see The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 2021, p. 80.) This flippant yet poignant style of writing is characteristic of Shirley’s style, always finding the “extra” in the ordinary. |
| ↑6 | In the beginning of Shirley’s novel We have Always Lived in the Castle, readers follow the main protagonist Merricat as she reads books and returns to them library (2009, p. 3). I see myself in Merricat’s love of books and libraries; I have always felt that within both lies the possibility of entering stories and worlds where neither a compass nor a map could ever take you. |
| ↑7 | One of my favourite Shirley Jackson short stories is “What a thought” which is published in the collection Just an Ordinary Day (1997, pp. 210-213). I remember turning to read this piece because I was looking for a short and sharp read at lunch time—at four pages long, this particular piece of prose fit the bill. The story starts very plainly in a scene of seemingly wedded bliss, a husband and wife digesting their particularly good dinner in the lounge, until Margaret has a thought—she does not love her husband any longer. In and of itself, this thought alone would not be disturbing but it is the others that rush in behind it that make Margaret restless. The curtains cajole her to strangle him, the goldfish bowl suggests a drowning would be more expedient but, in the end, she picks up a glass ashtray as he sits in his chair reading the evening newspaper and smashes his head with it. This verse is inspired by Margaret and realisation of the inevitably of death, the circumstances that lead women to take such measures into their own hands and the fear she holds onto while simultaneously relishing the consequences. Shirley’s short story is a perfect example of the way she brings the horror that lurks below the ordinary each and every day to the surface—without warning and without apology. Margaret does not recite the Lord’s prayer, but if it were me, I think I just might—and the first thought is often the best. |
| ↑8 | In The Haunting of Hill House, Eleanor’s red shoes (p. 41, 83) are a striking detail—she buys them impulsively, symbolizing her desire for freedom, sensuality, and self-expression beyond her constrained life. They become a motif of transformation and rebellion against domestic confinement. Susan Griffin, in works like Woman and Nature, uses red shoes as a feminist symbol of erotic energy, autonomy, and the tension between desire and societal control. Susan often frames red shoes to reclaim bodily pleasure and agency. Eleanor’s red shoes represent a yearning for liberation, stepping into a new identity, but also foreshadowing danger, while Susan Griffin’s red shoes symbolise feminist reclamation of desire and embodiment. Both link to ideas of transgression, visibility, and risk—the act of wearing red shoes marks a crossing of boundaries |
| ↑9 | Eleanor’s red shoes symbolise her yearning for freedom and self transformation, but the line “I will still be here” (p. 83) reveals her fear that even acts of transgression cannot truly free her from the lifelong constraints that bind her. This tension mirrors the dual nature of the red shoe motif: a step toward a new identity shadowed by the persistent pull of duty, isolation, and internalised control. Ultimately, the phrase expresses Eleanor’s quiet recognition that despite her desire for change, she may remain psychologically and emotionally trapped. What an utterly terrifying thought; and yet, one which I am sure many women experience once, twice or maybe more than 6 or 7 times in their lives. |
| ↑10 | There is no written account from Shirley herself of dying mashed potatoes green, but Ruth Franklin (A Rather Haunted Life, 2016, p. 178) tells us that her friend Jesse Zel Lurie spoke of witnessing her using food colouring to dye mashed potatoes a hideous bright green for “the regular kind bored her.” For Shirley, mashed potatoes were a symbol of the perils, pleasures and the plainness of domesticity; the thought of changing the narrative around this staple white vegetable by dying them green tapped into the absurd and made her ordinary life as a harried housewife bearable. When my two children were young, the only wildly imaginative thing I did with mashed potato was to add it to a chocolate cake the next day! |
| ↑11 | Throughout the oeuvre of Shirley Jackson’s writing and writing about her, there are glimpses of a lingering fascination with skulls. While at Syracuse University in 1939, she wore a bracelet with miniature skull charms and at a dinner party with friends in the early 1950s, delighted in showing a human skull to one of their guests a human skull as she spoke to it and cradled it tenderly (Ruth Franklin, A Rather Haunted Life, 2016, p. 117, p. 330). In the essay, “Hex me, Daddy, eight to the bar” published in Let me Tell You (2015, pp. 199-204), Shirley reveals her fear of being followed by “something supernatural and malignant” and in an effort to rid herself of this evil visitation, turns to a copy of John George Hohman’s 1890 text Pow-Wows: Long Lost Friend, a Collection of Mysteries and Invaluable Arts and Remedies for Man as well as Animals with Many Proofs she found in a second-hand bookstore. Shirley recounts the thrill she experienced reading the pages of this volume and delights particularly in finding a fail-proof strategy for compelling thieves to return stolen goods—all you need do is bend a juniper branch toward the sunrise while reciting a charm to summon restitution from the wrongdoer, then place a stone and a symbolic skull beneath the bush to seal the intention (2016, p. 201). She quips that it would be wonderfully satisfying to apply this practice to retrieving all the books that were “borrowed” from her and never brought back—though she suspects she’d run out of skulls long before she recovered them all. I can relate to Shirley’s particular need for reparation, having leant countless numbers of books I love to students, colleagues and friends. Like her, I have often considered ways to bring them back home to my shelves and might just take Shirley up on her final invitation to “come right on over” (2015, p. 204) and join her—for there are many skulls to be procured and much work to be done. |
| ↑12 | The line “perfect horror story” was written by Shirley in a letter to Stanley across Christmas vacation in 1939 (The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 2021, p. 80). In this letter, Shirley shared with him a dream that had followed her from her daytime nap and turned maleficent as she slept that night. In her nightmare, Stanley had transformed into a grey crocodile and had begun to eat her hand—yes, a horror story indeed for a young woman in love. I have taken this line and added it to memories of my own love for a young man who turned into a monster, shadowed as they are by fear, violence and entrapment. |
| ↑13 | See Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, (2016), W. W. Norton & Company, p. 7. |