Blowing Up the Nuclear FamilyShirley Jackson’s Queer Girls in Postwar US Culture

  1. Laura de la Parra Fernández 1
  1. 1 Universidad Nebrija
    info

    Universidad Nebrija

    Madrid, España

    ROR https://ror.org/03tzyrt94

Journal:
Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos

ISSN: 1133-309X,  2253-8410

Year of publication: 2021

Issue: 25

Pages: 25-48

Type: Article

DOI: 10.12795/REN.2021.I25.02 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-85103326585 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos

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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Funding information

This research was carried out thanks to a Visiting Fellowship for Doctoral Research Fellows granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education (reference: EST2016/0055) for a short research stay at Birkbeck College, University of London. The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the project “Improvisation and Emotional Contagion. History and Philosophy of Emotional Experiences”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (reference: PID2019-108988GB-I00).

Funders

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