I'm currently reading Elizabeth by Shirley Jackson and the wonderful thing about my Kindle is I can highlight passages and make notations. This helps me to validate my reading comprehension which is hard for someone like myself, who has clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder, to do. There were points where I looked up definitions within definitions or reread a sentence a hundred times because I was anxious and couldn't concentrate. I've been feeling melancholy today, but reading Shirley Jackson, despite the dark subject matter, really brightened me up. I can relate to her stories. Onto the story, itself, I have not finished it, yet, so if you have please don't spoil the ending for me, but I'm up to the part where Elizabeth Style is in the restaurant talking to Robert Shax, and they just got done with lunch. I keep thinking to myself, Elizabeth knows how to run this business better than Robert. All her internal thoughts would make the business better, why doesn't she open her own literary agency? Robert is sexist in this story, no doubt, but I think Elizabeth is being judgemental towards Daphne Hill, the new receptionist. I see where Shirley Jackson is going with this, though. Elizabeth immediately thinks Daphne is incompetent and stupid because she is beautiful and blonde, which is not right. I personally love Shirley Jackson's stories because she shows that no one is clearly good or clearly bad, but that there is a habitual evil undercurrent within human behavior. She observes the world. She takes a starred mirror and holds it up to humanity. She did so in The Lottery and received so much controversy over it. She is one author I look up to and hope to be like someday. She spoke up and I love her for it.
I read your entire post not knowing who Shirley Jackson was until you mentioned The Lottery. How wonderful to find out that such an amazing woman was behind it! I also enjoy the way she portrays humans as... humans. Nothing in life is as easy as "good" or "bad," so seeing that on paper is pretty heartening. Maybe I should pick up Elizabeth soon?
It's a short story. You should definitely read it, among her other short works. But even before that I'd recommend picking up her novels We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. Excellent works.
The haunting of hill house is one of my favs. To the TS you can write and highlight in a regular book as well.
