“the maid freed from the gallows” performed by john jacob niles
hangman, hangman, slack you line
slack a just a while
‘for i think i see my papa comin’
traveling many a mile
traveling many a mile
kelly:
welcome to “not in her own house” season 2 of reading shirley jackson: the podcast. this season, join us as we explore the world of jackson’s second novel, hangsaman.
Kelly:
Okay, and we’re rolling. Hi, everybody.
Mckenzie:
Welcome to episode three of season two of reading Shirley Jackson: the podcast. Hooray, we made it to three episodes!
Kelly
Yes, we did and it’s Halloween weekend.
Mckenzie
Yes, our English Graduate Student Association is hosting a big Halloween party tonight. So if you’re in Manchester, Connecticut–
Kelly:
this will have happened by that time.
Mckenzie:
It’ll have happened two weeks ago. But yeah, we’re excited about that.
Kelly
And today is October 27th, birthday of the great Sylvia Plath.
Mckenzie
Kelly, do you want to tell people what you’re being for Halloween tonight?
Kelly
Yes, I am being objectively the most terrifying thing in existence, which is a Sims burglar. Really, I’m being just a regular burglar, because I realized I have a black and white striped shirt and so I wouldn’t have to put all that much effort into it. And so I got it. You can order burglar kits on Amazon, if you’re interested, and it comes with a mask, which actually hurts, a hat, gloves and then a bag with a big dollar sign on it. And honestly, if I was ever going to rob a bank, I can’t think of a bag I would least want to use than that one. Anyway, so in my head, I am a Sims burglar, because every millennial child has a very, very traumatizing memory of the fucking music that comes when the burglar comes in The Sims one. And I’ll put it in the show notes, because if I have to live with it, so do you.
Mckenzie
Can I tell you something?
Kelly:
Yeah.
Mckenzie:
I never played the Sims.
Kelly
Well, it’s been fun, folks.
Mckenzie:
Like never ever. I think I tried to play. I wanted to be more into gaming as a child. I wanted to like Dance Dance Revolution. The only game I ever actually liked was Toon town but I would never ask for the subscriptions. I wouldn’t own them. I would get it every six months when it renewed and I would play for three days and I would play for hours and hours and hours, that was part of it, was that time was running out.
Kelly:
Oh, I see.
Mckenzie:
And somewhere like the Disney Channel website games like The Lilo and Stitch game or the sandwich one I played. But yeah, I was never into the Sims.
Kelly:
It’s a lot of fun. They’re still making the Sims, although the Sims four is not that great. But honestly, the things that are in The Sims one I look back on and it’s like watching Grease as an adult. Like, why did that sim just take all their clothes off and get in the vibrating bed, which is a real thing? And you would get very ominous prank calls. And when the burglar came, just the music … anybody who has ever been through this does not need to be reminded of what I’m talking about. But for those of you who don’t know, yeah. you know who looks like a burglar?
Mckenzie:
Who?
Kelly:
your son
Mckenzie:
Should we tell the folks what my son did this morning?
Kelly:
You can. Yeah, because he’s a criminal.
Mckenzie:
So my cat biscuit recently has gotten the privilege of roaming the house at night because he was always really sad to go into his little room. And so we thought he’s about six months, that’s when the internet said that he could search around the house. our garbage is fortified and he hasn’t been much interested in the recycling. But the recycling bin is still fortified; it has a bunch of shit on top of it so he can’t get into it. Well, my fiance wakes up this morning and finds him yelling in the kitchen, because he broke into the recycling bin and got his head stuck in a can of dog food, trying to lick it. And so Alan, my fiance, had to put olive oil all around his neck to try to lubricate it to come out. And so now biscuit, because I washed it a little, I took a washcloth and tried to wash it, and then my dog Scout has been licking him to try to bathe him. But the olive oil has clumped all his hair together, so it’s all stringy and it’s all sticking up. And he looks like a member of nsync. we’ll have to include a photo in the show notes.
Kelly:
He looks like Joey Fatone.
Mckenzie:
he looks so stupid.
Kelly:
And he’s currently biting my copy of hangsaman.
Mckenzie:
he loves to bite Kelly and her things.
Kelly: Yeah, and I saved your life. Also, if anybody does Cat Rescue, you know that honestly, if that had happened on the streets, that probably would have been the end of him. So you’re welcome, buddy, because you were not built for the streets.
Mckenzie:
No, he really wasn’t. How is your cat?
Kelly:
he does not care. Ruble is good. ruble is on a diet, which is not working, So if anybody has tips on how to put a cat on a diet and keep him on a diet, I’d love to hear it. But you know what? me and rube are both in a good mood, because we get to go home. Very often when I’m up here in Connecticut, I feel like I’m Sandy cheeks like “I wanna go hooooooooome,” but yeah, so we’re going to see my parents back in my beloved New York where I haven’t been in two months. And that is the longest I’ve been without being home since I’ve been up here. So I’m very excited. Before we get into the text, I want to remind everybody that the website is still very much a work in progress. I am in the process of posting transcripts from season one, as well as show notes from season one. This morning, in fact, I just posted our very first episode transcript, and it made me a little bit nostalgic for the long ago time of February, because that episode was only 50 minutes, and the transcript was only like, I don’t know, 17 pages compared to the, like, 25 pages we have now. Anyway. So yeah, the transcripts will be on there. There’s also a search feature. So if you’re interested if there’s an episode where we talk about anything specific, give it a search, I have used it to see how many times I’ve talked about the sundial, and in the episodes that I’ve posted from this season, which have only been two, plus my bio on the website, plus the very first episode, I have talked about the sundial at least five times. So I’m sure that that number is going to continue to go up. Also, we want to encourage you to reach out to us, we know that we have a pretty steady contingent of listeners now. We also know where you are, because Spotify tells us. we’re not going to come to your house, but we just know generally where you are. So hello, DC people. Hello, Illinois. Hello, New York. Hello, Greece, which is very impressive. Reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you. shirleyjacksonpodcast@gmail.com We want to know what you think, and if you send us something good, we’ll read it on the podcast.
Mckenzie
especially winners and losers of each episode. Feel free to send those to us and we can compare/contrast. Cool. Okay, everybody. So today, there aren’t a ton of content warnings, but there will be some light hazing. In fact, Kelly was like, “we don’t need a content warning for light hazing, because it’s so stupid.” But anyway, there it is. And as always, there will be some reference to sexual assault. We hope this episode is going to be a bit more uplifting than last episode, but thanks for everybody who listened to that, but there will be a little bit of that discussion.
Kelly:
But there will be donuts this time.
mckenzie
So before we jump in, I wanted to briefly talk about something that Ruth Franklin discusses. And this is about an earlier draft of the novel. I just think it’s really interesting, as we’re making this official transition from home to college, that in an earlier draft, we actually get a glimpse of Natalie in high school. She has two friends – Doris and her sidekick Jenny, who are both very silly, and honestly made fun of a lot by Shirley
kelly:
they are proto vernas.
mckenzie:
Yes, I think that’s right. So Doris was, “fat and badly dressed and stupid, in the center of a little group of girls who did things by themselves.” And then Ginny is, “she played sentimental tunes very badly on the piano, and was given to much giggling flirtation with her teachers,” and that will actually be a huge theme moving forward is tragically: flirtation slash predation with teachers. And she actually has to go to a dance with them, and she doesn’t have a date. And Franklin writes, “the humiliation of attending a school dance with these girls instead of with a date is redeemed only by her encounter there with a teacher who compliments the poem she submitted anonymously to the school newspaper.” and the teacher writes, “I knew they were yours, of course,” he tells her, “even though you tried to change your handwriting, you couldn’t change your own peculiar phrases and way of looking at things.” And then she agrees to let him publish them, and she ends up being proud of the poems. this is something I wanted to linger on, just because I think it is interesting that [because] we only get Natalie’s family life in the first part of the novel, we don’t really get a sense of who she is outside of the home, which makes that transition to not home even more striking. And then also, we know that Shirley began really writing in college, and so I think this mixture of the teacher complimenting her and then she goes off to college to really start writing in earnest is an interesting context to get us started. So Kelly, can you read for us the first paragraph of chapter two? How does this transition happen between home and college?
Kelly
So before we talk about that, can I just say something about Shirley and drafting?
Mckenzie:
Yeah.
Kelly:
So it fascinates me to know what the novels we know so well now used to look like. I just finished an article on we have always lived in the castle and I was looking back at the Franklin biography, and because we have always lived in the castle was her last finished novel, it’s very short, it’s very tight, and the editing process was a process of stripping things out. So in we have always lived in the castle we don’t really know why Merricat kills her family. We don’t really know why Constance is afraid to leave the house, although that I guess we know. my favorite Jackson drafting detail is in Hill House and I’m sure I said this last season. When Eleanor first knocks on the door, she uses her bare hand. second draft, she uses the knocker. third draft, she uses the knocker which is a child’s face. So I think Jackson was somebody who was really, really good at figuring out what she was trying to say between drafts. And if she did indeed end up cutting Natalie’s friends from hangsaman i’m sure she had a really good reason for that. And interestingly, I would like to know if Verna was in that first draft too, because then we would have two characters like that. anyway.
mckenzie
Well, and I guess that brings up an interesting question. when we have so much documentation and so many drafts from an author like shirley, do you view the early drafts as canon, for lack of a better word, or for truth within the narrative structure?
kelly
No, because so often the first drafts are so completely different than we have now. Yeah, that’s my answer.
Mckenzie:
So like with those gaps in we have always lived in the castle that surely fills in in earlier drafts that leaves out, you still view them as gaps, you don’t view those as answers to those questions?
kelly:
That’s a harder question. I’m not sure. the conclusions that scholars have come to are pretty much the conclusions that Shirley wrote in the first draft, but that doesn’t mean that those are the only possible conclusions. As I said, the process of cutting is something that, frankly, I am not very good at. And so it always fascinates me when writers are good at that. But yes, the novel is infinitely better for us not knowing, and infinitely scarier for us not knowing.
mckenzie
So Kelly, can you read for us that first paragraph of chapter two as we transition from Natalie’s home to her not so home?
*Kelly reads from page 47*
mckenzie:
What do you think about this first paragraph?
kelly:
I will clean it up a little bit in the editing, but I will leave in some of my having butchered that paragraph, because it connects to something I wanted to say. We talked two episodes ago about how sometimes the text takes on the qualities of Natalie’s writing. I think this is what her academic writing sounds like. So we have this very clunky, “moreover the mere process of learning is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is so excruciating and so bewildering” blah blah, blah “conceivable phraseology.” That is how college freshmen write. so I think…you know, shirley is too skilled a writer not to notice what she’s doing there. So that really impressed me. But also, there’s a little bit of the sort of narrative voice that we see in Hill House here, right? “no live organism can continue to exist under conditions of absolute reality.” Here we have “anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly.”
mckenzie:
Moving on to this next section, we get to hear a little bit more about this college in particular and the ideals on which it was formed socially.
*Mckenzie reads from page 48*
So is this still Natalie if that first paragraph is your interpretation of Natalie’s academic writing? Is this Natalie thinking about the value of college sarcastically?
Kelly:
No, because one, I don’t think she cares, and two, this narrator knows things Natalie can’t know. But again, shirley is at her searing best here. We’re gonna go on and talk about what she’s writing about in the education paragraph, but the stuff that she’s writing about is still very relevant. “Should the student be free, should the teacher be free?” So obviously, this is a parody of Bennington College, which was then and now a very, and forgive me, my bennington listeners, hippie-ish place. I started out at Purchase College, which is very much like Bennington, except ugly. And it was…actually purchase’s motto was “think wide open.” And so I love that shirley describes this idea of a college where, yeah, we’re not going to give grades, everybody do whatever you want, and everybody’s going to be free and equal. And then as things go on, they realize actually, no, we have to teach them things that are useful. Also, “should there be a marriage course?” I love that because what is being asked there is should there be sex ed?
mckenzie:
Yeah, that was interesting. So this college was in existence for 15 years, which I think is just an interesting perspective. I think by the time that we got to college, they felt like such institutions, like great history. And so it’s really interesting [that] Shirley’s writing from a point where a lot of these colleges are coming into fruition.
*Mckenzie reads from page 48*
So again, we see what Kelly’s talking about here, these kinds of great ideals by perhaps men who are not as smart or philosophical as they think they are, dictate what the school thinks of itself.
kelly:
Yeah, we’re told essentially, a bunch of drunk guys got together and were like, “bro, you know, what’d be a great idea?” And that’s the system that we’re living in. But I want to talk… of course, we’ll talk about the giant red flag with no men in the classes and no women on the faculty, but I want to press a little bit on this idea of informality, right? They believe that “more information is derived from one casual conversation than from a dozen lectures, that education is, after all, a thing of give and take and should be a pleasure as well as a duty.” What do you think?
Mckenzie:
that education should be a pleasure as well as a duty?
kelly:
or that informality is so important, or as important as they think it is.
mckenzie:
I don’t agree with that. I think structure, even if it’s structure that doesn’t look like the way we think structure looks like, is helpful, boundaries are helpful, explicit, clear expectations are appropriate. I think it always bugs me when people talk about having to learn math, or having to read books. education is so much a privilege, and I think it is not just to train you to work at a desk. it has value beyond that. curiosity, I think, should be valued more.
kelly:
So I’m glad you brought up the idea of privilege. something we don’t hear too much about in Shirley Jackson is money. But even without being told, we know what kinds of girls go to this school. So education should not be a privilege, education is a right. But the education that Natalie and co are getting here is very much education for rich white women.
mckenzie:
We also learned that the creators of the college hope that anybody could go to the college, and it was ardently hoped that moderately odd students, which for them include black people and indigenous people, might desire to enroll. and they talk about how they think students should be able to drink and see naked people. And how does that work out for them?
Kelly:
So, the phraseology, to use Natalie’s word, “it was ardently hoped that moderately odd students, such as perhaps even negros or real Navajo Indians…” and it’s just such a cynical turn of phrase: “real Navajo Indians”, like “a real live Indian,” which, of course, is not the way we speak now, and we don’t endorse speaking like this, but just that sort of crudity of tokenism and box checking, which I think is something that you still very much see in education today. I’ve heard a lot of people joke about, like, “my kids are 1/16th Native American, and when they apply to college, they’re checking that box.” So this is not a new thing. Also, the things that the faculty think the students should be able to do: drink, stay out all night, gamble, paint nude from female models, red flags left and right. we are being set up to see this as an environment that is ripe for predation. Once again, I’ve not read this novel, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that that’s where we’re going.
mckenzie:
Yeah, andI think, right, it brings back that image you were talking about, of a bunch of guys getting drunk in an apartment being like, “let’s make a school. Let’s make an all-female school.” it just feels really gross and icky. And then this idea that boundaries are in fact, barriers to a real, quote unquote, education. Yeah, like you’re saying, it just creates moments for predators to thrive.
kelly:
I love the next sentence, and boy, it hits close to home. “The faculty members were to be drawn almost entirely from a group which would find the inadequate salary larger than anything they had ever earned.” That is painful. Do you ever just think that you’ve made every single wrong choice in life?
Mckenzie:
You know what? I actually don’t think that.I sometimes do have those moments where I’m like, “should I be working a corporate job if I’m stressed in my current life and making $28,000? And if I would be stressed in my corporate life, I would be still stressed and making more money.” But I do think that I am much happier than certain people I know working in jobs they hate. I’m not there yet. Are you there yet?
kelly:
No, I’m not there yet. But oh boy, there are days. particularly bad teaching days, which everybody’s had, but they don’t happen at this college because, can you read what the students are learning – the really popular course?
*Mckenzie reads from page 49*
kelly”
So do you know what “Frankie and Johnny” is?
Mckenzie:
No
Kelly:
So it’s an old — it’s not a folk song, because it’s younger than that — but it’s a song that’s been covered and covered and covered, so it would have been very popular at the time. There are a million different versions of it that you could find.
Mckenzie:
I actually…okay, here’s what I actually think. I think that I don’t believe those are bullshit. I think the history of yoga is super interesting. Or the use of percussion. the problem is the cost of those courses. that’s why it feels like bullshit, and that’s why it feels unethical. But I think if those courses were accessible, then knowledge knowledge’s sake is a worthwhile endeavor. I think that’s where that’s where I land. I get mad at people saying, I” shouldn’t have to take a music course if I’m a STEM major, I shouldn’t have to take –whatever– an English course. I shouldn’t have to learn about the Victorian novel if I’m a stem major,” which I don’t agree with ideologically, but I understand given how much those courses cost
kelly:
Yeah, also shirley is very clearly making fun of this stuff. “The music teachers to a man,” because they’re all men, they all like the importance of drumming. So let’s sit in a circle and drum. Also “the people in the town near the college felt strongly that the college community was communistic.” shirley and Stanley were accused of being communists. I’m not sure if they were ever party members, but this is still very much a thing, right? “those commies over at the college.”
Mckenzie:
Stanley did date a communist who was several years older than him and he was like, “this is the first communist I’ve ever really met.”
Kelly:
Was that Tony?
Mckenzie:
I don’t think so. He described…he was like, I think it was in a diary or something, i forget. I was reading it today. He wrote, “she is what the novels describe as pert.”
kelly:
So he has Shirley’s passive aggressive sense of humor too.
mckenzie:
Kelly, can you read for us what comes of all of this high minded educational thinking, starting on page 49 With “unfortunately”?
*kelly reads from page 49*
mckenzie:
So we see the way that ideals, even phony ones, get shoved into institutional boxes. and some for the better, many for the worse. So I thought one that was funny was students who were supposed to just feel worthy of a good day’s work by waiting tables, They were like, “well, I guess maybe we should pay them.” But now, also students can’t drink freely except with the (I’m sure very trustworthy) faculty members.
kelly:
Which as I said, is a lot worse. I also love that you’re still allowed to dance, but you have to dance the way they tell you. A text that comes up a lot in conjunction with Shirley is my beloved play/movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which actually was based on our own Trinity College up here in Hartford. And in this play, there’s a scene where the two academic couples are drinking and arguing, which is essentially the whole play. But the young biology professor’s wife gets very drunk and she’s just running around, going “i dance like the wind!” And that’s what I picture happening with Bennington College.
mckenzie:
and we learn that the college isn’t what the founders perhaps intended. She writes, “thus the college was in brief, a place modern, authentic, progressive, realistic, honest and humane with decent concessions to the fact that it was supposed to be and had to be a strictly budget balanced proposition, a factory in which the intake must necessarily match the outgo.” which actually is a pretty communistic thing to write from shirley, this idea that even the best ideas, like I said, get shoved into institutional boxes that create people in the image of workers, in this case, probably wives. In a final note, shirley wrote about the desire for original beams in the construction of the houses and shirley ends the section with, “it might also be noted, that the original beams having been found to need constant repair, plastic brick had been substituted wherever possible.” So a pretty on the nose metaphor for fakeness.
kelly
But fakeness with the pretense of quaintness. I also really love “because there was a more comfortable place for single faculty than the Living Centers devoted to faculty or the unusually perishable faculty houses.” She’s essentially saying, “We do not care if the faculty die,” which can be very true of academia, in some places. All right. Are you ready to go to college?
mckenzie:
Yeah, so Natalie arrives at college. And before we get that full picture of what university life looks like for Natalie, I thought we would take a brief look at what university life looked like for shirley. So as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, college is really where Shirley began to write, and, more fundamentally, I think, where she began to identify as a writer. So she first went to the University of Rochester. In the application, the committee asked, Why do you want to go to college and shirley wrote “to prepare myself for a career.” After two years of struggling at the University of Rochester, she would actually eventually be thrown out of college due to poor academic performance.
Kelly:
I didn’t know that.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, she failed most of her classes. And she spent a year at home working on her writing. And by the time that she applied again to Syracuse University, this time, they asked a very similar question, “why do you want to go to college?” And she actually wrote that she wanted to work on her writing career. So in these two years, she established not just “I want to have a career” but “I want to have a career in writing.”
kelly
I love that first answer. Like “why do you want to go to college?” “so I can be successful in a career.” the most half-assed answer.
mckenzie
But what Franklin actually writes about that is that that in itself was semi radical, because most women were going to college to find a husband and not really – not to shame those women, they had cultural restrictions – i thought the same thing where I’m like, “Jesus shirley.” like no, that was actually really cool of her.
kelly
one thing that my dad loves to talk about, because as you know, I am in academia. He loves the movie Animal House, which is a very dad movie. Have you seen it?
mckenzie
No, but it is a very dad movie.
kelly
He thinks it’s the funniest thing where – I don’t know if it’s the college motto, but engraved somewhere, is the motto “knowledge is good.” And that very much reminds me of “I would like to have a career.”
Mckenzie
when Shirley got to college, her preferences were law, journalism, or quote “literary work,” which is a pretty big bubble. her first year course of study included English, government, psychology, philosophy and music appreciation, which is almost identical to Natalie’s schedule. So again, I think I want to be cautious about what we’re reading as autobiographical in hangsaman, but it’s also pretty autobiographical. Yeah. She really struggled to adjust to living in the dorms. Similar to what we’ll see later, in the episode, she saw a sorority initiation, which Franklin says left her deeply shaken. in her diary, she wrote that she was, “sick at the things girls will do to one another.” And so it was something that really disturbed her. Natalie really struggles to find friends at college, but shirley made a really good friend. Her name was Jean Marie bedel. I will include a picture of them in the show notes.
Kelly:
That’s one of my favorites.
Mckenzie:
It’s really sweet. She was actually a French exchange student. She was a few years older, and Franklin claims that actually she was the only other person besides Stanley who had such an enormous effect on her at that time. So the only other person who had a bigger effect on her was stanley. shirley wrote a poem about them called “gay jeanou and crazy lee,” which I think is very sweet. I couldn’t actually find the poem.
Kelly:
I forgot she used to call herself lee.
Mckenzie
there was one part where she wrote a letter to herself called dear Shirley, signed Lee, which I thought was really interesting.
Kelly
Those of you who have read the bird’s nest will recognize that thing. “Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy and bess, they all got together and made a bird’s nest.” so the same self with slightly different names.
Mckenzie
Here’s a piece about Shirley and jeanou from Shirley’s diaries. “My friend was so strange that everyone, even the man I loved, thought we were lesbians. And they used to talk about us. And I was afraid of them, and I hated them. Then I wanted to write stories about lesbians and how people misunderstood them. And finally, this man sent me away because I was lesbian and my friend went away, and I was all alone.” So the reason I wanted to include this is because people have in the past, to shirley’s intense chagrin, read hangsaman as a lesbian novel. And we can decide whether there’s merit in that point. But this is, I think where it’s coming from is having these really intense relationships with women, and there’s no evidence that they were romantic or sexual. And shirley actually had some like, pretty, like bigoted writing.
Kelly:
Oh, yeah.
Mckenzie:
From That time that again, was representative of the culture she was living in, but also morally reprehensible right to write those things.
*dog barks in background*
Kelly
That Scout, she’s locked away and we keep her chained up because she’ll maul me if we let her out.
Mckenzie
She won’t maul you. All it is to say she had this very intense friendship with this woman who had this huge impact on her, and when she went away at the end of Shirley’s freshman year, I think she really struggled. After she left, writing took a bigger focus for shirley and she actually had to move home. the Jacksons had moved to a larger house, and so she ended up living with her parents. And she found out her mom was going through her papers because Geraldine scolded her for writing “sexy stories,” which I thought was really funny. But tragically, shirley started to really struggle, especially her sophomore year. She failed three of her fall courses and barely passed the other two. In the spring, her grades got even worse, and then after being put on academic probation, the university asked her to leave in June. Part of why she was struggling, I think, was because while she was living at home, her mother was really encouraging her to find someone to marry, And was, as we’ve discussed before, really critical of her appearance, saying you’ll never land a man until you I think, “lose weight and dye your hair.”
Kelly
Oh, I thought you were gonna say lose weight and die.
Mckenzie
Oh gosh. So, even though shirley had a really tough time at Rochester and in the year after leaving, she does end up getting a lot better, and things get much better for her when she transfers to Syracuse. And again, that transfer to Syracuse is really indicative of her knowing that she wants to be a writer that becomes her focus. Kelly, can you read for us about Natalie’s first moments at college?
Kelly:
Sure. This is on page 50.
*Kelly reads from page 50*
Mckenzie
Why the double use of “precisely a new start”?
Kelly
I don’t know. But something that did come to mind as I was reading this is shirley loves to write about doorways. So the second episode, we had Natalie standing in the doorway with her mother. But the thing that just reminded me more than anything was the nursery doorway in Hill House, which is the heart of the house.
Mckenzie
So what do you think that is signifying about this moment or this space?
Kelly
Thresholds. So when you cross from the nursery into Hill House, you’re entering the horror. Natalie is essentially crossing the other way – from the horror that has been her home life into this new unknown future. so shirley really pauses us at this moment where Natalie is standing literally and metaphorically at a threshold.
Mckenzie
we get the obvious metaphor of the bare walls, right? this place of expectancy, a possibility of what could be. We can talk about it as we go on. It’s semi tragic, right? The idea that you have to reinvent yourself, or especially for Natalie, that she really desperately wants her life to look very different. it’s not just a moment of possibility. It’s also a moment of tragedy. Kelly, can you read for us starting “for the first time” about Natalie’s feelings about starting college?
*Kelly reads from page 52*
Mckenzie
It’s interesting that so much of the pleasure of her own space for Natalie is isolation. I think she was pretty isolated at her home, certainly in terms of being understood. But her idea of pleasure is nights alone, shutting the door, afternoons spent at the narrow desk in the corner, and the only mention of other people is “if she pleased she could entertain here,” but there’s no mention of actual friends.
Kelly
Yeah. And the way that she imagines entertaining- “if she pleased she could entertain, if it suited her pleasure.” So it’s almost like this queenly image of, “she can hold court in her room if it pleases her.” But we also get this one really brilliant thing. she thinks of long nights alone in the room with, in parentheses, “no one to notice her light, no one to tap on her door and ask was she all right, dear.” So brilliant, brilliant interpolation: Mrs. Waite and her surveillance.
Mckenzie
I also think about numbers this way. not quite the way Natalie does, but there are good numbers and bad numbers and I agree 27 is a good number. 28, My current age is also a good number. 29, bad number.
Kelly
So it’s interesting that you bring this up, because in the passage I was transcribing today in our very first episode, we talked about Shirley Jackson’s article, “the real me”, which is just one paragraph, in which she describes herself as a witch who specializes in image and number magic. So here’s some number magic. My personal lucky number is 22. But yeah, so 27- pretty good number. 17 – Bad number. But also, this is – I’ll put this on a shirt too – straight out of Freud. In the uncanny, there’s a passage where he talks about suppose you see a number and you see it again and again and again, and it accrues meaning. and shirley definitely was aware of what she was doing here.
Mckenzie
So as she’s contemplating this future she’ll have in this space shirley writes, “for the whole first afternoon that she was alone at college, Natalie asked herself constantly, is this meaningful? Is this important? Is this part of what I am to go home knowing?” You think it’s good?
Kelly
No, it’s just that’s one of the moments where like, “oh, right in the feels.” you can’t see me, but I’m punching myself in the chest.
Mckenzie
Because it’s…
Kelly
it is so relatable. “Is this meaningful? Is this important? Is this what I’m going to go home knowing?” Would you like to talk about that for a second while I go see if he’s stuck?
Mckenzie
Yeah sorry, biscuit’s meowing. Well, the reason I wanted to note it is because I think as you’re alluding to, it’s really relatable being in the big moments and moments you’ve thought about for so long, and not really knowing how you’re gonna feel. I thought about this when I got engaged, which wasn’t necessarily a big moment to me. I picked out my ring. I knew we were getting engaged, and I knew I was gonna say yes, but it still ended up being like, you’re hyper conscious of this amazing or pivotal thing happening to you. And it’s this constant questioning,, “is this feeling the way I imagined?” And “what do I… what am I supposed to act like?” Oh, and then the other reason I thought this passage was interesting is I wonder, does it make you think differently about the making out with the grass passage, because I know you were really frustrated with Natalie’s attempt to find meaning, or to find purpose in the way that her writing presented itself in those moments. Have you gained any sympathy in this passage? Or are you still like, “shut the fuck up, Natalie”?
Kelly
Even though that was only what, like 40 pages ago? It feels like a lifetime ago, of course, because there has been this horrible traumatic event in between, incidentally, when she does not ask herself, “am I going to remember this?” Yeah, but she does afterwards. So I guess I just … I am never going to be somebody who appreciates that passage. So if that is … that is the hill i die on.
Mckenzie
No. And I think that’s fine. I guess I remember you also said you don’t think Natalie is looking for anything, or you don’t think she wants anything.
Kelly:
Now She does. So I’m interested to see how that evolves throughout the novel.
Mckenzie:
So we go on to meet the girls that Natalie will live with.
*Mckenzie reads from page 52*
Thoughts?
Kelly
I love that: “terrible, sacred friendships of these years.” Yeah. And we talked about this actually when we were talking about Hill House and the arrival. you do develop these very intense friendships very quickly, and some of them don’t end all that well.
Mckenzie
And even the ones that don’t end well are still sacred. I think that word is really cool and really useful.
Kelly
Yeah, sometimes your friend drives into a tree and dies. That was an Eleanor reference, not a my life reference.
Mckenzie
I was sad for Eleanor, I haven’t thought about her in a long time. And there’s also this traditional, “who’s gonna be the most popular girl.”
Kelly:
Yeah, they’re sizing each other up. And we do have one of those right? So can you read for us on page 53?
*Kelly reads from page 53*
Mckenzie
Actually, that’s good. So what is shirley doing with space in college, and how is it either different or similar from how she deals with space in hill house?
Kelly
So it’s not a coincidence that this is a house, right? It’s not a dorm. It’s a house, which also, I think is probably true of Bennington, that the students live in houses and not the dorms that we would traditionally think of. But there’s a very clear act of replacement happening here. And it reminds me of when we talked about the first episode, Natalie’s philosophy of home is [that] if you go somewhere, stay there long enough, it will automatically become home. So this idea of replacing. I also love the immaculate date.
Mckenzie:
Why do you love it?
Kelly:
Well, because there’s this concept of virginity, which we’ll get into, but also this concept of surveillance, right? You bring your date to the living room of your house where you’re not only under the watchful eye of whoever is in charge, but you’re also under the watchful eye of everybody else. So do you want to tell the listener what just happened?
Mckenzie
Biscuit did a little step on the keyboard and cut us off. So what were you saying?
Kelly
I was making a very important point and now it’s gone. Thank you, biscuit. No, I was saying Happy Birthday to Sylvia Plath. This is also very much a thing in the bell jar. when buddy Willard comes to visit her, all the other girls who live in her house, because she went to Smith College, which is very Bennington, know who is coming to look for you.
Mckenzie
And I think this idea of the perfect college girl that she knows is related to this, not just in terms of who you’re dating, but to be the perfect college girl that everybody envisions being, with lots of friends, who’s easily succeeding, all that has to happen under a microscope. to bring it back to your focus on surveillance and being seen. it’s not just that you have to bring your date to the living room, but everything you do has to be visible in order for it to be real.
Kelly
Except for this one terrible, invisible thing which happened to you.
Mckenzie
Yeah. Which must remain unseen or unsaid to continue to be unreal.
Kelly
Yes. Also, can I just say, this was not me at all. I don’t think I really cared about being popular.
Mckenzie
You have to have had an idea of what you were gonna be like in college.
Kelly
Oh, yeah, I wasn’t like, you know, “I’m gonna go there and I hope everybody hates me.” Interestingly, I should point out, I went to an all girls high school. And this is actually much more in line with what my first day of high school was like than what my first day of college was like. And I think actually, a lot of that has to do with gender. I always tell people that I missed the point where boys matured. in eighth grade, you know, the boys are still making fart noises in the back of the classroom. In high school, I was completely separated. I went to an all girls high school. And then I went to college, where all the guys pretty much were gay, but some were not, And that was a big difference for me. And I remember specifically, and I think this speaks to sort of the juvenileness of Natalie’s mind, getting to the first day of high school and being like, “who is going to be popular? I’m going to be popular.” But I guess by the time I got to college, I had just grown out of that.
Mckenzie
I think for Natalie, and for me, this huge life transition is happening. And so you have an idea of what it’s going to look like in a positive way. You’re going to do great in all your classes and you’re going to meet your best friend and you’re going to get a boyfriend, and maybe not that you’re going to be the best at everything. But there’s an easy breeziness to it that I think you expect when you are imagining these kinds of transitions that the space of the house is alluding to; it’s this blank palette where you can be the perfect version of yourself, even though that is never going to happen because that version doesn’t really exist. Kelly, can you introduce us to our popular girl starting with, “there was one directly opposite.”
*Kelly reads from page 54*
Mckenzie
I don’t know. I just was really struck by how funny that passage was.
Kelly
I love this. “Did She put that dress on this morning thinking it was good for the first day of college? because it’s not.”
Mckenzie
That’s sort of the artfulness of the sentence construction, the chattiness that I feel like I was missing from Hill house.
Kelly
Yes. And she’s also very mean to people with bangs. she talks about “the girl with the ugly line across her forehead.”
Mckenzie
That was really devastating for me.
Kelly:
I had bangs.
Mckenzie:
No, not just the bangs but the whole idea that did the “girl secretly bewail it and persuade herself that she was more aware of it than anyone else,” because that’s what everyone tells you, that nobody thinks about you as much as you think about you. And Natalie’s being like no, I’m thinking about you, and you look fucking ugly.
Kelly
It’s so mean.
Mckenzie:
But also at the same time, it’s very poignant.
Kelly:
right before the part I read – first of all, we have the very strange word organism. “intended to bring out the maximum personality any given organism possessed.” organism also appears in the beginning of hill house, but they’re trying not to be seen looking at the other girls in the room. So again, surveillance is a huge thing in this novel. they are all sizing each other up, but they don’t want to be seen to be sizing each other up. But also, Natalie is looking for somebody who’s not looking at her but looking for her. So she’s assessing all these girls and not being particularly kind to any of them. And she’s wondering, is anyone seeking me out, looking for me? Also, another thing that came to mind as you were reading this is just a really short devastating thing that I learned from the internet. If you ever want to insult somebody, just mention something that they’re wearing and call them by that name. like you could call me like, “okay, jeans.” my jeans aren’t even ugly, but that will psychologically torment that person enough that they will never wear those jeans again.
Mckenzie
That’s funny. I don’t think that would work on me.
Kelly
Okay, hair.
Mckenzie
I like my hair. It’s one of the only things I’m not self conscious about.
Kelly
Okay, shirt. Anyway, I think that’s pretty psychologically devastating. But you’re immune.
Mckenzie
Yeah, this idea also like you might not know what someone is noticing about you, that is terrifying.
Kelly
Yeah. There’s something so horrible about you that has never even occurred to you.
Mckenzie
The last part in this passage I found Funny is the red haired girl. And Natalie being like, “there is someone I will know only slightly.” I feel like I do that too, where I meet someone and I’m like, we’re not gonna be close.
Kelly
Oh, I read that more as like, “oh, that’s the popular girl. I don’t think that she’s gonna want to hang out with me.”
Mckenzie
I think it’s probably both, because I think we do see that Natalie, I think,feels a little bit superior to other people. And so there’s the sense of she is a basic popular girl and we see later that Natalie’s like, “she’s already running for some freshman office or something.” so it’s both superior and also devastating.
Kelly
Because it is once again Sylvia Plath’s birthday, I’ll tell you one of my favorite lines from the bell jar. “Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak.”
Mckenzie
We see Natalie start to interact with people around her again, to not a ton of success.
*Mckenzie reads from page 55*
Kelly
That is such a…that word just rankles me
Mckenzie:
Cute?
Kelly:
Yeah,
Mckenzie
you think it’s diminutive?
Kelly
Yes, I once told a professor of mine that I was planning on writing my paper in my LGBT Studies class on the documentary The celluloid closet, which I thought was a fine thing to write about. to this day, I think it’s a fine thing to write about. And they said, “Oh, cute.” It’s not me, is it?
Mckenzie:
No, that’s tough.
Kelly:
Yeah, I just hate that because it’s dismissive. but obviously, that’s not how this girl means it, but it’s how Natalie means it. and again, she’s “the girl with the unpleasant hair” because she has bangs.
Mckenzie
Can you read Natalie’s experience as she’s hearing everyone introduce themselves, and also try to introduce herself? starting “around the circle of girls.”
Kelly
This is page 55.
*Kelly reads from page 55*
Mckenzie:
What do you think?
Kelly:
Once again, very true. In situations like these, nobody’s listening to anybody else, they’re only thinking about what they’re going to say. But also, we talked a couple of episodes ago about Natalie’s instability of identity, and there’s a sense here like “is my name Natalie? Well, if it is, it might as well not be. I might as well be the girl sitting next to me.” And of course, the hidden implication is, “except for this one thing that happened to me.”
Mckenzie
and also the idea that you can’t trust your own mind. And I find that really relatable. sometimes in class, especially, I’ll say a comment, and I’m like, did I say that right? Or I’m convinced I said gibberish, and everyone is just being really nice to me. not just not made my point clear, but I’m convinced I wasn’t speaking English and that everyone is just being like, “Oh, it’s okay.” Because I just think sometimes when you’re in those moments, you’re so out of your own body. And then when you return, you’re like, did I say that? Like, was that right? Or did I say somebody else’s name? And so I really liked that part. so after this introduction, Natalie starts to really settle into college. I’ll skip over most of it most of her second day. But one interesting passage: “as one who awakens to find his city destroyed and himself alone in the ruins, Natalie found herself a rude shelter, food and comfort by a system almost scavenging.” So this idea of being alone is actually not what she thought it would be.
Kelly
Yeah. And the scavenging is something that will become literal as Shirley’s career goes on. Her final heroine, Merricat Blackwood, is quite literally a scavenger. she goes to the village, she gets things, she lives in literally a hut by the river. So this metaphorical nature scavenger has become quite literal. Also, I wanted to just point out on page 56, the emphasis “the second day, waking up in the strange room, moving downstairs, putting away her own things, selecting her own place, able to find her own room without being puzzled.” So the title of the season again, is not in her own house, which of course, is a bodily metaphor, but there is also the sort of vibes of A Room of One’s Own. Like most of Jackson’s heroines, she equates identity with place, and she wants a place that belongs only to her. But of course, the great irony of that is that the place that does belong precisely to her is exactly the same as the place that belongs to all the other girls.
Mckenzie
So next, we move to the big action of this section. It’s really not huge, like a big plot centric section, but this is a really interesting encounter. I think this is where the light hazing content warning comes into play. Kelly, can you read or can you tell us about Natalie’s experience waking up to pounding on her door?
*Kelly reads from page 57*
mckenzie
What’s the significance of the “it could have been a nightmare” opening? I find that really jarring, especially hearing you read it out loud.
kelly
Of course, it’s hard not to see it in connection with the pounding on the wall in hill house.
Mckenzie:
Yeah.
Kelly:
Is that what you were thinking?
Mckenzie:
Oh no, I just thought that it signifies that she’s having nightmares. is this just another nightmare? No, actually, but it’s not war. Yeah, it’s sophomores.
Kelly:
Yes. It’s not war. It’s sophomores. episode title.
mckenzie
That is a good episode title. I think this is really funny.
*Mckenzie reads from page 57*
So there’s this moment as this all is happening and she’s waking up where she’s not only doubting her own identity like “am I a college? Is this the space I’m in? Am I a freshman?” but also again, this fear that everyone’s laughing at her. Very Eleanor-esque, I think. “They’re all playing a trick on me. It’s actually not initiation at all. I would open the door, and it’s just me opening the door. They’re gonna laugh at me.”
kelly
Yes. And then when we find out when she does come out in the hall, not only are all the other girls dressed exactly like her, but she’s the last one out.
mckenzie
Yeah, so what do you think that means? that Natalie is particular in her fears and anxieties?
kelly
So, no, absolutely not. one of the hardest things, and I think most comforting things, you learn about yourself, not necessarily when you go to college, but you learn at some point in your life, is you are not special. And I don’t mean that in like a “you’re worthless” way. I just mean, No, you’re not that different. You are not special. Everybody worries about this stuff, of course to differing degrees. But no, you are not important enough for there to be a global conspiracy against you. Sorry.
mckenzie:
I still think there is a global conspiracy against me.
kelly:
I assure you there is not.
mckenzie
Kelly’s going to be read for us how the scene unfolds, starting, “Where do we go?”
*Kelly reads from pg 57-58*
mckenzie
So, reading the sentence, what do you think that means? I think I got it.
kelly
Honestly, I have no idea. That is one of those sentences that as I was reading it, I was like, what? So it’s a parenthetical reference. What do you think?
mckenzie
So I think she’s saying she’s resenting the “movie word frosh.” The idea that they’re play acting something.
kelly
I love that. “movie word.” In the movies, this is always when the initiation happens.
mckenzie
But then I think the parenthetical is saying, because her curiosity is tempered with excitement, It’s not just resentful; It’s fear and excitement. That is a specific feeling brought about by the night. I think that’s what it is, but I agree, it’s phrased really strangely. So Natalie is being led down the hallway by someone with a mask over their face, like basically a handkerchief. Perhaps like your costume tonight?
kelly
No, my mask just goes over my eyes, and let me tell you, it hurts.
mckenzie
Oh, gosh, okay. I think this is the opposite where it’s over their mouth, right?
Kelly:
“The cops and robbers effect” she says, yeah.
Mckennzie:
And when she asks where they’re going, she’s just told to shut up. Like, I get it’s hazing. But I still think it’s not the nicest thing in the world.
kelly
Yeah, I also want to point out that this is a half assed hazing. Another possible episode title. but I want to talk about this passage.
*Kelly reads from page 58*
and that smacks of “the lottery” to me. Because in “the lottery,” Shirley takes pains to tell us nobody really knows why we do this, we just know that we do. Of course there it’s half-assedly killing someone here it is, as I said, a half assed hazing.
mckenzie
So when she reaches the door, the masked person says, “Do you have any qualification for entering here?” And Natalie says, “no, I was brought.” and then she’s pushed into the room quite violently. But as Kelly says, they get bored of this over time because there are so many girls. And so I think she writes, they fall flat. So she says, “it became increasingly clear that the party had fallen flat, that the pure number of girls entering docilely had worn thin the viciousness of the voice of the leader.” so they get bummed out that everybody doesn’t get pushed.
kelly
Yeah, I love that. They’re like, “Alright, the first time I’m really going to sell it,” and then after that, it’s like, “Alright, come on, I want to go back to bed.” So we’ve been alluding to Natalie’s rape, which was in the last episode, and I’ll add a content warning to the beginning to say that we talked about it explicitly, but we see sort of glimmers of it poking through. “Now I will keep quiet, Natalie thought, knowing, and it was not, after all, any too soon to learn. the resignation of a perceptive mind before gleeful freed brutality, and let someone else get pushed.” So we’re being signaled here to think that Natalie is remembering what it’s like to know that oh, this person has no mercy. Although of course, here it is a lot less serious context.
mckenzie
But we do see the harm that’s inflicted because of it. So Natalie, even though she was the first in line, she’s not the first chosen for this weird initiation. it’s barely a hazing. But again, nonetheless vicious for it. kelly, can you read on page 60, “the girl chose..”
*kelly reads from page 60*
Mckenzie:
What do you think?
Kelly:
So, part of shirley’s genius here – “I hope they don’t ask me,” which is something that you would think in that situation. “Oh, God, I hope they don’t ask me.” But then you realize what Natalie’s answer to that question would be.
Mckenzie:
Yeah.
Kelly:
And interestingly, she’s assuming that she is the only one in this room that that has happened to, which of course we’re not privy to, but knowing what we know now statistically, she probably is not.
mckenzie:
What strikes me about what they’re doing is that asking someone if they’re a virgin is pretty low scale, pretty stupid hazing, but we see the way that just the action of singling someone out asking personal questions can be vicious. And that for Natalie and whoever else in that room who’s maybe had an experience like Natalie, it is genuinely shattering and devastating and also is meant to be this first experience at college. they’re more concerned with tradition than the pain that they might inflict.
kelly
Yes. And to be clear, the girls who are asking these questions, that is not at all on their mind. they do not possibly think that they could be – of course, this wasn’t a thing back then– But they don’t think about who they’re triggering.they’re just asking the giggly questions that teenage girls ask.
mckenzie
So when the first girl says that she is certainly a virgin, someone else asked her to tell us a dirty joke then, and she goes,
*mckenzie reads from pg 60-61*
Kelly:
I love that.
Mckenzie;
Yeah, it’s really creepy. Reminds me of an amoeba.
kelly
Well, but there’s comfort in being in the amoeba with the mass. and the mass offers protection. so you have been sort of put in the spotlight and then, having gone through that, you are allowed to pass on into Gen pop.
mckenzie
But unfortunately for Natalie, she starts to get more and more disturbed by what’s happened, and unsettled, and of course, we know the reason why. So she leans to the girl next to her and whispers, “I won’t answer them,” and she gets shushed. Again, they’re asking for dirty jokes from the girl up front, and they’re not satisfied with how dirty they are, but they still excuse the girl. And then Natalie gets selected. so “unbearably, unbelievably, the leaders look squarely at Natalie. ‘you,’ she said,” and Kelly, can you read her response?
*kelly reads from pg 61-62*
Mckenzie: what do you think?
Kelly:
Natalie is realizing the fragility of this, that if even one freshman says, you know, this is dumb, then the upperclassmen are gonna burst into tears and be like, “well, it was her idea”. I mentioned earlier that this is roughly concurrent with when Shirley was writing her book on the Salem witch trials. And the very next sentence, “someone said menacingly, that she had better tell, And someone else said that if she didn’t want to tell, well, that proved it.” So again, that is very witch trial logic. well, if you’re not telling us, then obviously, you have something to hide. I think Natalie, in this moment, is coming upon something pretty – not profound – but smart. And in fact, she’s thought about it since the moment that this started happening. when they say initiation. She just says no. And when she goes to bed in just a little bit, she realizes that, in fact, there were girls who were just like, “No, I’m not doing that.” And there’s a lot of power in that. But also, of course, “the desire to assume the stool, if not the confessional.” So there is this ambivalence. she’s wondering to herself in the back of her mind, “what would happen if I just told them.”
mckenzie
but I think what’s interesting is that you’re right, that Natalie comes upon this important idea to use your word, the fragility of this superiority, but it actually doesn’t happen. she says, with one small gesture of resistance, everything would have crumbled, but she does that small gesture of resistance, and it doesn’t crumble. They call her “bad sport, rotten sport, not fair.” And she leaves and it just continues, right? No one follows her. And so I think there’s the fragility of the existence of superiority, but ironclad commitment to retaining that fragility. Does that make sense?
kelly
Yes, but I think this is still couched in terms of a victory for Natalie. She does not answer the question of whether or not she’s a virgin. She says, “I won’t” and they say “excused.”
mckenzie
So there is moment of resistance but it’s not what she thought it was.
*Kelly reads from pg 62-63*
So you think that realization of aloneness is comforting, that she can just exit and be in her own space, and her resistance maybe didn’t change the hierarchy, but changed it for herself, changed her own participation?
kelly
So it’s a small personal victory, and then it’s a realization of defeat, and then it’s realizing well, what did I actually win? so the paragraph before, she says, “she won’t answer, and she might lose a seat among them by questions, by rebellion, by anything except the cheerful smile and the resolution to hurt other people.” So Natalie, for once, is thinking of someone other than herself. But she’s still doing it in a sort of self aggrandizing way, right? “Follow me, and a new world is made.” This reminds me of that scene in the movies where they’re like, “Are ya with me?” And nobody’s with them.
mckenzie
And also it’s less that she doesn’t want to hurt people and more that she wants to be the person that doesn’t hurt people.
kelly
Yeah, she wants them to say, “Yeah, this is dumb, and we’re all going with Natalie.” But of course, that’s not at all what happened. So it’s a Pyrrhic victory At best.
mckenzie
I just hadn’t noticed in my first read of this that the red haired girl is one of the people that hadn’t answered the call. And so I’m not quite sure what to think about that. I think that’s really interesting.
kelly
So she’s preordained, in Natalie’s mind at least, as being the popular girl, maybe the girl who would do this to the freshmen next year. And she does not follow the herd.
mckenzie
So the final thing that happens in this section is that we see Natalie’s letters home. This is interesting in a couple of ways. First, just the idea of a letter within the text, I think, complicates what we think of as the genre of the novel. obviously, lots of novels have letters, but I think it’s interesting just to think about what is revealed in letters and Shirley’s purpose. We also know that Shirley was a prolific letter writer. So she wrote Stanley tons of letters in their summers away from each other during college. She also wrote her parents tons of letters, and I think I might have mentioned this in another episode, she asked her parents to keep all her letters as a way of biographying herself. And I think that’s interesting, too, if we think, does Natalie imagine this letter being written about in her future biography.
kelly
So one thing that we skipped over in the first episode which I think is just so hilarious and so true, when Natalie is writing in her diary, she thinks “it’s very private. It was intended, of course, intended for eventual publication.”
mckenzie
Which lots of diaries are. I think I went to the Anne Frank House two summers ago, and I didn’t know that before going to that house, that Anne Frank wrote her diary with the aim of publication. she wanted it to be read.
kelly
Fun fact. Do you know who’s writing an Anne Frank book?
Mckenzie:
Kelly:
Ruth Franklin.
mckenzie:
Really?
Kelly:
Yes.
Mckenzie:
Wow.
kelly
Yeah. So look forward to that, folks. Also, if I can plug a book with which I have no connection, but probably one of the most valuable Shirley volumes I have is the collected letters.
mckenzie
So Kelly, can you read for us this first letter from Natalie’s collected letters?
kelly
*Kelly reads from pg 63-64*
mckenzie
What do you think?
kelly
The thing that comes to mind is that Pete Seeger songs, “little boxes.” So they’ve been given their very first little boxes. Incidentally, when I was Natalie’s age, I used to sing this and annoy my friends.
mckenzie
It’s striking me now because you’ve made such a point of when Shirley is writing in Natalie’s writing voice, that this is one of the first substantial pieces of writing we get from Natalie. So that would be cool to do later, to go through and see verbal or rhetorical tics that Natalie’s making.
Kelly:
“Please don’t criticize.”
Mckenzie:
Yeah, I think that’s the other big thing. it’s not just that Natalie’s writing this, perhaps with the intention of it being read in the future, she is performing for her father. And you know that even though she says she’s writing fast and not stopping to correct, she’s putting in an enormous thought of how she wants her father to perceive her in this letter. And this meditation on space I really like because I think it’s accurate. But again, I think it’s her trying to feel philosophical. Like she’s contemplating, you know, mysteries of the universe. Like she’s supposed to be at college.
kelly
She also says, “Let me tell you about my house.” And I liked this idea of it’s a world completely private. So it’s a very feminine world, as are many of Jackson’s spaces, and very private. privacy in Jackson is something pretty complicated, as a lot of her work is spent examining all the ways in which it can be perverted. But yeah.
mckenzie
we also get mention of the English professor, Professor Arthur Langdon, that’s our second Arthur.
kelly:
Third Arthur. second, Arthur chronologically. Third, if we talk about Hillhouse, I feel like when Shirley’s writing, and she’s like, “need a guy name, need a guy name, need a guy name ARTHUR.”
mckenzie
Maybe she was really into King Arthur.
Kelly
Could be.
mckenzie
He’s mentioned twice. “one class, langdon’s English, is usually held out on the lawn.” And then later, she talks about her afternoon class with Arthur Langdon and how he’s the most popular person on the campus. He “runs the beauty contests before the senior dance.”
kelly
as I was saying, the comment I wrote next to that is “nooooooooooo.”
mckenzie
And I think we’ll meet Arthur next time as well. So we can get more information on him.
kelly
So Arthur, he likes to have class outside, which is, I guess, the cool Professor thing to do. Although I have never done it, because I don’t like the outdoors.
mckenzie
I hate having class outside. Like, even as an undergraduate, I was like, I need a place to put my notebook.
kelly
Yeah, I just don’t want to be in nature. But also, he has class in the living room of the girls’ house, and class runs long because they like to hang out and sit and smoke and talk with him. And I think that this is something that I was lucky enough not to have experienced. But again, shirley is asking us to view this guy as a predator. Right? Of course, the girls who are his students don’t know enough of the world to know that this guy should not be doing this. But Natalie is writing about ooh, this cool guy and writing about it to her father, who we have seen is an Arthur Langdon.
mckenzie
we’ll find out I think next episode, that it is a known fact on campus that his wife was a student, I think either last year or two years ago. So I think actually, it’s the opposite, where it’s been so normalized, that there is an air of possibility. It’s not that they don’t know it’s gross, it’s that they want that closeness because they know that it’s possible and he’s charming and popular.
kelly
But also, if your professor is ever hitting on you, it is because they cannot compete in their own age group. So. free wisdom with Kelly.
mckenzie
We learned about Natalie’s first attempt to make a friend.
*mckenzie reads from pg 64*
I just thought that was really sweet. I’m just imagining her playing tennis with a friend.
*mckenzie reads from pg 65*
You made a sad noise.
kelly
Yeah, “tell Mom I could use a box of cookies or cake. Lots of the girls get packages from home. So, Hint, hint, Mom, you didn’t think to send me a package, but lots of the other girls do.” And if we connect that with what we know about surveillance, she wants to be seen to get a care package from home. So get on it, charity.
Mckenzie:
sad.
kelly
Also, i am very interested in seeing how much of this letter turns out to be true. Because she’s putting on a very, happy type of “Wish you were here, having a great time.” But I don’t think that that is the case. Have you seen the letters that Lin Manuel Miranda wrote to his family from camp?
Mckenzie:
No. Oh, no.
Kelly:
He hated it. And he wrote, “hello, this is your son. Remember me? I’m the kid you left in the woods.”
mckenzie
Oh my god. I did see on Tik Tok that a mom told her son, because he sent photos home, And she gave her son a signal If things were really bad, it was like a circle or something. And he’s making it in every photo.
kelly
Yeah. So Natalie is performing once again. She also really likes donuts.
Mckenzie:
This is something Kelly really wanted to bring out.
Kelly:
after her 8am, She gets a breakfast of coke and doughnuts. And for some reason she’s gaining weight. I’m not body shaming, have coke and donuts for breakfast if you want but you know, balanced diet.
mckenzie:
Who won this episode?
kelly
I’m gonna give it to Natalie. it took her three episodes, but she did it. What do you think?
mckenzie
Um, I’m gonna give it to Peggy Spencer.
kelly
I knew you were gonna say peggy spencer.
mckenzie
She’s thriving. She’s redheaded, which I always really wanted to have auburn hair. She’s taking charge. And she is setting boundaries. She’s like, No, you cannot haze me. So Peggy is the winner. My loser I think will be the girl with the bangs.
kelly
I had bangs. getting rid of them was the darkest year of my life. But also, the loser is academia.
mckenzie
once again. So if you are following along with us, we are reading until page 95 Next time. we will meet the aforementioned Arthur Langdpn and his child bride, and also some of the other women that Natalie goes to school with. we’ll see a little bit about what Natalie’s college is like, and will keep on plugging away.
kelly
Poor girl with bangs. Do we ever see her again?
mckenzie:
I don’t remember.
kelly
Anyway, also, as with many of Jackson’s heroines, we have no idea what Natalie looks like. But she’s been gaining weight. And for someone who looks in the mirror a lot, that’s significant. All right, well, we will see you next time folks. have a nice Halloween. Although Halloween will have passed by the time we release this. Check us out on the web. Also, we are going to have some guests this season. So we’re very much looking forward to talking to them. If you would like to be one of our guests, or even if you would like to send us a voice memo that is not offensive and will not get us canceled, send it our way, and we’ll play it on the podcast. So any final thoughts? That’d
mckenzie:
That’d be dope, please send us voice memos.
kelly:
Did you want to tell the people what cocktail I’m going to make tonight?
mckenzie:
What is it? It’s a literary cocktail.
kelly
It’s a literary cocktail. First of all, let it never ever, ever, ever, ever be said that I am a Hemingway fan, ever. But I’m making death in the afternoons, because they’re green, and they were on a list of Halloween cocktails, and they seem fairly easy. So it’s absinthe and prosecco, and if we die, we die. So this may very well be the last time you hear from us.
Mckenzie:
See ya!
Kelly:
goodbye.
KELLY:
thanks for listening to reading shirley jackson: the podcast. you can find us on the web at readingshirleyjackson.com, where you can get access to show notes and transcripts from both season one and season two, as well as contact us with any questions, comments or suggestions for what you’d like to hear on the podcast. if you like the show and you’d like to support us, the best way to do that is to tell a friend, or even better, leave us a five star review on spotify or apple podcasts, since that really helps the algorithm notice us and recommend us to more people. thanks again for listening and we’ll see you in two weeks!
reading shirley jackson:the podcast 