Honors Thesis Archive

Author	Sophia Reutter
Title	Arsenic in the Sugar
Department	English
Advisor
Year	2020
Honors	University Honors
Full Text	View Thesis (784 KB)
Abstract	1950’s author, Shirley Jackson, wrote of the daily housewoman’s life with a Gothic turn. Beginning with domestic life magazines and later extending her works to the international press, Jackson wrote of the familiar and sometimes welcoming image of domesticity in a way that demonstrates the complex and ambiguous relationship women hold with their domestic roles. Though for some her writing inspired the breaking away from the housewife image, for many it brought a desire to embrace the housewife identity with writings that shared their experiences and made light of their domestic roles. Feminist readers debated whether women could truly be happy in these domestic roles or if the attempt to make light of the household duties was a denial of the limitations placed on them by a patriarchy. In Jackson’s writing, there is a combination of support for the agentic housewife and the belief that domesticity brought personal destruction. Through this essay, it is shown how Jackson’s literature, including her penultimate work, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, provides insight into the historical questioning behind the domestic woman, simultaneously showing the positive and negative components of domestic life.