2024/09/28 by Margherita Orsi · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Crime and Detective Fiction Studies #Crime, Deviance, and Social Control #Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.3390/h13050125
openalex publication_date 2024/09/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The “haunted house formula” is a central component in every Female Gothic narrative from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Typically, it revolves around a heroine trapped in a gloomy mansion, seeking to escape a male villain. This trope, which covertly explores feminine anxieties such as domestic confinement and familial oppression, recurs multiple times in Shirley Jackson’s “house trilogy” as well, namely The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. However, as noted by many critics, while Female Gothic narratives usually conclude with the protagonist’s successful escape and her marriage to the male hero, in Jackson’s fiction, there is “no way out”. Her protagonists remain confined within the domestic space. This essay explores Jackson’s reappropriation of the haunted house trope as a symbol of the paranoia experienced by women in 1950s suburban America. The analysis begins by outlining the theme in traditional Female Gothic fiction, followed by an account of the sociohistorical context in which Jackson operated, without dismissing the significancy of her personal life experiences as well. Jackson’s “house trilogy” will then be examined, paying particular attention to the ways in which the haunted house formula is subverted to function not as an escape narrative, but as a metaphor for modern women’s inescapable confinement.