Women in the Father’s House and the Domestic Ideology of the Fifties in Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial
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This essay investigates how the three female characters' voluntary confinement to the house in Shirley Jackson's The Sundial reflects mid-twentieth century American women's internalization of domestic ideology. America in the 1950s were often remembered for its prosperity and stability. The typical familial image in this era is a nuclear family of a breadwinning father, a housewife mother, and children in front of their suburban house. However, on the contrary to this idealized image, women in the fifties suffered from frustration and hopelessness, which Betty Friedan referred to as “the problem that has no name.” Jackson, herself a mother, housewife, and writer, parodies this situation of women in her novel. As the women in the fifties were physically chained to the house through drudgery and psychologically imprisoned by domestic ideology, three female characters confine themselves in the Halloran mansion, which replicates a traditional Gothic castle. Invoking typical heroines entrapped in the castles of Gothic novels, Jackson's women cannot leave the house, but in this case by their own choice, without any villains keeping them there. This voluntary imprisonment is a satiric and exaggerated description of the women in the fifties, who could not help but remain in the house. The seeming matriarchy under Mrs. Halloran is only superficial when the long-dead patriarch's rule still exists, and Aunt Fanny, who loves the house most, can barely occupy the marginal space as an old, unmarried daughter. Fancy, the most sensible child character in the novel, only repeats, like Mrs. Halloran, the murder of her family member. Through these female characters' voluntary incarceration and vain obsessions with the house, Jackson reveals how deeply the women of her time unconsciously accepted the popular images of domesticity and how difficult it is to escape from that unconscious imprisonment.
Abstract
This essay investigates how the three female characters' voluntary confinement to the house in Shirley Jackson's The Sundial reflects mid-twentieth century American women's internalization of domestic ideology. America in the 1950s were often remembered for its prosperity and stability. The typical familial image in this era is a nuclear family of a breadwinning father, a housewife mother, and children in front of their suburban house. However, on the contrary to this idealized image, women in the fifties suffered from frustration and hopelessness, which Betty Friedan referred to as “the problem that has no name.” Jackson, herself a mother, housewife, and writer, parodies this situation of women in her novel. As the women in the fifties were physically chained to the house through drudgery and psychologically imprisoned by domestic ideology, three female characters confine themselves in the Halloran mansion, which replicates a traditional Gothic castle. Invoking typical heroines entrapped in the castles of Gothic novels, Jackson's women cannot leave the house, but in this case by their own choice, without any villains keeping them there. This voluntary imprisonment is a satiric and exaggerated description of the women in the fifties, who could not help but remain in the house. The seeming matriarchy under Mrs. Halloran is only superficial when the long-dead patriarch's rule still exists, and Aunt Fanny, who loves the house most, can barely occupy the marginal space as an old, unmarried daughter. Fancy, the most sensible child character in the novel, only repeats, like Mrs. Halloran, the murder of her family member. Through these female characters' voluntary incarceration and vain obsessions with the house, Jackson reveals how deeply the women of her time unconsciously accepted the popular images of domesticity and how difficult it is to escape from that unconscious imprisonment.
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