'The Witch' | Shirley Jackson’s Hidden Masterpiece

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was a master of twentieth-century American Gothic literature. Her novels and short stories are still widely read, studied, and adapted. If you’ve read Jackson, you’re probably familiar with her chilling 1948 short story, ‘The Lottery’. But is it the most unsettling story Jackson ever wrote? Might there be an even shorter, even more disturbing tale in her oeuvre? Watch on to find out.

Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats

Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_

Bibliography

Franklin, Ruth, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2016)

Jackson, Shirley, 'Biography of a Story', Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010)

Jackson, Shirley, 'The Lottery', The Lottery and Other Stories (London: Penguin, 2009)

Jackson, Shirely, 'The Witch', The Lottery and Other Stories, (London: Penguin, 2009)

[JinjoJess]

For me, I think my read of "The Witch" hinges on the exchange the boy has with the man when he first enters the train car, about how his dad smokes cigars too, and the old man says something like "all men smoke cigars; you will too one day." I've always interpreted "The Witch" as being about how casually and blatantly violent misogyny is passed down to boys from older men. Given that the violence is being done to a younger sister and the man and boy form a bond over rattling the mother, I've always felt like that's at least one of the undercurrents to the story. The gender reversal of the titular witch then calls to mind how men in power used accusations of witchcraft to keep women in line and distract from their own misdeeds.

[GradKat]

I think Jackson’s most unsettling story is “ Louisa please come home”, where a missing woman returns to her parents in response to their annual radio broadcasts, but they don’t believe it’s her.

[ritahertzberg]

At age 74, after a lifetime of being an avid reader, “The Lottery” still stands as the most horrifying piece of fiction I have ever encountered. I actually was introduced to the story in play form, performed by my junior high school drama club. It so disturbed me that I became physically ill and had to leave school. I had nightmares for months. In spite of this, I forced myself to read the story and its hold on my psyche even deepened. I truly believe that Shirley Jackson’s capturing of the human capability for being inhumane is one of the most chilling and brilliant written works of post-WWII literature. Thank you for your wonderful presentation.

[pintsizebear]

The most disturbing part of The Witch to me isn't the story itself, it's that it mirrors an experience I had when I was a lot younger. I was on the bus alone, carrying home groceries and a bottle of detergent that had a baby harp seal on the label. An older man came and sat beside me, striking up a fairly normal conversation, and after a couple minutes of chatting he says while pointing at the detergent, "Hey, do you know what they do with baby seals like that?" I say, "No, what?" He then began to describe in detail how baby seals are clubbed to death and skinned for their fur. I awkwardly cut him off, said goodbye, and got off the bus at the next stop.
The horror for me isn't in the hypothetical scenario of "wouldn't it be scary up if this happened" or thinking about what the story could have conceptually represented, it's that people like that are real and I met one.

[kbanks]

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but I think the last lollipop is important--when his mother gives it to him, she prompts him for thanks.

""What do you say?" she asked.
"Thank you, " the little boy said. "Did that man really cut his little sister up in pieces?"
"He was just teasing, " the mother said, and added urgently, "Just TEASING."
"Prob'ly, " the little boy said."

The boys knows how to behave. She's taught him how to behave. He can still perform the duties of higher courtesy--when prompted. But there's been another element introduced, and it can't just be scrubbed clean. I think this is something anyone who feels a sense of responsibility to a child (I don't have children of my own yet, but I have younger siblings I would fight to protect) fears.

Theory: This story is horrendously unnerving because you get to watch a loss of innocence happening not by natural erosion and maturity but all at once, and in a public place, and right in front of a child's guardian, and I can't think of much more terrifying than that. It's so quick and stunning that it's almost...a wicked magic.

[theresahemminger]

When I first read The Witch I was a young mother myself. It never occurred to me that the man might be telling a true story. He clearly heard the boy’s conversation and was echoing it which the boy recognized so he wasn’t frightened. But the mother’s world was turned upside down as he must have known it would be because the mother knew what the child didn’t—that adult men don’t talk like that to children. That, to me, was the horror—the mother’s realization of how easily evil can slip into a child’s life and her weapons are only those she uses where her only power lies which is what she uses for disciplining her child: the wagging finger and the lollipop reward. The boy was correct: he was a witch—a witch being someone who wishes evil on another which has real power of its own, the mother being the object, not the child.

This story terrified me more than all the others.

[liamross]

the witch immediately jumps out to me as a representation of an interaction most women in my life have gone through. i’m a man but i’ve often been told by women close to me of experiences where they’re alone with men that they trust and yet suddenly a switch will flip. a joke will be taken to far, comments will keep being made, looks will be given. they aren’t safe anymore. among friends, lovers, family even and yet just for a moment they realise just how alone they are. i saw another comment talking about how they read the story as being about how men are easily groomed into violent misogyny and im glad im not the only one. even before the man shows up the boy is fantasising about brutally murdering a woman. did he see a witch that needed to be defeated or did he just see an innocent woman in the window? is there a difference to him? that’s why he moves on so quickly. it was just him and the man having fun. just boys being boys. but his mother spent those moments in terror. men often don’t even know nor care that they’re treating these women terribly. the old man was talking about his little sister with love and how he adored her and how beautiful she was and then he killed her. violently. under patriarchy men can see violence and subjugation as a normal or right way to treat those they love. the old man wasn’t a witch. the boy’s mother was, because she was there and the man was a man.

[CharlieApples]

I think The Witch is about how easy it was (and still is) for men to influence young boys and get them excited about violent misogyny as if it were a normal thing that just happens sometimes. The mother, being a traditional woman raised to expect that men would protect women and that women were meant to be timid and defenseless, is just that; timid, defenseless, and totally unsure what to do now that she’d witnessed her son being effortlessly indoctrinated into the folksy, traditional masculine pastime of fantasizing about violence against those too weak and timid and defenseless to stop them.

Her horror was one of unknown territory which she’d never imagined possible. She was raised like a sheltered prize winning pony to produce beautiful perfect children, and now an old man, an authority figure over all women and children, is joyfully teaching her joyful male child how to be a violent misogynist. Because that’s how masculinity was expressed; prizing and sheltering the women you approve of and like, and torturing and murdering the ones you deemed to be witches. It was normal! She was a nag, and only witches do that! There’s just something about her that makes me feel…angry!

And then male life goes on, joyfully, knowing that they will never be burnt at the stake for raising their voice or taking attention away from their sisters. They will be rewarded by male acceptance and terrified female offerings of lollipops in exchange for short term compliance with the most superficial rules of civility.

The mother’s horror is realizing what her innocent little baby boy is already on his way to becoming.

But the happy little boy with the second lollipop is reflecting on how much he admired the old man for being the _real_ witch. That is, a malevolent person who manipulates others and sows the seeds of evil thoughts into benevolent minds, but always invisibly. In ways that can’t be called criminal. Just stories. And then he gets up and moves on, still the same harmless, smiling old man.

[ingridcornwell]

When you brought up the mother’s point of view, what do you say to your 4 year-old son, brought back a memory of a comment from a high school friend of mine. He said that his family had to be careful of his little brother who, after watching the Three Stooges a few times, had started reenacting various scenes. If you were sitting watching TV, he would come up behind you and try to knock you on the head with a hammer - just like Mo - and run off laughing. My horrible thought for the mom in the story, after the boy’s laughing at the man’s story, was can I trust my 4 year-old around the baby? I think part of the brilliance of Shirley Jackson’s abrupt endings is that it allows each person’s own terrible life events combined with their imagination to take her story to places more horrifying than what’s written on the page. Like the man in the story, Shirley Jackson plants a seed, then walks away chuckling. 😱

[Boggythefroggy]

Popping in here late, but wanted to say that my read on The Lottery makes me think of how in our capitalistic society, there will always be a hierarchy and thus a needed sacrifice, usually being someone who is marginalized in some capacity (gender, race, class etc). Like the elders in the village, we are also told much of the time that “it was always like this” and “nothing but capitalism works.” All while we watch people die unhoused and without healthcare. It’s also interesting how the mother is the one to be sacrificed, and how gleeful the sons are to be spared over their mother. It very much feels like Jackson, who writes a lot about feminist issues (even if she didn’t identify as such at the time), wrote it to be the mother chosen for the lottery very pointedly, as it’s often the case that women are the scapegoats for the faults of society.

[pamelachristie]

One of the things I find particularly striking in this story is way Jackson defines the genders. The mother is passive, ineffectual, unable even to protect her child from a stranger. The daughter is, significantly, a baby and helpless even to the point of falling over if not supervised every minute. The boy, on the other hand, is vibrant, assertive, curious. And the man, whose ranks the boy will one day join, when he's old enough to smoke cigars, takes complete control of the encounter, to the point of usurping the boy's loyalty for his mother. This is the way society still works, and it was even stronger back then, when there were no dissident voices protesting the social order.

Another point to consider is imagery of the witch. A witch is a fairy tale character, and unabridged fairy tales, with their wolves and ogres are actually very useful for childhood learning. From the safety of their beds, children can think about future encounters with dangerous people and decide what to do if they meet one. Have you ever heard a small child respond to a fairy tale like this? "If I ever meet that monster, I'll shoot him, BANG! And I'll cut him up in pieces!" Without foreknowledge of wickedness, an adult who grew up without scary stories is a sitting duck for the first opportunist who comes along. However, in this story, the boy isn't safely tucked up in bed, and the storyteller himself seems like a kind of wicked wolf. It's unlikely that he really did all those things to his sister - it's pretty hard for a kid to dismember a human body, for example, and where would he have found a caged bear to feed the head to? But I think his dual aim in telling this, is to remind the mother that she's helpless to oppose him, and to intrigue the boy with a glimpse into the realm of male dominance that is hi s birthright.

I actually wasn't shocked by the man's anecdote, because this, of course, is a Shirley Jackson story. As soon as he said "Shall I tell you what I did?" I was prepared for something outrageous, so I was a little confused at first when he spoke of rocking horses and lollipops. But that was soon put right when he went on from there, and I found myself back in familiar territory.

[grimgoblinjack]

"The Witch" is too much like reality for me. "The Lottery" is true in the fact that families stone their outcast relatives in other ways, leaving them to die on the street. Shirley Jackson was a realist. She wrote realism, not just gothic horror.

[dakotaridgek]

You spooked me when you touched a floating book and it began to sway. I thought it was a bookish design on the wallpaper

[justinecooper]

The boy goes back to his seat, and looks out the window. "Prob'ly he was a witch."
...
The mother opened her mouth to say something, to point out that there were no such things as witches but, as the boy stared out the window and seemed to have given the encounter no further thought, she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the door to the compartment. She ran the words the old man had said through her mind over and over until finally she could sit still no longer and stood, walked to the door. She looked back at the boy.
"I'm going to get us something to drink, " she said. "And...and maybe some snacks. Would you like that?"
The boy turned his face from the window and nodded.
"Then take care of your sister while I'm gone. I'll only be a minute, ok?"
The boy nodded again. And smiled.

[letolethe]

I don't think what the mother says sounds like she's addressing a child, necessarily. "What do you think you're doing?" seems like pretty commonplace response when you observe someone hurting something or someone you love. I might say something similar. But I do agree that the man talks to the boy mostly like another little boy, not an adult, which is telling, I think. I think that the story is about two things--the everyday violence with which we surround ourselves and our families (in fairy tales, cartoons, video games, movies, many books, and, in the real world, war and murder and guns, etc.) but the horror and shock we react with when it occurs or seems likely to occur in the real world nearby. Violence is for THEM, not us; it's in stories, not real. But of course, we know we live in a violent world. The story also subtly calls out a sexist subtext--the man joins forces with the male in the group (small as he is), while the jokes and stories all revolve around female victims--sisters and the mother.

[Natskygge]

as a female horror author, Shirley has always been a huge inspiration. She was amazing!

[rebeccac]

I think for me the impact of The Witch is heightened by how eerily in line it is to experiences I have had on trains. While I was studying I regularly traveled 12hrs by train to visit my family and strange things like this happen. One instance found me sitting next to a rather bedraggled older man who was altogether to insistent that I should sleep on his shoulder, he told me of how I reminded me of his mother, and he loved her cooking, all of a sudden the tone shifted to how vitriolic his hatred for her was, and he began miming how he would beat up animals in far to much detail "just for looking at him" the whole time laughing as if he were telling a great story. Another trip I taught a young boy to tie his shoelaces, and played 4+hours of eye spy like games, to distract him from concocting plans in grotesque detail about how he would kill his elderly Nanny who sat beside him seemingly unbothered by his imaginings of elaborate Rube-Goldbergesque traps with levels of violence that were so unsettling to hear from a child.

[tomasdominguez]

An aspect of terror and horror in this story that I haven't seen people touch up on as much is the baby. The baby sister(s) in the story become one and the same to me. One cannot help but imagine the baby in front of the boy being the one that's being mangled and destroyed. This, added with how the baby is already hurt before in the story: when his brother goes to comfort her and she reacts positively, clearly trusting him. However, once the man sits down, she's only mentioned to show she falls sideways, yet again delicate as babies are and in danger. While we're focusing on the old man (who clearly is a threat to the boy), the boy and his mom, all I can think about looking back is WHERE IS THE BABY?! Not only in the subconscious idea of "Did this man grab her? Clearly he has a fantasy he's not afraid to speak out loud nor is he disgusted at of hurting young girls." But also, because she has bumped her head before. What if she falls? What if the strap suffocates her? The dismissal of the baby continues until the end of the story. The last time she's mentioned is mid conversation between the boy, the old man and the woman, as stated before. This means one cannot check-in on her, and even leaves place for the fantasy of the-old-man-as-witch, having kidnapped the baby as witches often do.

[jenford]

I love The Witch and am almost sure my deceased mother-in-law had read it as she took a real joy in telling people and especially children outrageous threats. The first time I read it all I could see was her face as the man. I think she too wanted to see how people would handle it, at my baby shower she didn't bring a gift and stated to my old mom and aunts that she always waits in case the baby is born dead, I had to hear about that for years and the most horrifting thing to the ladies is that she was a labor and delivery RN,

[Wanda]

This story reminds me of a short story by Saki called "The Story-Teller". There's a similar setup, with several unruly children travelling on a train with their aunt, and a gentleman tells them a story about a good little girl who ends up being devoured by a wolf. It does have a payoff, though: the indignant aunt tells him off, and he replies that his story at least kept them quiet for 10 minutes, which was more than she could do.