Wallpaper Quotes - page 2
The tension between socially acceptable housewifery and creative ambition is certainly easy to find in Jackson's life, but it's rather harder to locate in her fiction. There's no question that, in her books, the house is a deeply ambiguous symbol-a place of warmth and security and also one of imprisonment and catastrophe. But the evil that lurks in Jackson's fair-seeming homes is not housework; it's other people-husbands, neighbors, mothers, hellbent on squashing and consuming those they profess to care for. And what keeps women inside these ghastly places is not societal pressure, or a patriarchal jailer, but the demon in their own minds. In this sense, Jackson's work is less an anticipation of second-wave feminism than a conversation with her female forebears in the gothic tradition. Her stories take the figure of the imprisoned "madwoman," as found in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and make her the warder of her own jail.
Shirley Jackson
The new thing, a great banality in white, off-white and poor-white, leaned up against the wall. "Interesting,” we said. "It's poor,” Snow White said. "Poor, poor.” "Yes,” Paul said,” one of my poorer things I think.” "Not so poor of course as yesterday's, poorer on the other hand than some,” she said. "Yes,” Paul said, "it has some of the qualities of poorness.” "Especially poor in the lower left-hand corner,” she said. "Yes,” Paul said, "I would go so far as to hurl it into the marketplace.” "They're getting poorer,” she said. "Poorer and poorer,” Paul said with satisfaction, "descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever been.” ... "Sublimely poor,” she murmured. "Wallpaper,” he said.
Donald Barthelme