{"id":495,"date":"2025-12-19T16:25:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shirleyjacksonstudies.org\/?p=495"},"modified":"2026-01-09T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T17:21:12","slug":"495","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shirleyjacksonstudies.org\/?p=495","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cNothing\u2026Well, Soft\u201d: Shirley Jackson\u2019s Transgressive Adolescents and Post-War Women\u2019s Periodicals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Janice Lynne Deitner<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Janice Lynne Deitner is a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin. Her work, funded by Research Ireland, situates American author Shirley Jackson within the postwar periodical landscape, with a focus on critically neglected magazines. In 2024 she completed her PhD on bodies and minds in Shirley Jackson\u2019s American contexts, also at Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests include periodical studies, twenty-first century zombie narratives, and American popular culture, with a special interest in Science Fiction, Horror, the Gothic, and where they intersect. She has published work with The Irish Journal of American Studies<\/em>, Shirley Jackson Studies<\/em>, and in various edited collections. She is Assistant Editor of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies<\/em> and co-organizer of The Irish Network for Gothic and Horror Studies.<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The May 1960 issue of the Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em> includes a short poem entitled \u201cIt\u2019s Such Fun to be a Woman.\u201d In the poem, a mother sees her young daughter as taking up the mantle of \u201cthe joy of living and reliving\/The fun and loving ritual of woman\u2019s beauty.\u201d The mother includes her own mother, her daughter, and a fictional future granddaughter, in \u201ca long parade\u201d of figures embodying the same feminine norms, with \u201c[t]heir new spring suits and lady gloves.\u201d The mother also refers to \u201cthe look in [her daughter\u2019s] eyes\/That dazzled gaze that seems to say,\/\u2019I want to be like you<\/em>,\u201d demonstrating how those feminine norms are taught in childhood and adolescence through mimicry and repetition of the mother\u2019s behaviors (\u201cSuch Fun\u201d 61; original emphasis). Elsewhere in the same issue, Shirley Jackson\u2019s story \u201cLouisa, Please,\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> is introduced with the byline, \u201cWhat kind of girl would do this\u201d (49), referring to the protagonist\u2019s choice to leave home without notice. The magazine\u2019s byline casts judgement on Jackson\u2019s main character Louisa that her story does not. Reading this judgement in tandem with the sentiments expressed in the poem clearly delineates the boundaries of what was considered acceptable feminine agency and expression. As Tyler M. Dick notes, \u201cmuch of Jackson\u2019s short fiction in [women\u2019s] magazines existed in subtle tension\u201d with other magazine content (Dick). More pointedly and as made evident in this Journal<\/em> issue, Jackson\u2019s construction of adolescence sits in tension with hegemonic views of post-war2<\/a><\/sup> femininity such as that on display in the poem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, the poem allows only for maturation through example of a type of narrowly defined femininity. Instead, as is evident in Jackson\u2019s work, there is space within the process of maturation, particularly in the liminal state of adolescence, that can allow for a blurring of feminine norms and constricting gender identities, as evidenced by a cartoon in the same issue with \u201cLouisa\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Such Fun to be a Woman.\u201d In the cartoon, two young women of indeterminate age, coded as tomboyish teenagers by their dress, look at each other as one says, \u201cI must be at the dangerous age\u2014whatever I want to do, either I\u2019m too young or I\u2019m old enough to know better\u201d (\u201cCartoon\u201d 110). In other words, either you are a child, or you should \u201cknow better,\u201d i.e. adhere to the norms mentioned above on the way to becoming a woman. According to Deborah Martin, because the \u201cfemale adolescent\u201d is \u201cboth female and child, she twice challenges categorization [\u2026], embodying anxiety about categorization\u201d itself \u201cand posing a double threat to the power relations of patriarchy\u201d (138). This article examines two representations of adolescent figures in Jackson\u2019s work within the contexts of the magazines in which they first appeared. Though an increasing number of critics look at Jackson\u2019s semi-autobiographical humor pieces which make up the bulk of her publications in women\u2019s magazines, my focus instead is on two fiction pieces3<\/a><\/sup>: \u201cLouisa, Please,\u201d mentioned above, and \u201cAll She Said Was Yes,\u201d published in Vogue<\/em> in November 1962. In particular, \u201cLouisa\u201d and \u201cAll She Said\u201d feature adolescent figures with non-normative physicality, outr\u00e9 lifestyle choices, or socially dangerous forms of knowledge. Louisa in the former story is technically no longer an adolescent but embraces a liminal adolescent playfulness. Vicky in the latter story is fifteen, but has been granted knowledge beyond her years, giving new meaning to the idea of \u201cknowing better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The publications that printed these stories, Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em> and Vogue<\/em>, represent different views of narrowly defined femininity: the Journal<\/em> emphasizing domesticity and motherhood and Vogue<\/em> focusing on high fashion. This difference is indicative of a need to look more closely at these publications, rather than merely including them under the umbrella term of \u201cwomen\u2019s magazines.\u201d Additionally, Jackson\u2019s transgressive young women clash with many depictions of acceptable femininity reflected elsewhere in the pages around them, but they are not alone in complicating the often-prescriptive content of these publications. In discussing these adolescents, I first establish the role of women\u2019s magazines in post-war America, touching on Jackson\u2019s relationship with them. I use the work of Betty Friedan as a negative framework, as Friedan\u2019s conception of women\u2019s magazines is limiting. I then briefly discuss the position of the adolescent in post-war America, based on the work of popular Freudian psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, as introduction to a close reading of Jackson\u2019s stories. Through this reading, we see that Jackson\u2019s characters, because of either their adolescence mindset or their redefinition of \u201cknowing better,\u201d are able to embrace ways of living and being that exist outside of restrictive ideological norms of the era, presaging shifts in gender roles that occurred in the late 1960s and after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To begin with the magazines: as briefly mentioned above, the term \u201cwomen\u2019s magazines\u201d contains a multitude of publications with a great variety of editorial stances, ideas about content, and target audiences. To conflate these publications under a single categorical descriptor does a disservice to the variety of work included. In particular, Vogue<\/em> and Journal<\/em> have very different editorial stances and audiences, but they are both marketed to female readers, and they do contain material that creates and sells standards in a time of narrowing cultural norms regarding class, race and, most relevant for this article, gender. Through their content, including advertising, they \u201cserved as advice manuals, guides to fashion and home decor, cookbooks, marriage counselors, and catalogs of goods and services\u201d (Walker, Women\u2019s<\/em> v). In an era with fewer options for communication and interaction, \u201c[m]agazines thus […] both shape[d] and reflect[ed] the values, habits, and aspirations of American women and their families\u201d (1). This is also why they were so important to a writer like Jackson, as they needed a large amount of material to meet popular demand and therefore provided a wide variety of publishing possibilities and financial opportunities.

Jackson published more often in women\u2019s magazines not covered in this article, primarily Good Housekeeping, Charm, Woman\u2019s Day, <\/em>and Woman\u2019s Home Companion<\/em>, though she also had pieces in Mademoiselle, Red Book, <\/em>and McCall\u2019s<\/em>; Ladies\u2019 Home Journal <\/em>and Vogue<\/em> contain only a handful of Jackson pieces each. They also have very distinct and different editorial reputations and markets. \u201cVogue<\/em> primarily addressed fashion and upper-class social interaction … and Ladies\u2019 Home Journal <\/em>presented perhaps the most diverse and comprehensive conception of domestic life\u201d (Walker, Shaping viii), albeit with a middle-class focus. Both Journal<\/em> and Vogue<\/em> were shaped by male figures who, though no longer living by the post-war era, had huge impacts on the publishing standards of these respective publications. In 1889, Edward Bok took over editorship of the Journal and, in the words of Helen Woodward, \u201cfrom this moment [it] began to develop into an American institution\u201d (64). In 1921, Bok wrote a third-person autobiography in which he noted his intention to create \u201can authoritative clearing-house for all the problems confronting women in the home […] a magazine […] that would give light and leading [sic<\/em>] in the woman\u2019s world\u201d (162). He also argued that \u201cthe public, while it knows what it wants when it sees it, cannot clearly express its wants.\u201d The editor, instead, has to \u201cedit rightly so that he may lead\u201d (163-64). This sense of Journal<\/em> as directing women\u2019s lives recurs in much of the literature around it and, to a lesser extent, in discussions of other women\u2019s magazines. Vogue<\/em> is one such magazine that provided instruction for women, with the emphasis instead on fashion. Similar to Bok, publisher Cond\u00e9 Nast bought an existing magazine in 1909, implementing an editorial policy that made \u201cVogue<\/em> […] the technical adviser\u2014the consulting specialist\u2014to the woman of fashion\u201d (qtd. in Seebohm 76). Four years later he delineated his idea of \u201cClass Publications,\u201d writing that \u201cthe publisher, the editor, the advertising manager and circulation man must conspire not only to get all their readers from the one particular class to which the magazine is dedicated, but rigorously to exclude all others<\/em>\u201d (Seebohm 80; original emphasis). This belief system would make the magazine a closed, upper-class bastion. In fact, Nast originally excluded fiction from his version of Vogue<\/em> because \u201cfiction\u2019s indiscriminate appeal \u2026 dilute[s] \u2018class\u2019 circulation\u201d (118). Nast would revisit this idea in the early 1940s, particularly because of the success of fiction in other women\u2019s magazines (336). However, in the 1960 issue I discuss here, Jackson\u2019s story is the only piece of fiction in over one hundred and fifty pages. 

In the post-war era, both of these publications were in a long period of transition, resulting in tension between the editorial principles that had shaped them and new editorial leadership. In 1935, married couple Bruce and Beatrice Blackmar Gould took over editorship of the Journal<\/em>, only stepping down in 1962, two years after the publication of \u201cLouisa.\u201d Under the Goulds, circulation expanded. In the 1956 edition of his Magazines in the United States<\/em>, James Playsted Wood noted that “the Goulds believed that the working intelligence of the average American woman was far greater than generally believed.\u201d In response, they sought to \u201c\u2018widen the boundaries of her traditional areas of interest\u2019\u201d (120). Wood also ponders the reason for \u201cthe Journal<\/em>\u2019s pre-eminence among women\u2019s magazines. It seems … at once more feminine and feminist than its peers.\u201d The Journal<\/em>\u2019s post-war \u201ceditorial philosophy\u201d stated that \u201c[a] magazine like ours is [\u2026] a moral force\u201d (qtd in Wood 121). All of these assertions provide a complicated view of a powerful platform. Jackson only published a small number of stories with the Journal<\/em>, and \u201cLouisa\u201d was the second. Joan Wylie Hall notes that the ending of Jackson\u2019s final story, 1965\u2019s \u201cHome,\u201d was changed at request of the editors because \u201cthe magazine\u2019s fiction department was shocked and disappointed\u201d by Jackson\u2019s original version and requested a happy ending (89). Though the Goulds made it their mission to publish best-selling fiction of quality (Wood 121, Gould and Gould 250), there were pressures on writers to conform to editorial standards.

The Goulds also oversaw a growing focus on the youth, who by the 1950s were included in the target audiences of these publications (Walker, Women\u2019s<\/em> 2). Between the two editions of Wood\u2019s history of American magazines, that is between 1949 and 1956, the Journal<\/em> feature \u201cHow America Lives,\u201d established in 1940, was tellingly retitled, \u201cHow Young America Lives\u201d (120-121). Much of this content targeted at young audiences would continue to reinforce narrow ideals of femininity. Nancy A. Walker notes that \u201c[m]agazine features for children and adolescents\u201d not only broadened the readership, but certain articles also \u201creinforce[d] the idea that girls, like their mothers, had to be taught to perform their roles in society and suggest[ed] that these girls [would] be observed and judged\u201d in the process of learning those roles (Shaping<\/em> 138). For example, in the issue of the Journal<\/em> that contains \u201cLouisa,\u201d an article entitled \u201cTeenagers Want to Look Pretty Too\u201d answers \u201cbeauty pleas\u201d from young readers: \u201cThough problems vary, all girls are uniformly sure of one thing: \u2018We want to look pretty too!\u2019\u201d (Norman 86). In fact, uniformity is the intended outcome, with all young girls fitting the same thin and fashionable standard. Elsewhere in the issue, in a regular feature entitled \u201cPat Boone Talks to Teenagers,\u201d religious heartthrob Boone advises young people that \u201cthe far goal of [their] dating days\u201d is love, \u201cwhich leads to marriage, and marriage leads to families, and families make nations\u201d (82). However, in contrast to these conformist tendencies, the “Teenage Report to the Nation” the next page surveyed \u201chundreds of teenagers,\u201d with mixed results. Quotes from teens appear below images: under a group of boys, \u201cAdults tell us we should think for ourselves then don\u2019t like it when we do\u201d; under a girl on the phone, \u201cNothing is more important than friends\u201d (\u201cTeenage\u201d 83). The gender divide is stark, yet the topics even for girls include sex, drinking, and autonomy, a more complicated view of youth and gender norms that more clearly emphasizes the space in the Journal<\/em> for negotiation of those norms.

Meanwhile, as Anna Lebovic notes, Vogue<\/em> was also undergoing an \u201ceditorial shift\u201d in the mid-1950s (178), softening its attitude from a \u201cdictatorial approach as a fashion \u2018Bible\u2019 during the 1940s\u201d to \u201ca more considered and circumspect tone\u201d in the following decade (180). In 1952, new editor Jessica Daves \u201creorient[ed] the magazine towards the youthful demographic she had long identified as critical,\u201d including features on college fashion for example, in an attempt to embrace the \u201cthe cultural Zeitgeist.\u201d (Lebovic 186). This same editorial stance was firmly in place until Daves retired in early 1963, three months after publication of Jackson\u2019s story. However, looking through the November 1962 issue that contains \u201cLouisa,\u201d the focus still appears to center what Mary McCarthy calls \u201cthe mature woman\u201d (248). Unlike in the Journal<\/em>, there are very few features focused on \u201cteens.\u201d One fashion feature with the clever name \u201cEnfant-Terrific Night Looks\u201d focuses on the high fashions of elite young women and their dates, including \u201ca young Spanish diplomat\u201d and heir to a shipping business (\u201cEnfant-Terrific\u201d 124-29), reinforcing the upper-class, sophisticated, and worldly reputation of the magazine. Similarly, the regular feature \u201cPeople Are Talking About\u2026\u201d mentions the Cuban missile crisis, political thrillers, literature, theatre, art, and opera (\u201cPeople\u201d 108), however these topics are presented in sound-bite fashion for knowing, adult audiences. Much of the magazine is dedicated to imagery, advertising and fashion, giving the overall picture of a mature, sophisticated, expensive way of life, without the focus on youth visible in the Journal<\/em>.

While there were editorial shifts in the magazines, and more focus on the youth, there were also growing critiques of women\u2019s magazines. Former advertising executive Helen Woodward\u2019s 1960 book The Lady Persuaders<\/em> argued that \u201c[t]o the uninitiated, a woman\u2019s magazine may seem merely a powdery bit of fluff. No notion could be more unreal or deceptive \u2026 These publications involve a giant business investment, and have an overwhelming influence on American life\u201d (1\u20132). Woodward claimed that the magazine editors infantilize readers \u2013 \u201cthey teach them, they command them, they threaten and promise them\u201d (6\u20137) \u2013 and \u201cindoctrinate them\u201d into upending the gender hierarchy (11-12); yet, Woodward also believes that \u201cmany [editors] have fumbled, trying to guess what the reader really needs or wants,\u201d making the editorial impact of the magazines ineffective (5, see also 8). Woodward\u2019s critique is thus confused, but she was not alone in targeting the women\u2019s magazines for their influence. Intellectual author Mary McCarthy\u2019s 1950 critique of women\u2019s magazines does not see their conforming ideas of womanhood as a problem, but complains instead about infantilization: \u201cVogue<\/em>, in those days before Mademoiselle<\/em> and Glamour<\/em> and Charm<\/em> and Seventeen<\/em>,\u201d all magazines targeting a younger audience, \u201cwas an almost forbidding monitor enforcing the discipline of Paris\u201d (247). McCarthy\u2019s complaint is that these publications which cater to the youth market have destabilized what should be a constant and constraining ideal of womanhood.

Conversely, Betty Friedan\u2019s 1963 exploration of women\u2019s status, The Feminine Mystique<\/em>, analyzed women\u2019s magazines to explore the “strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform\u201d (1; see also Douglas 9, 51). This image, Friedan argues, was primarily constructed by the media, including the women\u2019s magazines and the women who, like Jackson, wrote for them. She claims that \u201cthe new image of American woman\u201d visible in the magazines \u201chad hardened into a mystique, unquestioned and permitting no questions\u201d (34). Though groundbreaking, The Feminine Mystique<\/em> is a complicated and problematic text. For example, Friedan unfairly characterizes Jackson as one of a group of \u201cHousewife Writers\u201d who use their writing to uphold this constraining feminine ideal, concluding that \u201cthere is something about Housewife Writers that isn\u2019t funny\u2014like Uncle Tom or Amos and Andy\u201d (40). Magazine pieces like Joyce Cary\u2019s March 1951 Vogue<\/em> feature \u201cThe Revolution of the Women\u201d illustrate that Friedan did have a point. The \u201crevolution\u201d of the title refers to the androgynous fashions and broader gender definitions of the 1920s, here portrayed negatively. Cary argues that \u201c[t]he young women\u201d of the post-war era \u201cnot only accept the position\u201d of mother, \u201cthey choose it,\u201d this proper \u201csense of duty\u201d a return to sanity from the woman of the 1920s who \u201cdenied her nature, cut her hair like a boy, dressed like an immature child\u201d (99). This idea of childishness as a refusal of strict gender norms is useful for my discussion of \u201cLouisa\u201d below, but Cary sees it as indicative of an \u201cage of confusion\u201d that she happily declares \u201cis past. Women are essentially free. They know what they want, and they can decide for themselves how to get it.\u201d However, this freedom to decide is limited to choosing to work or not, while raising children and running a home, and feminine presentation, in her view, is naturally restricted to certain norms (149).

As mentioned, articles like Cary’s appear to uphold Friedan\u2019s critique, but by looking at Jackson\u2019s work in the context of these magazines, it is clear that the situation is more complicated than Friedan admits. In fact, Friedan previewed her concept of the \u201cmystique\u201d in women\u2019s magazines, including the Journal<\/em>, and while \u201cthe \u2018huge\u2019 response to the book excerpt in the January 1963 issue contained \u2018more cons than pros\u2019\u201d (Coontz 30; see also 31, 146-47), Coontz also notes that despite her narrative, \u201cFriedan had no lack of supporters in the women\u2019s magazines,\u201d highlighting sympathetic and even openly feminist editors (146). Thus, the reality is more complicated than Friedan argues. As Walker and other magazine scholars point out, while \u201cthe magazines by necessity tended to preserve the status quo in their editorial content and stances, they did not, as Betty Friedan claimed […] consistently promote homemaking as the only path to female fulfillment\u201d (Women\u2019s<\/em> 8). They \u201coffered clear and limited cultural definitions of womanhood\u201d but also provided space to negotiate those definitions (Scanlon 2). Jennifer Scanlon and other periodical scholars believe that allowing women such space prepared the way for the following decade\u2019s feminism (2). Wood noted in 1956 that from the end of the nineteenth century on women\u2019s magazines helped women leave the domestic sphere, which he said seemed \u201cparadoxica[l]\u201d because \u201cthey were first directed to women as housewives and homemakers\u201d (122). Jessamyn Neuhaus places Jackson within this matrix of negotiation, because \u201cJackson showed women\u201d with her autobiographical writings that \u201cthey could transform\u201d their \u201cexperiences within their proscribed social roles to challenge the limitations of domesticity\u201d (129). In contrast to Friedan\u2019s claims, Jackson and writers like her modeled other possibilities.

Though Friedan oversimplified the impact of the magazines and \u201cexaggerated the ubiquity of the happy housewife\u201d (Coontz 65), her work is frequently useful, particularly when she comments on the work of contemporary thinkers who contributed to the outlines of the \u201cfeminine mystique,\u201d such as Freudian psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch. Deutsch\u2019s work had a noticeable influence on post-war ideas of feminine development. Her two-volume The Psychology of Women<\/em> (1944), covered adolescence in the first volume and motherhood in the second. As Rachel Devlin phrases it, \u201cfor a dense work on psychoanalysis\u201d it was \u201ca phenomenal success\u201d and as the second \u201cmost widely read work on adolescence during the post-war period,\u201d it \u201cremained the unchallenged authority on all aspects of girls\u2019 psychological passage from girlhood to womanhood\u201d until feminists, starting with Friedan, began to take issue with Freud, leading to \u201cdisinterest in her work today\u201d (222). Devlin centers Deutsch in her work on the popularity of post-war psychoanalysis, which, she argues, \u201cwas animated by the dominant preoccupations of the period,\u201d most importantly the \u201cchanging behavior of adolescent girls\u201d evident in \u201crising rates of juvenile delinquency among adolescent girls, sexual precocity, and the sense that paternal authority in particular was threatened by transformations in youth culture in the United States\u201d (219)4<\/a><\/sup>. Thus, anxieties about girlhood were at the center of post-war fears, and Deutsch\u2019s work framed the discussions about girlhood, while also determining norms for female adolescents.

Friedan depicts Deutsch as one of \u201cFreud\u2019s followers\u201d who indulged in a \u201ctorturous attempt to fit their observations of real women into his theoretical framework\u201d (95), but she correctly if sharply paraphrases Deutsch\u2019s assertion that \u201c\u2018[n]ormal\u2019 femininity is achieved […] only in so far as the woman finally renounces all active goals of her own\u201d (96). In Deutsch\u2019s words, \u201cMaturation in prepuberty consists in an aggressive thrust of activity that\u201d eventually \u201cdisappears under pressure of more passive tendencies […] The passive tendencies are of the greatest important for the further development of the girl toward femininity\u201d (Psychology<\/em> 93). In fact, Deutsch claims, \u201cthe passive nature\u201d of woman is \u201cinherent in her biology and anatomy\u201d (140). 

Because The Psychology of Women<\/em> \u201cwas used as a text for training analysts\u201d (Webster 553), it framed much of the thought around women within the psychoanalytical industry, but it also entered popular discourse in a wide variety of magazines, though often not directly. In her 1947 Life Magazine<\/em> article exploring the \u201cwoman question,\u201d Frances Levison includes Deutsch in what she calls \u201cantifeminists\u201d who believe that \u201cwoman made her big mistake when she began to imitate man and made progress in the out-of-the-home working world,\u201d adding that \u201cDr. Helene Deutsch \u2026 insists upon certain psychic qualities of femaleness that must not be denied.\u201d Levison also includes Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg under the label of \u201cantifeminists” (114). Farnham and Lundberg\u2019s 1947 book Modern Woman: The Lost Sex<\/em> argued that \u201ccontemporary women in very large numbers are psychologically disordered and that their disorder is having terrible social and personal effects\u201d (Lundberg and Farnham v). An article by Farnham and Lundberg in the November 1944 issue of the Journal<\/em> entitled \u201cMen Have Lost Their Women\u201d delineate the ideas that would eventually become Modern Woman<\/em>. Both texts refer frequently to Deutsch, and it is clear they built their arguments from her work (see also Devlin 223). Friedan notes that Farnham and Lundberg\u2019s book was \u201cparaphrased ad nauseum<\/em> in the magazines and in marriage courses, until most of its statements became a part of the conventional, accepted truth of our time\u201d (94). 

At the same time that Deutsch was influencing gender discourse and defining the process of female adolescence, the very concept of \u201cyouth\u201d was being delineated in new ways. The word \u201cteenager\u201d was new, \u201ccoined during the early 1940s\u201d for the benefit of \u201cmarketers and social reformers\u201d (Hine 3\u20134). This new concept included \u201cthe assumption that all young people, regardless of their class, location, or ethnicity, should have essentially the same experience\u201d (11). This experience, however, was differently gendered. Teenage norms were male-based, particularly when focused on rebellious or innovative worldviews, while girls instead were seen as complicit in post-war conformity (Breines 382). Transgressive female behavior was less visible because \u201c[i]n contrast to boys, stricter gender rules for girls dictated covert dissidence\u201d (384). Additionally, the anxieties regarding girls were explicitly sexual (Hine 177; see also Breines 384). Regular Journal<\/em> contributor Dorothy Thompson published a satirically titled piece \u201cIt\u2019s All the Fault of the Women!\u201d in the same issue as \u201cLouisa.\u201d Though Thompson addresses ubiquitous outrage \u201cabout the failure of women to perform their proper function in society\u201d (11), she also indulges in this fearmongering, referring to the \u201csexual and moral looseness\u201d of the time. \u201cHundreds of thousands of parents\u201d she announces, \u201cdon\u2019t know where their sixteen-year-old daughters are at three o\u2019clock in the morning!\u201d (16). Of course, this fact is true for the parents of Louisa in Jackson\u2019s story, \u201cLouisa, Please,\u201d whose actions directly evoke such fears.

Louisa decides on the eve of her sister\u2019s wedding to leave home, and the story follows the first-person account of her thought processes and plans as she erases any connection to the person she used to be. The title quotes the plea from Louisa\u2019s mother over the radio to \u201cplease come home,\u201d because at the start of the story \u201cthree long, long years\u201d have passed. Louisa tells us that her mother\u2019s voice during these yearly pleas \u201calways frightened me badly for a minute […] [e]ach time I heard it I was frightened again\u201d (Jackson, \u201cLouisa\u201d 48). The story opens with this plea, with Louisa\u2019s foregrounded fright, before jumping back in time to cover the steps of her escape. Though, as discussed above, Friedan unfairly represents women\u2019s magazines, there are useful elements to The Feminine Mystique<\/em>, for instance, when it directly reports the comments of women, including a group of popular, high school girls in the early 1960s who \u201cwere so terrified of becoming like their mothers that they could not see themselves at all. They were afraid to grow up.\u201d (54\u201355; see also Coontz 96). Similarly, Jackson herself, on her seventeenth birthday, wrote in a diary, \u201cI\u2019m afraid I\u2019m growing up\u201d (SJP Box 1). Susan Douglas repeats a version of this sentiment: \u201c[w]atching my mother […] there was one big lesson I got. Whatever this category \u2018woman\u2019 was, I didn\u2019t want a big part of it […] But then puberty hit […] And it started to seem as if we had only two choices: sink or organize a mutiny\u201d (60; see also Piercy 116). Roberta Rubenstein says this story \u201celaborate[s] on the psychological estrangement of mother and daughter\u201d (134). For Louisa, as we will see, this estrangement is a choice in response to what her mother represents. There is a freedom in immaturity for Louisa and other Jackson protagonists, such as Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle<\/em> (1962) and Natalie in Hangsaman<\/em> (1951), a refusal to conform to a single, cohesive notion of womanhood. The fact that Louisa is nineteen, technically no longer a child, reinforces this choice to be a girl on the verge of womanhood, who refuses to follow what Douglas calls that \u201cirreversible, inexorable, and excruciating\u201d maturation into womanhood (60). This reading is supported by Louisa\u2019s assertion that she \u201cdidn\u2019t just up and leave.\u201d She explains, \u201cI always knew that I was going to run away sooner or later, and I had made plans ahead of time, for whenever I decided to go\u201d (Jackson, \u201cLouisa\u201d 48). Louisa began planning her escape when still a child, through her adolescence, waiting until she was old enough to plausibly get away without interference. 

The agency implicit in Louisa’s actions enact a rebellion against the heteronormative constraints implicit in her sister\u2019s Carole\u2019s wedding, which is the background for her escape. She chooses to leave the day before the wedding \u201con purpose,\u201d intentionally \u201cleav[ing]\u201d her sister \u201cone bridesmaid short (48). Echoing Friedan\u2019s sentiments about \u201cthe reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform\u201d (1), discussed above, there is a divide between how Louisa depicts herself, her representation of her lived reality, versus the media presentation constructed by her family, that of a \u201cnormal\u201d conforming young girl. We can clearly see this divide through Louisa\u2019s narration. She feels glee at \u201cimagin[ing] Carole\u2019s face\u201d when her wedding party is impacted. Conversely, Carole publicly comments that Louisa \u201c\u2018would never have meant to spoil my wedding,\u2019\u201d to which Louisa internally responds that Carole \u201cknow[s] perfectly well that that would be exactly what I\u2019d meant\u201d (48). She even reminds the reader of the wedding later in the story, as she celebrates her successful escape: \u201cat seven in the morning of my sister\u2019s wedding day I was so far away, in every sense, that I knew<\/em> they would never find me\u201d (140, emphasis original). The concept of being \u201cso far away, in every sense\u201d extends to the wedding and the life it represents. Louisa\u2019s actions reveal a conscious and joyous rebellion against the constricting lack of choices for post-war women. She also treats the anniversary of running away \u201cas though it were my birthday\u201d (48), implying that the choice to leave is in fact a rebirth.

Indeed, the story goes into detail regarding Louisa\u2019s plans and the lengths she goes to avoid detection, as if she has planned a murder of her normative self to allow for this rebirth. For example, she purchases a round-trip ticket \u201cbecause it would make them think I was coming back\u2014that was always the way they thought about things\u201d (138). It is unclear if this \u201cthey\u201d signifies her parents or the authorities (if there is a difference), but her awareness of the rationality of authority allows her to playact rationality while remaining stalwartly \u201cirrational.\u201d Patrycja Antoszek argues that \u201cJackson\u2019s writing is political\u201d partially because of her \u201crejection of rationality and the dominant ideologies of her times\u201d (851), something that is evident in Louisa\u2019s play with rationality. When Louisa later reveals that she recently left college \u201cwith nobody\u2019s blessing\u201d (Jackson, “Louisa” 139), again asserting her autonomy, she briefly ponders whether fearing parental retribution had actually been a catalyst for her disappearance, a theory put forward by unnamed commentators. She rejects this interpretation: \u201c[I]f that had been all, I don\u2019t think I would have left. No, I had been wanting to leave for so long, ever since I can remember\u201d (140). She denies rational cause and effect, leaving for no other reason than she wants to, again an \u201cirrational,\u201d playful, and rebellious way of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key moment in this rebellion is the purchase of a new raincoat, since her old raincoat belonged to her previous life. \u201cMy mother picked it out for me,” she tells us, the maternal figure shaping identity through clothing. Her old coat is also the reason she was last recognized, so there is a rational reason for the change, but she also likes the new coat because it is so unlike the one her mother picked. She admits, \u201cI had never before owned a raincoat like that and my mother would have fainted dead away.” Her new raincoat and its accompanying identity are unacceptable by her mother\u2019s, and the magazines\u2019, beauty standards. She later calls it \u201cshapeless\u201d (139), which positions the garment against the type of advice given in \u201cTeenagers Want to Look Pretty Too\u201d that a girl\u2019s clothing should \u201cemphasiz[e] her naturally pretty proportions\u201d (Norman 89). She also comments on her shoes, calling them \u201cgood solid shoes, the kind of comfortable old shoes you wear whenever you don\u2019t really care how you look\u201d (Jackson, \u201cLouisa\u201d 140), again refusing the dictates of fashion. Meanwhile, her pursuers are \u201clooking for Louisa Tether, and I had stopped being Louisa Tether the minute I got rid of\u201d the coat her mother gave her (139). Her last name, of course, is fitting. She is no longer tethered to the normative identity chosen for her by her mother5<\/a><\/sup>. As mentioned above, Deutsch believes the adolescent process results in passive femininity. Deutsch writes that to mature requires the \u201cliberation of the growing child from infantile dependences,\u201d including \u201cthe loosening of the old affective ties \u2026 some part of him [sic<\/em>] seeks new possibilities of identification, rejecting the parents as objects\u201d (Psychology<\/em> 91-92). In other words, the child must reject identification with the parents to mature. Deutsch\u2019s ideas of \u201cliberation\u201d mean only a freeing from childish dependence, and not political liberation. However, by untethering identification with her mother and refusing the passive femininity implied in matrimony and motherhood, Louisa remains immature. In fact, she deposits her old coat amongst the sale items \u201cas though\u201d it were merchandise and she\u2019d \u201cdecided against it\u201d (Jackson, “Louisa” 139), coopting consumerism to rid herself of former demands, and then dismissing the leftovers.

Jackson similarly comments on the interchangeability of feminine fashion, as \u201cutilizing conformity to mask her identity […] Louisa closely watches others and uses material goods to strip and rebuild her identity\u201d (Dick). As mentioned above, teenage girls were considered complicit in such conformity. \u201cThere is a time in the life of every American girl,\u201d begins a Life<\/em> magazine article from December 1944, \u201cwhen the most important thing in the world is to be one of a crowd of other girls and to act and speak and dress exactly as they do\u201d (qtd. in Schrum 150). Kelly Schrum notes that not all girls appreciated this view, and some pushed back against it (150). Jackson expressed her own exasperation with conformity in her autobiographical piece \u201cOn Girls of Thirteen\u201d: \u201cIf everyone else is wearing white wool ankle socks these days […] everyone else has handed down the word and we conform, or we are different<\/em>, which is a fate roughly equivalent to being pilloried in the public square\u201d (360; original emphasis). Jackson adds that \u201cyoung people […] ought by rights to be carrying around faces and minds of their own,\u201d bemoaning when girls embrace such erasure of individual identity ( \u201cOn Girls\u201d 360). Jackson critiques such uniformity as early as her 1941 story \u201cMy Life with R. H. Macy,\u201d which contains \u201cstartlingly beautiful,\u201d interchangeable, \u201cyoung women in tailored suits […] All […] named Miss Cooper\u201d (\u201cMacy\u201d 57). The narrator of \u201cMacy,\u201d ostensibly a Jackson stand-in, is wearing \u201ca red velvet afternoon frock\u201d (57-58), the wrong kind of feminine attire for the situation, which alerts the reader to her outsider status. Louisa, similarly, can see these pressures and use them, \u201crelying on\u201d the fact that \u201cthere must be thousands of girls in the country\u201d who look like her (139). She uses uniformity to become invisible: \u201cI behaved just like everyone else, and even thought<\/em> like everyone else\u201d (140; original emphasis). Friedan quotes a girl of seventeen who admits, \u201cI want so badly to feel like the other girls […] just do what they do […] I guess I even started to make myself not different inside\u201d (Friedan 55). Louisa here weaponizes this drive to obtain a degree of freedom yet still retains her agency: \u201cI could look like whoever I decided to be<\/em>\u201d (Jackson, \u201cLouisa\u201d 140; emphasis added), the decision to conform or not ultimately her own.

 While reconstructing her identity for escape, Louisa meets her new landlady, Mrs. Peacock6<\/a><\/sup>, which she describes as \u201cthe luckiest thing that ever happened to me\u201d (140). Just as Louisa recreates herself, she creates an ideal family background to convince Mrs. Peacock that she is an upstanding young woman, but Mrs. Peacock. soon replaces both her imaginary and real families. Though Mrs. Peacock gives advice, Louisa notes, \u201cjust as if she had been my mother\u201d (141), their relationship is more complicated. They speculate about what may have happened to Louisa Tether, delighting in the gory possibilities. \u201cMrs. Peacock,\u201d Louisa says, \u201calways loved anything about homicidal maniacs\u201d (139), an unladylike preoccupation. They also daydream about \u201cpool[ing] our savings and buy[ing] a little car, or go[ing] on a trip somewhere, or even a cruise\u201d (141). This daydream and its implications come right before Louisa admits, \u201c[w]hat I am saying is that I was free, and getting along fine, with never a thought that I knew of about ever going back\u201d (141). Louisa\u2019s freedom comes from financial independence, her upward mobility in a new job, and her relationship with Mrs. Peacock. In the same issue of the Journal<\/em> as \u201cLouisa,\u201d a marriage counselor advises a bride-to-be who \u201cwould rather have a job than be a housekeeper\u201d that \u201c[h]er reason for working is questionable.\u201d He delineates \u201ccertain principles\u201d regarding women and work, notably that \u201c[t]he wife\u2019s earnings should not […] be regarded as the wife\u2019s personal income to be spent for her own pleasure\u201d (Adams 40). In choosing a life of financial independence and created family, Jackson\u2019s Louisa pushes back against these \u201cprinciples.\u201d Helen Gurley Brown\u2019s 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl <\/em>is just one text from this era that uses the infantilizing moniker of \u201cgirl\u201d for women who have not yet married or who choose, like Louisa, to stay unmarried. Brown herself became editor of the women\u2019s magazine Cosmopolitan<\/em> three years later. She writes in her book that \u201ca job gives a single woman something to be<\/em>. A married woman already is<\/em> something\u201d (80, emphasis original). Nevertheless that \u201csomething\u201d is a wife, defined by her relationship to her husband and expected to live within the restrictive norms discussed above. Louisa chooses a position that, to society, consists of an infantilized, incomplete state, but within this liminality, outside of the strict gender norms of womanhood depicted in the magazines, she is free.

However, Jackson does not provide an easy resolution regarding Louisa\u2019s chosen identity, or her freedom, after Louisa sees an old neighbor and reveals herself without thinking; her certainty then slips, thinking \u201c[m]aybe I did want to go home.\u201d When she is later brought back to her hometown against her will, it erases her experience as an independent woman: \u201cfor three years I hadn\u2019t given a thought to that town\u201d but after returning, \u201cit was almost as though I had never been away at all.\u201d Louisa \u201calmost crie[s]\u201d when she sees her parents\u2019 house (141), though her exact feelings are not given, and she \u201cshak[es]\u201d and \u201cshiver[s]\u201d as she tries to avoid going in (142), a physical reaction that evokes the fear she earlier felt at hearing her mother\u2019s voice. When her parents fail to recognize her, she reacts with a mix of childish impulse and adult rationality, \u201cready enough to cry, but now, when crying would make me look better, all I wanted to do was giggle.” She cannot do the “rational” thing which would “look better.” Her father dismisses her by saying, \u201c[m]y daughter was younger than you are\u201d (142), which is true because three years have passed but also because, in the process of recasting her as stranger, Louisa is no longer playful and adolescent in her attitude. She has the childish impulse that \u201ca temper tantrum might bring them some fleeting recollection of their dear lost Louisa,\u201d a childish feeling, but finally admits that \u201cI hardly thought it would persuade them to invite me to stay\u201d (142), a rational response. Louisa\u2019s liminal freedom as working girl cannot happily exist within the confines of the family home.

Though he recognizes the break from \u201ctypical social expectations of femininity, such as docility and acceptable domesticity\u201d in the story, Michael Dalpe, Jr. sees a \u201cdomestic yearning\u201d here, reading \u201cthat moment of nonrecognition\u201d as \u201cthe core horror of the story\u201d (47). He also reads the end of the story as punishment, required because Louisa\u2019s \u201cactions threaten the greater good of the social order\u201d (49). Dick sees the earlier sequence with the coat as \u201cLouisa\u2019s attempt at conformity\u201d which eventually \u201cresults in the complete erasure of her identity,\u201d arguing that Jackson\u2019s \u201ccritique of conformity through mass consumption\u201d is \u201cdestructive for individual identity\u201d (Dick). However, the identity that is erased is one that Louisa no longer has a need for, and one that she cannot reclaim, though she momentarily desires to do so. When her former parents say, \u201cGo back home where you belong,\u201d and, \u201cGo back to the people who love you,\u201d Louisa responds internally, \u201cThat meant Mrs. Peacock, I guess\u201d (Jackson, “Louisa” 142). Her \u201cI guess\u201d reveals the level of her conflicted response, just as women\u2019s magazines presented an ambiguous and conflicted space to their audience. However, \u201cMrs. Peacock\u201d really \u201cseems to be all the family Louisa needs\u201d (Hall 71). Ironically, Helene Deutsch herself did something similar to Louisa, writing in her autobiography that in \u201clate adolescence, I wanted more than anything else to get away from home\u201d (Deutsch Confrontations<\/em> 28). She regularly connects this impulse to adolescence. Her schooling was \u201cvery limited\u201d and her mother \u201cextremely discouraging\u201d so she \u201cbegan [her] war against these obstacles. To an adolescent, the first step seemed obvious. I had to get away from home!\u201d (81). Deutsch seems to bring this action in line with her beliefs by arguing elsewhere that \u201c[u]sually a girl\u2019s adolescent uproar and self-preoccupation end spontaneously when she reaches marriageable age and finds the right husband\u201d (94), an assertion that, when applied to Louisa, implies that she remains in an \u201cadolescent uproar.\u201d Jackson allows for an ambiguity in the text that, through its own refusal to resolve, provides space for transgression, self-creation, confusion regarding identity to comfortably exist alongside a different concept of family.

There is a different type of tension between gender expectations and family dynamics in \u201cAll She Said Was \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d Like in \u201cLouisa,\u201d there is a first-person narrator, though here it is not the adolescent figure, Vicky Lanson, who tells the story but an adult neighbor who is a representative of the status quo. When the Lansons die in a car accident and the narrator is forced to cancel a trip to care for Vicky, her thoughts, which deserve to be quoted in full, reveal a constant disparagement of the Lansons according to normalized models of femininity and domesticity, while the narrator and her daughter Dorrie display the proper \u201ctraining\u201d:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First I had to unpack those suitcases and put everything away so it wouldn\u2019t wrinkle. Also, I thought I kind of ought to go over to the Lansons\u2019 and straighten up\u2014Helen Lanson always left things in a mess and I certainly wouldn\u2019t have been surprised to find her dinner dishes still dirty in her sink; that girl wouldn\u2019t lift a finger to wash them, I know now, after having her in my house. Not one thing did she do. […] I\u2019d just like to see my Dorrie act like that no matter what<\/em> happened. I mean, even if I was dead it would give me comfort to know that my daughter didn\u2019t forget her training, and the nice manners I taught her. (Jackson, \u201cYes\u201d 171, emphasis original)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jackson expertly depicts this narrator as externally beholden to proper behavior while revealing an internal hypocrisy in her narration. She judges Vicky\u2019s passivity in housework without noting that she is a child, a guest in her home, and, most importantly, grieving. She frames herself as \u201cfrank and open\u201d while complaining about the openness of the Lansons: \u201cthey were never secret about things and expected us to be the same\u201d (142). This openness is fully on display in fifteen-year-old Vicky, who we soon learn can see future events and talks about them without reservation. This ability means that Vicky has known about her parents\u2019 deaths for months, but it also means that she does not respond or grieve the way the narrator expects. 

The title of the story comes from Vicky\u2019s muted response to the news of her parents\u2019 death, which the narrator uses as another opportunity for comparison with her daughter, Dorrie: \u201cI just hope that if ever anything happens to me my<\/em> daughter will have the grace to sit there and shed a tear\u201d (143; original emphasis). The reader knows that this is because of Vicky\u2019s horrible knowledge of future events, and that Vicky has lived with knowledge of her parents\u2019 deaths for months. Returning to Helene Deutsch, it is worth noting that she centers emotion in her discussion of the adolescent process towards passive femininity. \u201cThe emotions,\u201d she writes, have a \u201cclose connection with the instinctual life\u201d expected of women (Psychology <\/em>91). Deutsch also centers the emotions in this severing of ties required for maturation, as “they constitute the most elementary reaction of the individual to the outside world\u201d (91). Vicky’s lack of emotion should code her as mature beyond her years, but instead the narrator uses Vicky\u2019s lack of emotional response as more ammunition against her inability to live up to feminine norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost every statement from the narrator contains a judgement on Vicky and her deceased parents, but her most direct judgement, as we have already seen, is reserved for comparison with the narrator\u2019s daughter Dorrie. Dorrie does not directly appear in the story, so the narrator\u2019s comments about her may be just as biased, but her absence makes her the adolescent feminine ideal in the narrator\u2019s ideological framing. The narrator discovers that Vicky has no toys in her room, which in general contains, \u201cnothing\u2026well, soft\u201d (169). The narrator presents Dorrie, also fifteen, as connected with soft things and toys, particularly a blue lion. The narrator proudly admits, \u201cyou can tell when Dorrie\u2019s upset […] because she takes her blue lion to bed\u201d (143). Dorrie, infantilized by her mother, does not speak when upset but plays with toys, expressing her emotions through acceptable childish play, not like the transgressive adolescent play of Louisa. In contrast to Dorrie, Vicky speaks directly, not only about her feelings but also about everything she knows, including, as we will see, things that as a teenage girl she is not supposed to know. 

Though the narrator attempts to frame her critique of Vicky through these comparisons, early on she bluntly admits, \u201cI don\u2019t like<\/em> Vicky […] I couldn\u2019t make myself like her.\u201d Like Dorrie, we only see Vicky through the narrator\u2019s eyes, and her dislike continually reveals a physical disgust of Vicky, initially prompted by the perceived need to touch her in order to give her comfort: \u201c[s]he was so big and clumsy and ugly that I really couldn\u2019t face the thought of having to put my arms around her and comfort her\u2014I hated the idea of patting her hand, or stroking her hair\u201d (142). Replicating society\u2019s confusing messages, as Brenda Boudreau argues, adolescence for girls means that \u201cself-identities become closely linked to the physical body,\u201d but \u201cthe body\u201d also \u201cbecomes an obstacle to autonomy and self-agency\u201d due to \u201cthe demands of a socially proscribed gendered identity\u201d (43). The adolescent female body as a site of both conventionality and resistance are key to both the way women in general are depicted and discussed in post-war women\u2019s magazines and in the ways that Jackson\u2019s protagonists push back against expectations. Additionally, the body perceived by society to be \u201cnon-normative,\u201d refuses these \u201csocially proscribed\u201d demands. The narrator\u2019s feelings of disgust escalate once Vicky is put in Dorrie\u2019s room, the disgust framed through Vicky\u2019s supposed \u201cnon-normative\u201d physicality contrasted with Dorrie\u2019s acceptable femininity: \u201cyou couldn\u2019t think of that great dull girl sleeping with Dorrie\u2019s pretty little pictures and dolls […] all around her.\u201d Furthermore, she reads Vicky as \u201cmuch too big for Dorrie\u2019s bed,\u201d saying \u201cshe fit in Dorrie\u2019s room like Dorrie would fit in a dollhouse\u201d (169). With the prospect of guests arriving to pay their respects, the narrator says, \u201cI just wanted her there looking proper\u201d (171). She tries to make Vicky appear \u201cneat and clean\u201d (143), telling \u201cher to dress nicely and comb her hair” (171). Her wording implies a failure in that attempt. The narrator also refers to Vicky\u2019s constant eating, an unfeminine pastime. She also implies that Vicky is dirty \u201cbecause [the bedding] would have to be cleaned […] before Dorrie came home\u201d (169). She has to admit, despite her constant implication that the Lanson house is filthy, that \u201cVicky kept that room of hers at home looking so swept and bare\u201d (171), a quick aside that belies her depiction of Vicky while reiterating the lack of girlish adornment.

 It is vital to Jackson\u2019s story that Vicky is not bothered by the narrator\u2019s disgust and disdain, existing within her own understanding of reality that refuses the boundaries of \u201cacceptable\u201d behavior. This fact becomes clear when the Lanson\u2019s many friends come by to pay their respects, and Vicky starts sharing their secrets. She tells one partygoer that her grandson will \u201cbe caught with a girl in his room and expelled\u201d from medical school, another that his \u201cwife finally has the evidence to divorce\u201d him. She continues to release her knowledge of future events as if she can no longer contain it, disregarding the narrator\u2019s repeated reaction that \u201c[y]oung ladies should speak politely in company, Vicky,\u201d and of course that \u201cDorrie would never have said a thing like that\u201d (174). Vicky, however, does not only speak of future events, but of adult topics, beyond her supposed knowledge, seemingly compelled to break the bounds of etiquette and adolescence. The narrator misreads all of these assertions (175). When, at the end of the story, the narrator receives Vicky\u2019s little red notebook full of prophecies, which she had previously misread as a diary (an acceptable outlet for adolescent writing) (169) she sees them only as \u201cgossipy little paragraphs […] not at all the kind of thing you like to think about a child dwelling on\u201d (175). The narrator has missed every warning because of her insistence on reading Vicky and her behavior through the lens of \u201cacceptable\u201d adolescence and normalized femininity. Vicky has told her throughout to avoid boats, and her final word to the reader is \u201cwe\u2019re all going to go on a cruise\u201d (175). Again, the reader knows what the outcome will be.

In contrast to Louisa, Vicky is an adolescent, and her knowledge has forced her into an adult-like persona, though the adults in her life insist on her childishness. When Vicky tells her father\u2019s lawyer \u201cthat the papers in his office were going to be burned up in a big fire,\u201d the greedy narrator can only see Vicky\u2019s words as connected to her parents\u2019 will, to which, the narrator claims, \u201cshe reacted like a spiteful baby\u201d (175). Here she infantilizes Vicky in her mind, while Vicky herself is just trying to give a warning. Before their deaths, Vicky was also infantilized by her parents through their psychological jargon. When Vicky complains that she tried to alert her parents about \u201c\u2018the accident and their dying,\u2019\u201d she adds, \u201cshe wouldn\u2019t listen to me, no one ever does. She said it was an adolescent fantasy.\u201d The narrator uses this as another reason to disparage Vicky\u2019s mother, \u201cAdolescent fantasy is the way she talked […] I can tell you that Dorrie got spanked when she did something wrong, and none of this psychological jargon to make her think it was my fault, either.\u201d The narrator similarly blames this \u201cpsychological jargon\u201d for Vicky\u2019s odd behaviour; when she sees that Vicky is well-adjusted after the news, she thinks, \u201cmaybe some of Helen Lanson\u2019s psychology paid off, in a way she might not like so much\u201d (143). This sense of an \u201cadolescent fantasy\u201d is an attempt to infantilize Vicky while denying her any agency over her knowledge. While Louisa embraces an adolescent persona in her sense of play and mystery, Vicky, though an actual adolescent, is old before her time, but her knowledge allows her to read the world from outside of the narrator\u2019s judgement or normalizing influence, providing space for a different way of life. When the narrator attempts to passive aggressively manipulate Vicky by \u201cmention[ing] [a set of wineglasses] and sa[ying] how much I coveted them, [Vicky] only stare[s]\u201d in response (171). She cannot or will not read the narrator\u2019s social cues. Additionally, Vicky declares, through her knowledge, \u201cI\u2019m going to like London England,\u201d living with her aunt and \u201cstudy[ing] hard\u201d (143). It is just a glimpse of a happy life outside of the norms imposed by her neighbor. Lenemaja Friedman reads Vicky as a \u201cvicti[m]\u201d of her neighbor (76), but Vicky\u2019s inability or refusal to internalize the neighbor\u2019s understanding of the world, and her happy future in London with her aunt, like Louisa’s freedom, allows for a life outside of these constricting norms.

In one of her books on women\u2019s magazines, Walker quotes writing advice given in 1955 by author \u201cSheila Sibley, who had contributed stories to Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Ladies\u2019 Home Journal, <\/em>andWoman\u2019s Home Companion <\/em>[…] \u2018The heroine has got to be a nice girl, high-spirited, if you will, but no vice in her, or if there is<\/em> vice, you’ve got to work yourself to the bone to justify it. If she\u2019s acting awfully strange, it\u2019s because of that neglected childhood or that fractured romance\u2019\u201d (Shaping<\/em> 141, emphasis original). Jackson\u2019s stories in women\u2019s magazines do not adhere to Sibley\u2019s advice. Not only does she refuse to explain many of the choices of her heroines, but she also allows them space to construct lives for themselves outside of the restrictive gender norms on display elsewhere in the magazines around them. Biographer Ruth Franklin argues that \u201cthe stories [Jackson] tells form a powerful counternarrative to the \u2018feminine mystique\u2019\u201d (6), but they also form various counternarratives to Friedan\u2019s critique, to Deutsch\u2019s perception of adolescence, and to the editorial philosophies of the magazines in which she published. 

It is important to remember, however, that the magazines themselves often provided space for negotiation of strict norms. While examining Vogue<\/em> in post-war America, Lebovic notes that \u201cVogue<\/em> aided and abetted the feminist cause\u201d through 1950s editorial shifts, part of \u201cthe unexpected ways in which American women have utilized these spaces\u201d of popular culture \u201cto advance their personal and political autonomy\u201d (189). Jackson\u2019s stories in these magazines comprise some of those spaces, the adolescent figures at their core pushing back against restricting norms visible on the pages around them while embracing the ambiguity implied in what Walker calls the \u201covert contradictions\u201d in magazine content (Shaping<\/em> 23). In general, post-war adolescent girlss were \u201cso relentlessly isolated as a distinct market segment,\u201d it led them to believe \u201cthat they might be important culturally, and then politically, as a generation\u201d (Douglas 14). The contradictions of the 1950s enabled feminism to coalesce and grow, and Jackson\u2019s work, including her framing of female adolescent difference, is integral in creating spaces for transgressive play, reconstruction of identity, renegotiation of gender roles, and alternative ideas of family. Louisa and Vicky, left without resolutions that explain away their behavior or confirm gender norms, embrace and embody adolescent liminality beyond the boundaries that otherwise would be placed upon them. 


Works Cited<\/strong>
Adams, Clifford R. \u201cMaking Marriage Work.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal,<\/em> vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, p. 40.

Antoszek, Patrycja. \u201cHaunting Feelings: Shirley Jackson and the Politics of Affect.\u201d Women\u2019s Studies<\/em>, vol. 49, no. 8, Nov. 2020, pp. 850\u201367. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/00497878.2020.1814292.

Bok, Edward. The Americanization of Edward Bok<\/em>. Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1921.

Boone, Pat. \u201cPat Boone Talks to Teenagers: Teen-Time Romance.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, pp. 82, 176.

Boudreau, Brenda. \u201cThe Battleground of the Adolescent Girl\u2019s Body.\u201d The Girl: Constructions of the Girl in Contemporary Fiction by Women<\/em>, edited by Ruth Saxton, Macmillan, 1998, pp. 43\u201356.

Breines, Wini. \u201cThe \u2018Other\u2019 Fifties: Beats and Bad Girls.\u201d Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960<\/em>, edited by Joanne Meyerowitz, Temple University Press, 1994, pp. 229\u201362. Critical Perspectives on the Past.

Brown, Helen Gurley. Sex and the Single Girl<\/em>. Pocket Books, 1963. Internet Archive.

\u201cCartoon: Dangerous Age.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, p. 110.

Cary, Joyce. \u201cThe Revolution of the Women.\u201d Vogue<\/em>, 15 Mar. 1951, pp. 99\u2013100, 149.
Coontz, Stephanie. A Strange Stirring: <\/em>The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s<\/em>. Basic Books, 2010.

Dalpe Jr., Michael J. \u201c\u2018You Didn\u2019t Look Like You Belonged in This House\u2019: Shirley Jackson\u2019s Fragile Domesticities.\u201d Shirley Jackson and Domesticity: Beyond the Haunted House<\/em>, edited by Jill E Anderson and Melanie R Anderson, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2020, pp. 43\u201357.

Deutsch, Helene. Confrontations With Myself: An Epilogue<\/em>. Norton, 1973. Internet Archive, http:\/\/archive.org\/details\/confrontationswi00deut.

\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation<\/em>. Vol. 1, Grune & Stratton, 1944.

Devlin, Rachel. \u201cThe Oedipal Age: Postwar Psychoanalysis Reinterprets the Adolescent Girl.\u201d The Girls\u2019 History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century<\/em>, edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris, University of Illinois Press, 2011, pp. 217\u201341.

Dick, Tyler M. \u201c\u2018We Wouldn\u2019t Belong in the Suburbs\u2026we\u2019re Real People\u2019: Shirley Jackson, the Housewife Image, and the Transdomestic Networks of Ladies\u2019 Home Journal.\u201d Shirley Jackson Studies<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 2, Winter 2024, https:\/\/shirleyjacksonstudies.org\/?p=244. Accessed 24 September 2025.

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media.<\/em> Three Rivers Press, 1995.

\u201cEnfant-Terrific Night Looks.\u201d Vogue<\/em>, vol. 140, no. 8, 1 Nov. 1962, pp. 124\u201329. Smith College Special Collections.

Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life<\/em>. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique<\/em>. Penguin, 2010.

Friedman, Lenemaja. Shirley Jackson<\/em>. Twayne Publishers, 1975.

Gould, Bruce, and Beatrice Blackmar Gould. American Story; Memories and Reflections of Bruce Gould and Beatrice Blackmar Gould<\/em>. Harper & Row, 1968.

Hall, Joan Wylie. Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction<\/em>. Twayne Publishers, 1993.

Hine, Thomas. The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager: A New History of the American Adolescent Experience<\/em>. Perennial, 2000.

\u201cIt\u2019s Such Fun to Be a Woman.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, p. 61.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jackson, Shirley. \u201cAll She Said Was \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d Vogue<\/em>, vol. 140, no. 8, 1 Nov. 1962, pp. 142\u201343, 169, 171, 174\u201375.

\u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cLouisa, Please…\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, pp. 48\u201349, 138\u201342.

\u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cMy Life With R. H. Macy.\u201d 1941. The Lottery: And Other Stories<\/em>, Penguin Books, 2009, pp. 57\u201360.

\u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cOn Girls of Thirteen.\u201d Let Me Tell You<\/em>, edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt, Penguin Books, 2015, pp. 359\u201364.

Lebovic, Anna. \u201c\u2018How to Be in Fashion and Stay an Individual\u2019: American Vogue, the Origins of Second Wave Feminism and Mass Culture Criticism in 1950s America.\u201d Gender & History<\/em>, vol. 31, no. 1, Mar. 2019, pp. 178\u201394. EBSCOhost, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/1468-0424.12415.

Levison, Frances. \u201cWoman\u2019s Dilemma: What the Experts Say: Books, Articles Debate \u2018Woman Question.\u2019\u201d Life Magazine<\/em>, vol. 22, no. 24, 16 June 1947, Google Books, pp. 112, 114, 116.

Lootens, Tricia. \u201c\u2018Whose Hand Was I Holding?\u2019 Familial and Sexual Politics in Shirley Jackson\u2019s The Haunting of Hill House.\u201d Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy<\/em>, edited by Bernice M. Murphy, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005, pp. 150\u201368. 

Lundberg, Ferdinand, and Marynia F Farnham. Modern Woman: The Lost Sex<\/em>. Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947.

Martin, Deborah. \u201cFeminine Adolescence as Uncanny: Masculinity, Haunting and Self-Estrangement.\u201d Forum for Modern Language Studies<\/em>, vol. 2, no. 2, Apr. 2013, pp. 135\u201344.

McCarthy, Mary. \u201cUp the Ladder from Charm to Vogue.\u201d Women\u2019s Magazines, 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press<\/em>, edited by Nancy A. Walker, Bedford\/St. Martin\u2019s, 1998, pp. 247\u201354.

Neuhaus, Jessamyn. \u201c\u2018Is It Ridiculous for Me to Say I Want to Write?\u2019 Domestic Humor and Redefining the 1950s Housewife Writer in Fan Mail to Shirley Jackson.\u201d Journal of Women\u2019s History<\/em>, vol. 21, no. 2, Summer 2009, pp. 115\u201337. EBSCOhost, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/jowh.0.0071.

Norman, Dawn Crowell. \u201cTeenagers Want to Look Pretty Too.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, pp. 86\u201388, 169.

\u201cPeople Are Talking About…\u201d Vogue<\/em>, vol. 140, no. 8, 1 Nov. 1962, p. 108.

Piercy, Marge. \u201cThrough the Cracks: Growing up in the Fifties.\u201d Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt<\/em>, University of Michigan Press, 1982, pp. 113\u201328. 

Rubenstein, Roberta. \u201cHouse Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic.\u201d Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy<\/em>, edited by Bernice M. Murphy, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996, pp. 127\u201349.

Scanlon, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings<\/em>: The Ladies\u2019 Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture.<\/em> Routledge, 1995.

Schrum, Kelly. \u201c\u2018Oh the Bliss\u2019: Fashion and Teenage Girls.\u201d The Girls\u2019 History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century<\/em>, edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris, University of Illinois Press, 2011, pp. 1\u201314. 

Shirley Jackson Papers (SJP), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Seebohm, Caroline. The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life and Times of Cond\u00e9 Nast.<\/em> Viking Press, 1982.

\u201cTeenage Report to the Nation.\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, pp. 83\u201385, 192\u201394.

Thompson, Dorothy. \u201cIt\u2019s All the Fault of the Women!\u201d Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 5, May 1960, pp. 11, 16, 19.

Walker, Nancy A. Shaping Our Mothers\u2019 World: American Women\u2019s Magazines. <\/em>UP of Mississippi, 2000. 

Walker, Nancy A., editor. Women\u2019s Magazines, 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press<\/em>. Bedford\/St. Martin\u2019s, 1998.

Webster, Brenda S. \u201cHelene Deutsch: A New Look.\u201d Signs<\/em>, vol. 10, no. 3, 1985, pp. 553\u201371. JSTOR.

Wood, James Playsted. Magazines in the United States.<\/em> 2nd ed., The Ronald Press Company, 1956.

Woodward, Helen. The Lady Persuaders<\/em>. I. Oboloensky, 1960.


<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
  1. This is the title as it appears in the magazine, though other versions bear the title \u201cLouisa, Please Come Home.\u201d The truncated title opens up the plea to mean a variety of things.\u00a0 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. Though there is some debate regarding what years comprise the post-war era (and such historical divisions can be limiting), I myself read this period as extending from 1945 until about 1965, depending on what elements of the post-war years are highlighted. When focusing on feminist concerns, the publication of The Feminine Mystique <\/em>in 1963 <\/em>is an important turning point and the beginning of what would eventually become second wave feminism. Much of my research in general looks at how the interwar period of 1918-1939 helped shape the post-war era, so I continue that approach here in many ways. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. In fact, many of Jackson\u2019s adolescents in her magazine work are fictionalized versions of her own children in semi-autobiographical pieces of domestic humor. Though I briefly refer to this work here, the focus of this article are two works of fiction which have different implications within Jackson\u2019s oeuvre. A lot more space would be needed to unpack the complicated threads of gender norms, publication histories, and the publication of fiction in these periodicals, some of which is the focus of my postdoctoral work. This article does not strive to present a comprehensive overview of these tensions and Jackson\u2019s place within them, but rather to tease out some of the areas where Jackson\u2019s work sits in opposition to the acceptable standards of post-war femininity often visible within their pages, but also, importantly, where the magazines themselves trouble standard perceptions. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  4. The number of feminists, many of whom are American and came of age during the post-war era, who target Deutsch in their work is telling. Their critiques range from merely noting her ostensible division of women into only adolescents and mothers to claiming that her work forgives or normalizes sexual assault. See Eva Figes Patriarchal Attitudes <\/em>(1970), Kate Millett Sexual Politics<\/em> (1970), Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch<\/em> (1971), Juliet Mitchell Psychoanalysis and Feminism<\/em> (1974), Susan Brownmiller Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape <\/em>(1975), Nancy Chodorow The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of<\/em> Gender<\/em> (1978), Joanna Russ How to Suppress Women\u2019s Writing <\/em>(1983), <\/em>Luce Irigary This Sex Which is Not One <\/em>(1985), among others. Brenda S. Webster notes that Deutsch\u2019s \u201ctheories seem to put the stamp of inevitability on self-denigrating female behavior and thus to justify women\u2019s oppression throughout history\u201d (553), while also calling for a more nuanced appraisal of Deutsch. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  5. Michael Dalpe, Jr. notes Louisa\u2019s fitting last name, but he reads this change as being \u201cuntethered\u201d from expected marriage (48). However, the true change in Louisa comes as soon as she rids herself of the connection to her mother. Though there is much work on Jackson and mothers (see, for example, Rubenstein and Lootens), my focus here is simply on the mother as symbolic of feminine norms expected of girls once they become women, as presented in discussion of the poem \u201cIt\u2019s Such Fun to be a Woman\u201d in the introduction. Dick reads this untethering through \u201cpurchasing power and mass-produced goods,\u201d which is ultimately \u201cdestructive for individual identity\u201d (Dick). Instead, I see this construction of new identity as more empowering. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  6. The \u201cMrs.\u201d implies that Mrs. Peacock is married, possibly divorced or widowed. However, her husband never enters the story to resolve the situation either way, as Jackson seems more interested in the relationship between Louisa and Mrs. Peacock. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    \u201cNothing\u2026Well, Soft\u201d: Shirley Jackson\u2019s Transgressive Adolescents and Post-War Women\u2019s Periodicals By Janice Lynne Deitner Janice Lynne Deitner is a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin. Her work, funded by Research Ireland, situates American author Shirley Jackson within the postwar periodical landscape, with a focus on critically neglected magazines. In 2024 she completed her PhD on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"This is the title as it appears in the magazine, though other versions bear the title \u201cLouisa, Please Come Home.\u201d The truncated title opens up the plea to mean a variety of things.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"3185540f-07c2-4bcb-92bc-10b15a34bf0e\"},{\"content\":\"Though there is some debate regarding what years comprise the post-war era (and such historical divisions can be limiting), I myself read this period as extending from 1945 until about 1965, depending on what elements of the post-war years are highlighted. When focusing on feminist concerns, the publication of The Feminine Mystique <\/em>in 1963 <\/em>is an important turning point and the beginning of what would eventually become second wave feminism. Much of my research in general looks at how the interwar period of 1918-1939 helped shape the post-war era, so I continue that approach here in many ways.\",\"id\":\"a9d4f3f3-3e33-4650-94b1-87fa409227ed\"},{\"content\":\"In fact, many of Jackson\u2019s adolescents in her magazine work are fictionalized versions of her own children in semi-autobiographical pieces of domestic humor. Though I briefly refer to this work here, the focus of this article are two works of fiction which have different implications within Jackson\u2019s oeuvre. A lot more space would be needed to unpack the complicated threads of gender norms, publication histories, and the publication of fiction in these periodicals, some of which is the focus of my postdoctoral work. This article does not strive to present a comprehensive overview of these tensions and Jackson\u2019s place within them, but rather to tease out some of the areas where Jackson\u2019s work sits in opposition to the acceptable standards of post-war femininity often visible within their pages, but also, importantly, where the magazines themselves trouble standard perceptions.\",\"id\":\"4cd4ba20-e09f-443a-a05c-3ad8b7f43f60\"},{\"content\":\"The number of feminists, many of whom are American and came of age during the post-war era, who target Deutsch in their work is telling. Their critiques range from merely noting her ostensible division of women into only adolescents and mothers to claiming that her work forgives or normalizes sexual assault. See Eva Figes Patriarchal Attitudes <\/em>(1970), Kate Millett Sexual Politics<\/em> (1970), Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch<\/em> (1971), Juliet Mitchell Psychoanalysis and Feminism<\/em> (1974), Susan Brownmiller Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape <\/em>(1975), Nancy Chodorow The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of<\/em> Gender<\/em> (1978), Joanna Russ How to Suppress Women\u2019s Writing <\/em>(1983), <\/em>Luce Irigary This Sex Which is Not One <\/em>(1985), among others. Brenda S. Webster notes that Deutsch\u2019s \u201ctheories seem to put the stamp of inevitability on self-denigrating female behavior and thus to justify women\u2019s oppression throughout history\u201d (553), while also calling for a more nuanced appraisal of Deutsch.\",\"id\":\"9b3f751a-de3c-4268-a470-2d23d85cbce3\"},{\"content\":\"Michael Dalpe, Jr. notes Louisa\u2019s fitting last name, but he reads this change as being \u201cuntethered\u201d from expected marriage (48). However, the true change in Louisa comes as soon as she rids herself of the connection to her mother. Though there is much work on Jackson and mothers (see, for example, Rubenstein and Lootens), my focus here is simply on the mother as symbolic of feminine norms expected of girls once they become women, as presented in discussion of the poem \u201cIt\u2019s Such Fun to be a Woman\u201d in the introduction. Dick reads this untethering through \u201cpurchasing power and mass-produced goods,\u201d which is ultimately \u201cdestructive for individual identity\u201d (Dick). Instead, I see this construction of new identity as more empowering.\",\"id\":\"b7c1ad6d-2838-4382-9456-297165cfb10a\"},{\"content\":\"The \u201cMrs.\u201d implies that Mrs. Peacock is married, possibly divorced or widowed. However, her husband never enters the story to resolve the situation either way, as Jackson seems more interested in the relationship between Louisa and Mrs. Peacock.\",\"id\":\"39136058-873f-4a7b-ba21-563573892e40\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n- Shirley Jackson Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shirleyjacksonstudies.org\/?p=495\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"- Shirley Jackson Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cNothing\u2026Well, Soft\u201d: Shirley Jackson\u2019s Transgressive Adolescents and Post-War Women\u2019s Periodicals By Janice Lynne Deitner Janice Lynne Deitner is a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin. Her work, funded by Research Ireland, situates American author Shirley Jackson within the postwar periodical landscape, with a focus on critically neglected magazines. 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