Hangsaman

by Shirley Jackson

“I’ve got to review four books by Monday; four books no one in this house has read but myself.

Me

They all laughed, and the sudden family gesture was so pleasant to them that they immediately took steps to separate themselves from one another.

It was a beautiful morning, and the garden seemed to be enjoying it. The grass had exerted itself to be unusually green just beyond Natalie’s feet, the roses were heavy and sweet and suitable for giving to any number of lovers, the sky was blue and serene, as though it had never known a tear.

seventeen years was a very long time to have been alive, if you took it into proportion by the thought that in seventeen years more—or as long as she had wasted being a child, and a small girl, silly and probably playing—she would be thirty-four, and old. Married, probably.

She brought herself away from the disagreebly clinging thought by her usual method—imagining the sweet sharp sensation of being burned alive—and turned expectantly to her father.

“I particularly say that the handsomeness is largely arrogance; that so few people are really arrogant these days that such a person gives the impression of beauty. I liked that idea.”

“Do you know when you’re being honest?” “Usually,” Natalie said. “If I’m surprised at myself for saying or thinking it, it’s honest.”

Natalie, you must remember that it is natural, that hatred of me does not imply that you as a person hate me as a person, but only that the child, growing normally, passes through a stage when hatred of the parents is inevitable. That is your stage now.”

“See that your marriage is happy, child. Don’t ever let your husband know what you’re thinking or doing, that’s the way.

Mrs. Waite, too long accustomed to seeing her most heartfelt emotions exposed, discussed, and ignored, had long since fallen into protecting herself by stating them as jokes, with an air of girlish whimsy which irritated both Natalie and Mr. Waite as no flat statement of hatred could have.

“Look, here, at these teeth; they knew something of dentistry, at any rate—see, here’s one filled, with gold, it appears. Had they any knowledge of gold, do you remember? Male, I should say, from the frontal development.” At that time, of course, Natalie reflected with contentment, her life would be done. There would be no further fears for Natalie, no possibility of walking wrong when you were no more than a skull in a strange man’s hands.

There was a point in Natalie, only dimly realized by herself, and probably entirely a function of her age, where obedience ended and control began; after this point was reached and passed, Natalie became a solitary functioning individual, capable of ascertaining her own believable possibilities.

the gap between the poetry she wrote and the poetry she contained was, for Natalie, something unsolvable.

she had seen so many bad pictures of suns behind mountains that she allowed herself to find the sun itself ludicrous and unnecessary.

“Little Natalie, never rest until you have uncovered your essential self. Remember that. Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts, is a clean pure being made of radiant colors.”

“Wine is a splendid thing,”

This is the only life I’ve got—you understand? I mean, this is all. And look what’s happening to me. I spend most of my time just thinking about how nice things used to be and wondering if they’ll ever be nice again. If I should go on and on and die someday and nothing was ever nice again—wouldn’t that be a fine thing? Wouldn’t I have been cheated, don’t you think? I get to feeling like that and then I think I’ll make things be nice, and make him behave, and just make everything all happy and exciting again the way it used to be—but I’m too tired.”

“I keep telling you to watch out who you marry. Don’t ever go near a man like your father.”

“You think it’s going to be so easy. You think it’s going to be good. It starts like everything you’ve ever wanted, you think it’s so easy, everything looks so simple and good, and you know that all of a sudden you’ve found out what no one ever had sense enough to know before—that this is good and if you manage right you can do whatever you want to. You keep thinking that what you’ve got hold of is power, just because you feel right in yourself, and everybody always thinks that when they feel right in themselves then they can start right off fixing the world. I mean, when I used to listen to him talking about what kind of people we were, then I used to believe him.”

“First they tell you lies,” said Mrs. Waite, “and they make you believe them. Then they give you a little of what they promised, just a little, enough to keep you thinking you’ve got your hands on it. Then you find out that you’re tricked, just like everyone else, just like everyone, and instead of being different and powerful and giving the orders, you’ve been tricked just like everyone else

And he’ll find the way he can frighten you, too, but it won’t be because you don’t have anyone because your mother won’t turn you down. She won’t, Natalie,”

OH GOD

something incredible was going to happen, now, right now, this afternoon, today; this was going to be a day she would remember and look back upon, thinking, That wonderful day . . . the day when that happened.

“I was thinking about myself instead of listening.”

How far wrong, Natalie thought, can one person be about another?

she might get to be sixty-nine, eighty-four, forgetting, smiling sadly, thinking, What a girl I was, what a girl . . . I remember one time; did it happen to me or did I read it somewhere? Could it have happened like that? Or is it something one only finds in books? I have forgotten, she would say, an old lady of ninety, turning over her memories, which would be—please God—faded, and mellowed, by time.

Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution is certainly no exception to this, although training the young is by implication an art for old people exclusively, and novelty in education is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is so excruciating and so bewildering that no conceivable phraseology or combination of philosophies can make it practical as a method of marking time during what might be called the formative years.

Looking at her, Natalie saw clearly what had not seemed important before now: that Rosalind was squat and ugly, and had a drab dull face and a faint growth of hair on her upper lip.

OH!

here was this hideous girl attempting an alliance on the grounds that Natalie was—what? was there a word? (Innocent? Who was innocent—this girl with her nasty eyes? Chaste? Chaste meant no impure thoughts; virginal meant clear and clean and could not include this Rosalind with her low coarse face; untouched? Spotless? Pure?)

Ykw… I get it

Dearest dearest darling most important dearest darling Natalie—this is me talking, your own priceless own Natalie, and I just wanted to tell you one single small thing: you are the best,

Love

you can smile a little perhaps now when you are so unhappy, because how well we both know that you will be happy very very very very soon. Somewhere someone is waiting for you, and loves you, and thinks you are beautiful, and it will be so wonderful and so fine,

Nothing in the world exists in a perfect form, Natalie wrote in her notebook, feeling as she wrote that there just might be something.

“Arthur keeps a pitcher of martinis already made. I can’t make them,”

Love

“Mother never lets me dry the glasses at home because I always drop them.” Why did I say that? she wondered again, it isn’t true. Now I’ll just have to remember it so I won’t tell her in a few minutes that I never break anything.

WAIT

“You didn’t finish college before you married?” asked Natalie with interest, here was an achievement to be envied.

When Elizabeth came back with the drinks, she said, “Try to keep up with me,”

I wonder if he makes everyone feel like this,

she was beginning to know as jealousy that they were both lovely, in the way that Elizabeth Langdon was lovely: the rounded, colorful, rich beauty of girls who have been pretty babies and pretty little girls and pretty boarding school girls and who have, at last, in college, reached a fulfillment of prettiness because they are finally nubile; that their loveliness would be deadened as Elizabeth’s had been deadened was not more than a small consolation to Natalie;

that this loveliness built and recharged itself with an awareness of loveliness, and almost certainly masked vacant stupidity, was no consolation at all. The further thought that, premising the loveliness of young women as nature’s infallible way of insuring them husbands, these two could at best marry no more than a few of the men in the world, was less than no consolation at all.

“We were in your room the other day while you were out,”

? Hello

she did not understand her own feelings at the moment; the thought of anyone, and particularly these two girls, coming unbidden into her room was abhorrent to her.

Fight them

I sent you to college to enjoy yourself, not to get an education,

I wish I were the only person in all the world, Natalie thought, with a poignant longing, thinking then that perhaps she was, after all.

“I was thinking about when I would be dead,” Natalie said. “Dead?” he said, surprised. “Are we going to die, you and I?” “I only worry about how,”

“I keep thinking that of course it’s got to happen, and even to me, but then I always think that somehow and someday this interesting person of mine will . . .”

“You have a very original mind, Natalie.”

“can you imagine having a mind like mine and losing it when you die?”

it is not possible to “learn” French; as I believe someone else has said, one either is or is not born with the kind of personality to which French is a mother-tongue),

I want somebody who will fight about it, too. Suppose there is a person, somewhere very near me, right now, who is thinking about me and who watches me and knows everything I think about and who is just waiting for me to recognize

Mustn’t violate the sacred rules of magic, Natalie thought sleepily. Never wish for anything until it’s ready for you. Never try to make anything happen until it’s on its way. The formal way is best, after all; no short cuts allowed in this passage.

“You won’t notice it after you’ve had a drink,”