Hangsaman

by Shirley Jackson

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.”

while I can never be sentimental, I can never be great.”

If it’s happening why does he tell me?

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

“Well, she used to hate that chair, except I always used to think then that she only made such a fuss because she knew wives always hated their husbands’ old dear things and she was afraid no one would respect her if she let him keep the chair without a fuss.

Natalie had discovered that by a slight pressure on a back tooth she could make a small regular stirring pain that operated as a rhythmic counterpoint to her mother’s voice; she would not for the world have told her mother that she had a cavity in her tooth, but it was a pleasant change in her body since the day before, and she enjoyed it.

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.

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.

“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.”

Natalie was pretending to be a young girl standing in the doorway of her own house next to her mother.

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

you can’t just say, ‘I’ve been tricked and I’ll make the best of it,’ because you never believe it because they let you see just enough about the next time to keep you hoping that maybe you’re a little bit smarter and a little bit . . .”

the minute you start getting too big, he’ll be after you, too.”

It was unanimously voted that students should be allowed to drink, stay out all night, gamble, and paint from nude female models, without any kind of restraint; this, it was clear, would prepare them for the adult world.

who was a woman as surely as Natalie was a girl, since where Natalie was unconnected and vague, this other was purposeful and compact.

that’s all she knows to tell me about herself,

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;

smoking professionally,

“we can sit in the darkness under an oak tree and tell one another vast truths.”

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.

It was generally believed that it was completely possible to become pregnant by using the same bathtub as one’s brother, although not necessarily at the same time.

Let me, then, warn you direfully against false friends. And against those for whose friendship toward you you can find no material motive.

No material motive- inferring to psychological and therefore more sinister motives?

Remember, too, that without you I could not exist: there can be no father without a daughter. You have thus a double responsibility, for my existence and your own. If you abandon me, you lose yourself.

“Because I’m really too angry with her to care.”

I hate you, Arthur

abominable it is to be the receiver of such a thing, how dreadful and horrifying it is to have no choice at all about the swinging arms and legs that enwrap you, how sickening to be aware and to know that the unconscious one does not even see that it is you she is embracing,

she was at this time grieved over the understanding that Arthur Langdon insisted upon—so young, so pretty—maintaining at night a space of floor between himself and Elizabeth.

(This last is a joke depending entirely upon your knowledge of word roots. I have wasted too many jokes on you to let them pass now without identification.)

that princesses are confined in towers only because they choose to stay confined, and the only dragon required to keep them there was their own desire to be kept.

the same trees were outside, living in the ground without curiosity about the insides of houses, and growing toward death as surely as Natalie.

spot where two people have been talking, however briefly, is not after that a spot for one person to sit alone.

Why, above all, the constant unusual shock of the sound of her own name said aloud?

perhaps you feel that you are doing badly these days because you do not perceive that you are, in fact, doing very well indeed, and only lack the perception of your own worth to know exactly how well.

should hate to deprive you prematurely of the glories of the suicidal frame of mind,

It seemed that perhaps her father was trying to cure his failures in Natalie, and her mother was perhaps trying to avoid, through Natalie, doing over again those things she now believed to have been mistaken.

“The tree of sacrifice is not living wood,”