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Stanley was significantly less progressive. Many years later, he would reportedly say he did not believe it was possible for a woman to be raped. No matter how adamantly they might protest, he claimed, women wanted to be forced into sex,
As always, Shirley’s writing was the element of her life that brought her the greatest personal satisfaction.
Stanley had hoped to write fiction himself, but once he met Shirley, he realized that he could not compete. Stanley “wrote painfully, it was a tedious, forced thing, whereas she—the thing flowed like you turned on a faucet,”
Indeed, Shirley Jackson was always the family breadwinner. Stanley was paid little as a prof at a small liberal arts college and as a low-level contributor to The New Yorker.
More problematic was Stanley’s persistent interest in other women, which he saw no reason to hide.
her—Stanley, embracing a self-styled polyamorous philosophy, saw no reason to limit himself to a single woman.
