Yesenia answers “Did anyone else think the major theme or...”

Regan asked this question about The Haunting of Hill House:

Did anyone else think the major theme or "horror" of the book is repressed female (lesbian) sexuality?

Yesenia Shirley Jackson was utterly shocked when some of her works were interpreted along this line--her amazing biography, written by Ruth Franklin, reveals …moreShirley Jackson was utterly shocked when some of her works were interpreted along this line--her amazing biography, written by Ruth Franklin, reveals how important friendship was for her, particularly because, sadly, she did not have a lifelong female friend, had no female friend growing up that she would keep... and her mother was so horrible to her, so demeaning, so hateful, that Shirley Jackson did not even get that primordial relationship to give her comfort.

I think that lesbianism/female sexuality is sometimes read onto things that in fact speak of the longing for a true, close, lifelong friend, which is, in my view, an even more profound human need than sex--profound, becuase a true friend can make a life worth living. And sex, you can just have.

I think friendship and closeness and intimacy are too often conflated with sex. And it seems, from Shirley Jackson's own life and experience, that many of her books, the need and repressed desire, was precisely for those elements.

But, that is just me, a person who has not one, but several life-long female friends without whom... I cannot fathom what my life would have been like, if I had not had a friend in each and every stage... my sexual/romantic partners came and went, then I married and had a child--but my child will grow up and leave, and my husband, well, what's a husband? My friends--they are the backbone, the true foundations, of my life. And I really got the vibe, from S. Jackon's biography, that she wished to have such a foundation, such relationships, such love. Sex is overrated...(less)

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The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

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