Articles

"All You Have to Do … Is Keep Writing": Shirley Jackson’s Literary Feminism and Resistance to Cold War Gendered Expectations and Patriarchy

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Abstract

Shirley Jackson was a domestic and gothic writer in the late 1940s through the early 1960s. During her lifetime, Jackson was popular for her semi-autobiographical nonfiction and fictional short stories/novels published in women’s magazines (e.g., Good Housekeeping) and major newspapers (e.g., The New Yorker). However, her works have been largely dismissed by scholars and feminists, such as Betty Friedan. In recent years, there has been renewed interest and scholarship into Jackson’s life and work as a feminist author. In this paper, I explore the ways Jackson critiqued the cruelties, hypocrisies, and double standards that American Cold War society placed upon women and mothers in both her gothic fiction and domestic non-fiction. In the 1950s, the United States government and media widely and prolifically pushed for women to return to their homes, the sanctity of the nuclear family, and invasively monitored child-rearing to combat Cold War anxieties. I argue that Jackson did not make light of the oppression of women, as Friedan claimed she did in The Feminine Mystique, but utilized humor, psychology, and horror to resist U.S. patriarchal society and to explore issues that would also be a focus during the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s-1970s. In a time of great contradiction for women, Jackson’s literary work explores the inner struggle for independence and identity as a housewife, mother, and main financial provider; a struggle that resonates with 1960s feminists and feminists today. 

Keywords: Shirley Jasckson, Second Wave of Feminism, Betty Friedan, Gothic Literature, Cold War Era, 1950s Housewives

How to Cite:

Bonilla, A., (2026) “"All You Have to Do … Is Keep Writing": Shirley Jackson’s Literary Feminism and Resistance to Cold War Gendered Expectations and Patriarchy”, Footnotes: A Journal of History 8, 1-19.