Domesticity Is the Real Monster in ‘Shirley’
A new biopic casts horror writer Shirley Jackson as a villain — but it’s the forces that drove her to cruelty we should be scared of
Shortly after the trailer for Shirley, Josephine Decker’s new biopic about 20th-century horror writer Shirley Jackson, hit the internet, I found myself chatting with a friend about the movie. “I worry that they’re going to portray Shirley Jackson as crazy,” she said. Having finally seen the film, I must say: The friend will not be pleased. The Shirley of Decker’s Shirley is unremittingly bonkers, a contagious font of mental illness, a vicious drunk, a corrupter of the young and innocent — in the words of one of those young, innocent people, a “fucking monster.” Yet, somehow, this doesn’t come off as disrespectful. Instead, it feels like the best way to honor Jackson’s work, which gave women’s domestic struggles gravity by imbuing them with terror.
Jackson is sort of a patron saint of misunderstood female genius. She became a writer in the pre-feminist 1950s, writing exquisite literary fiction about human greed, madness, and cruelty that was dismissed as pulpy horror. She was one of relatively few female writers to carve out a financially viable career, but her earnings were controlled by her husband, the critic and professor…
