Still Raising Savages

A WRITER'S WIT
From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.
​Jane Hamilton
Born July 13, 1957

J. Hamilton

My Book World

Jackson, Shirley. Raising Demons. New
    York: Farrar, 1957.

I loved this sequel to Jackson’s first memoir about family, Life Among the Savages. For those readers who might think that a successful writer with a family of four children (five if you count her husband) might neglect any of them, such readers should take note of the following passage, in which a mother who is in full grasp of the personality of each one of her children writes:

---

“It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a four-day vacation, the thin veneer of family unity wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities; Laurie, for instance, is a small-town mayor, Jannie a Games Mistress, Sally a vague, stern old lady watching the rest of us with remote disapproval, and Barry a small intrepid foot soldier, following unquestioningly and doggedly. The two nervous creatures hovering in the background, making small futile gestures and tending to laugh weakly, are, of course, unmistakable. They are there to help with the luggage. These several personalities began to emerge in the car driving to Albany, and Sally’s hat began to unravel” (237)

Shirley Jackson may have been the first Tiger Mother as she reared her four children in the 1950s. Now, I don’t mean that she micromanaged their lives, but she did see, by her own accounting, that they were properly cared for, not just in terms of the basics like food and clothing, but also their emotional and psychological development. She knew the essence of each child and attempted to open up the world to them, or, at the very least, she stayed out of their way. She allowed Laurie to be all boy, Sally to be a starry-eyed spinner of tales, Jannie to be just as bossy as her mother, and Barry, the youngest, he was allowed to drink in the wonder of life. Who could ask for more? (Perhaps her children’s memoirs would reveal a different dynamic).

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-14 Delaware