The Suburban Unhomely: Alienation and Anxiety in Shirley Jackson’s The Road Through the Wall
The Suburban Unhomely: Alienation and Anxiety in Shirley Jackson’s The Road Through the Wall

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses Shirley Jackson's first novel, The Road Through the Wall (1948), as governed by two dominant affects: alienation and anxiety. It proves that the fictional middle-class suburban community in the novel can be seen as a metaphor for America with its unconscious desires and fears. The uncanny transformation of the setting from a pastoral ideal into a grotesque site of horror is a response to the major anxieties of the 1940s in America and a way to talk about contradictions at the heart of American national narrative.

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