"Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons" Quiz

Answer: a sharply leaning left-hand gatepost

Everyone in town had an opinion on what to do about that gatepost, until Sally "magicked" the right-hand one "just slightly" off its foundations. "I got the impression that there was a general feeling that we ourselves had made the ultimate dead-pan joke about the crooked gatepost, and further discussion would be superfluous."

Answer: No

At the end of "Life Among the Savages", there is a reference to "Mr. H." but that is as close as we ever come to learning his name. Jackson, in real life, was married to Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic and writer. The books are usually marketed as memoirs, rather than novels, and the names, and relative ages, of the children are the same as those of Jackson's own.

However, it seems that real life in that little Vermont town, for a writer of "strange" books, and her Jewish intellectual husband, was not quite as sunshiny as portrayed in these books.

Answer: Joanne

Her father had wanted to name her Jean, and her mother had wanted to name her Anne, so they "compromised upon an arbitrary Joanne". Jannie herself, however, calls herself "variously, Jean, Jane, Anne, Linda, Barbara, Estelle, Josephine, Garaldine, Sarah, Sally, Laura, Margaret, Marilyn, Susan, and - imposingly - Mrs Ellenoy. The second Mrs Ellenoy."

Answer: Charles

Our narrator goes to the first PTA meeting, all agog to meet Charles' mother, only to learn that there IS no Charles. We are left with more than a suspicion that the bad-word-saying, chalk-throwing, and girl-hitting Charles is, in fact, Laurie.

Answer: Sally

Sally has long been pestering her mother to be allowed to "magick" the leaning gatepost. "'WHY can't I?' she asked. 'Because it is a great big gatepost and you are only a little tiny girl, and you have made enough trouble with that magic already, what with poor little Jerry Martin afraid to go to bed at night and his mother keeps calling me and calling me to get you to take the spell off again - '"

Answer: the blanket from Sally's bed

Through a long, fevered night, all the members of the household moved from bed to bed, dragging their possessions behind them. In the morning all the pillows, blankets, cigarettes, ashtrays, drinks, and dolls could be found, except for the blue-patterned patchwork quilt from Sally's bed.

Answer: teacher at a girl's college

This puts his wife into a new position, that of "faculty wife". "A faculty wife is a person who is married to a faculty....It is considered probable that ten years or so ago she had a face and a personality of her own, but if she has it still, she is expected to keep it decently to herself." Shirley Jackson would have had first hand knowledge of this, as her husband was a teacher at nearby Bennington College, at that time an all-girl school.

Answer: clothespin dolls

"During the long summer when I was fourteen years old, I made, with the collaboration of my friend Dorothy, four hundred and thirty-one clothespin dolls. I know that never before or since have I made so many of anything, or with so much enthusiasm, and I feel increasingly, now, that there is not enough time left in the world to make four hundred and thirty-one things; perhaps some quality of adolescent fervor has disappeared."

Answer: Pyewacket

Although the family had two cats, they became plagued by mice.
"My husband announced shrilly that he personally would be prepared to pay any amount of money for a cat who was a CAT and caught mice instead of spending all his time sleeping in the oven and eating his head off. This provoked Gato into coming out of the oven with icy courtesy and going across the kitchen and upstairs without even a glance at any of us."

Answer: coins

"...it was suddenly abruptly clear to Jannie and Sally and me that their father and Laurie were planning to get hold of all the money in the world and put it away in their metal box, and a consequent strong bitterness began to show itself around the house."