"You'd think my own face would know me": Losing Identity in Shirley Jackson's Uncanny Domestic Short Fiction

The narrative of domestic fiction frequently depicts a woman’s search for domestic bliss, as a mother, wife, and homemaker. Shirley Jackson has often contested this narrative by portraying female characters who, through uncanny manifestations of repressed desires and fears, go against these norms. ‘The Deamon Lover’ (1949) and ‘The Tooth’ (1949) present two female protagonists, who are confronted by the reflection of their own lives, which neither of them are content with. The stories deal with loss of identity in post-war America, when domesticity was both preferred and obligated as a part of female identity in order to fit into societal norms. This paper studies how the pressure of living a domestic life comes across in Jackson’s fiction, through Freud’s theory on the uncanny as repressed desires and fears. By analyzing domestic tropes through the concept of gender roles, as well as discussing the resemblance with gothic fiction; In addition, the extension of the mind as a manifestation of the repressed, as well as the mental breakdown of the two protagonists as a loss of identity. The paper argues that Jackson opposes the narrative in traditional domestic fiction by portraying women who lose identity as they struggle to conform to domestic values signaled by uncanny experiences.