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Picnicking at Hill House: Shirley Jackson’s Gothic Vision of Heaven

ABSTRACT This essay examines scenes of eating, specifically picknicking, in The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, demonstrating that meals in Jackson’s gothic novels capture an irreconcilable duality at the heart of Jackson’s depiction of family: picnics become both idyllic heaven-like spaces in which women may escape the confines of patriarchal society, at the same time that they reveal the potential horrors of motherhood, subject to the all-consuming, monstrous appetites of her children.