A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's "Possibility of Evil"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's "Possibility of Evil," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535831284

Book preview

13

The Possibility of Evil

Shirley Jackson

1965

Introduction

Shirley Jackson's story The Possibility of Evil was first published on December 18, 1965, in the Saturday Evening Post, a few months after her death in August of that year. The manuscript of the story is dated 1958, but it is classified as one of Jackson's later works. Jackson's stories typically fall into two categories: those that can be classified as horror and those that contain more subtle gothic elements. The Possibility of Evil belongs to the latter category. Like many of Jackson's short stories, it deals with the actions of a woman who is psychologically troubled or disunified in some way. Through this character, Jackson explores the concept of evil, exactly what it is and how it should be dealt with. The story has a quaint and mostly pleasant small-town veneer, but again, like many of Jackson's other works, it has clear gothic influences and explores dark themes and subjects. The Possibility of Evil can be found in the Jackson collection Just an Ordinary Day (1995) as well as in Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories, published by the Library of America in 2010.

Author Biography

Jackson was born on December 14, 1916, in San Francisco, California, to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson, but she spent most of her childhood in Burlingame, California, where her family moved when she was young. Jackson became interested in writing early on, and she produced her first written works when she was a teenager. In 1933, Jackson's family moved to Rochester, New York, where she would later attend the University of Rochester. After about a year, she left the university and moved home to focus on her writing. In 1937, she enrolled at Syracuse University, majoring in English. There, she published her first short story, Janice, and served as fiction editor of the university's humor magazine. It was also at Syracuse that she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, who would go on to be an acclaimed literary critic. Together, Jackson and Hyman founded the college's literary magazine, Spectre.

After Jackson and Hyman graduated in 1940, they moved to Greenwich Village in New York City