Moore, Jackson, Oates Blog

 Moore, Jackson, and Oates

    The literary canon owes much to Mary Shelley for her seminal work on Frankenstein, possibly the first real science fiction story to come into the Western Literary canon. Shelley's work represented an elevation in complexity related to the literature of the day, blurring the line between man and monster. The stories of Moore, Jackson, and Oates all bear this complexity of ideas and willingness to explore ideas within a genre to their furthest extent. Moore presents in her story, Black God's Kiss, the warrior-woman Jirel of Joiry; one of the few female protagonists within the sword-and-sorcery genre. After a vicious warlord overtakes her kingdom Jirel vows to journey into a hellish underworld to gain her revenge, risking the loss of her soul for vengeance against the tyrant. Shirley Jackson of Haunting of Hill House fame, masterfully brings readers a social horror story about an annual ritual of mob sacrifice. One of several families is picked among the others in the town, and out of them the wife is selected to be stoned to death. What should be immediately horrific and appalling is presented as routine and something to be done with "in time for lunch". Joyce Carol Oates then presents in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? an unnerving an suspenseful story about a young woman in 60s being confronted with a stranger who claims to be in love with her, telling her all of this information which is meant to imply he has been stalking her or some other such action. The stranger comes to her house in the evening and asks to go on a car ride; and after an unhinged exchange in which he attempts to tell her that there is nothing for a "girl like you to do but be sweet and give in", he shuffles her to his car and drives away.

    Each of these stories present new and interesting ideas into their respective genres and sub-genres which, during the times each were written, were nearly unheard of. Moore's introduction of Jirel of Joiry as a female protagonist in the sword-and-sorcery genre was unheard of; female characters often had no agency within the genre, yet Jirel was at the center of her own series of short stories. Jackson's unsettling yet mundane presentation of a ritualistic stoning caused so much controversy at its inception that the New Yorker lost subscribers after they published the story. As the shock subsided readers began to search for the meaning behind the uncanny nature of the story, a response which the best social horror is meant to illicit from its readers. Oates brought the raw suspense and sheer terror of the prospect of a serial killer attempting to lure a town's young women to their deaths to the page, as it was inspired by a series of killings in 1966.


Would you put Oates' story in the same category of horror as Jacksons'?

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