Is this a universal feeling, the mortification you get when the person you thought was polite but friendly, and what it really was was them laughing at you.
This story spoke to me (hissed at me) when I was young and heartbroken, and its chill has lingered for many years. (In my head, "daemon lover" was perfect shorthand before people began using the verb "to ghost.") The protagonist's shame-tinged neediness, other people's dismissiveness ... sad, enraging - feminist rocket fuel. Thank you, looking forward to your follow-up!
All the little concrete details about the barrenness and loneliness and poverty of her wedding day make me sad. No jewelry or new (or at least new to her) clothes or shoes or purse to wear. No flowers, no nice meal planned, no one to be with her and help her prepare.
I remember feeling so bad for this lady. I was thinking the whole time, "Is she just crazy? Did she make him up? Is that why everyone is acting weird around her?" Is everyone just waiting for her own 'daemon lover'? Does the 'right guy' actually exist for anyone? Can't wait to hear your thoughts!
YES SHIRLEY!!! your video on Jackson was my first real introduction to her and she has since become one of my favorite authors. Thank you so much for your analysis and beautiful words about her work!
Gotta say, it's fascinating how the main character interprets the folks around her. It's almost as if she simultaneously sees their social cues, misses them, and knows she missed them, but can't react. The florist offering flowers, but she took it as offering facts about her partner. The newspaper stand attendant was telling her what she wanted to hear so she'd leave. The boy wanted to get her money, so told her anything It's hard to not feel bad though. I must wonder how it feels to be jilted before the alter even came into play. Did she imagine him? Or is he, as the title suggests, a daemon?
Or maybe, just a guy who played a cruel joke on her. Or, perhaps, it was all in her mind but with a person who existed for real and had no clue of how she translated his polite friendliness/ friendly flirtiness. 😊😅
I think it is worth noting that Jackson uses the specifically archaic spelling of Daemon--as this has the additional connotation of the classical Greek interpretation, that of an intermediate being between gods and humans, an "Inner attendant being or inspiring force." That particular definition is key to my interpretation, which is that the "Daemon" as it is, is in fact a manifestation of the narrator's mind. The first clue I think we have to this is in the letter to the sister. Clearly, the wedding was on very short notice, as the narrator apparently waits until mere hours before it is supposed to happen in order to write the letter. This can imply a myriad of contextual clues, my personal inclinations actually lean toward the nature of the relationship with the sister, as sister-sister relationships hold a very interesting place in many of Jackson's works--but that could be an essay all on its own, and this comment is going to be annoyingly long as it is. The more important thing to note about this letter is where and how it ends. "You won't believe how it happened--" and then she stops, gets distracted, seemingly completely forgetting she was composing the letter in the first place. This, alongside the remarks such as "she could not remember his voice or his face clearly[...]" plant a seed of doubt as to the actual existence of Jamie. We'll come back to that, but I want to jump to what I believe is the heart of the story--the cause of the manifestation. All morning, we see her bustling about to make things "perfect". No unwashed dishes, clean sheets and towels, constantly checking to make sure she is on time. When it comes to getting dressed, she is initially drawn to the patterned dress as more appropriate attire for a celebration, but then feels it is "too young", not "the right season". The pocketbook that goes with that dress is "shabby"--perhaps bought long ago. She feels the same about her makeup. She feels caught between trying to mark an important occasion and trying too hard to look younger than she is. This is made all the more significant by the sudden, easily-missed mention that she is 34, but the "license" (implied marriage, but not specified) says 30. She laments only having coffee and cigarettes all morning, but she can't have the food she has on hand--because that's for the future, after she is married. She prepares for the consequences of this, by placing aspirin in her bag. Then, after she visits the drugstore to get something to eat but finds she has no appetite, the air stale from the morning activities, she falls asleep, and wakes up too late for her wedding. At one point she recalls a memory of telling Jamie she used to be a good cook, and she could get back to that state. I think this whole first half of the story is telling the story of her life--that she spent her youth learning what made a "good woman", what made her marriageable. That she saved her nice dress, her bread and butter, herself, for one person, who didn't come when she was told he was supposed to. That she did make a small attempt to look at other options, and had no interest in them. Then, as she waited, she grew comfortable, and the time passed without her notice. It was then that she realized how late she was for her own wedding--and that she would have to find her betrothed herself, and that meant going out into society. We see how the people treat her as she looks for this man. The way people would treat a woman who Should Be Married By Now. Who should have been married by ten o'clock, but now it's creeping into the late afternoon. Some are dismissive, others are judgmental, some pity her, some try to use her desperation to their advantage. Again, I don't want to digress too much, but I'm confident each of these interactions could be very thoroughly dissected into something significant to the story. All of this I think contributed to a mental break wherein the narrator fabricated--though I don't believe wholesale--a fiance, whom if she could only find, if she could only marry, would insulate her from her growing fear how spinsterhood would affect her. And I am certain that the fear is absolutely rooted in societal judgement rather than a particular sense of loneliness. I don't believe she has any particular interest in marriage itself--her quick distraction from thinking about why she would want clean sheets, her disinterest in other "food", her somewhat bland description of her fiance ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"), all seem to me like hints at the fact that were it not for societal pressure to "be on time" as it were, she would be perfectly happy to pop a few aspirin and keep drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. No we go back to the existence of Jamie. A few of my blunter observations include: 1) She has little to no solid traits about him. He is tall. He is fair (either lighter skinned or good looking, neither is particularly notable). He wears a blue suit often ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"). Later, after someone says they do remember someone in a blue suit buying flowers, he was carrying flowers. 2) She is hesitant to start conversations knowing she must ask about him, and once she does, she takes every affirming suggestion someone makes as to identifiers, the only times she does not is when someone suggests he lied. 3) The confirmation we get is people who can only give the same general identifiers she does ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"). 4) The address she was given by him is within a walking distance of her apartment; she does not know about anyone renting out the apartment before the couple until someone mentions it to her, and no one knew that tenant's name. All the stops she supposed he might have made are also pretty walkable, and she sort of ends up going in a circle. The house he supposedly went into with the flowers is across the street from her, and abandoned. Nowhere that he has supposedly been in town would it be difficult for her find an address for or see a person, or have other people see a person, matching such identifiers ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"). I think it's reasonable to assume that under the stress of waking up realizing she was late for her own wedding, so to speak, she manifested an "Inner attendant being" to allay those fears. It is unquestionable that the narrator believed that the man existed--and it is also quite possible that he did, to some extent. Perhaps he was based on someone who courted her in her youth, that perhaps she had rejected, either because she felt she had plenty of time or she did not believe she would ever want to be married, only to later change her values or falter under societal pressure. Perhaps he was based on that actual tenant, who she had had a brief encounter with which her imagination ran away with, and thus later had been seen around town. I would believe he mentioned how long he would be in town, that he would be leaving around ten that day, which solidified the date and time in her head, even allowed some part of her to know she wouldn't be "caught" in her own delusion because he would be gone. Like I said, I don't believe our narrator really wants to be married. In fact, I think its that very ambivalence, the expectations of those around her in conflict with her own desires, that causes this manifestation. It is easier, perhaps, for her to tell the story, to herself and others, that someone walked out on her, that she tried and it was not her fault she failed, than to be labelled as a contrarian, to be shunned as a bad woman. I think our narrator, after a morning, after a youth, of creating the appearance of a life exactly as things should be, could not accept that she didn't want things that way at all. Anyway if you read all of that good job and thank you, I'm excited to go through the comments and see other interpretations, what I might have missed, and eventually see the followup video :D I love Shirley Jackson and it's been so long since I've been able to have a good discussion about stuff like this.
Part of me wondered if the daemon lover turned into the rat. A cat would certainly be offputting to such an entity. A good reason for a spinster to keep a cat. I don't trust Men who don't like cats.
This was a very good reading as always. Thank you. I think the story is one of the saddest stories I’ve listened to in a while. All that love, hope, waiting, wishing, planning, all that effort. And it came to nothing
I’ve read this story several times, but listening to you read it really helped me notice things I hadn’t seen before. What struck me this time was her imagined conversation with the policemen when she thinks “there’s more than what you think when you look at me.” Then I listened to you read it a second time and noticed all the ways she is trying to cling to her sense of self in the midst of her belittling by others. Thanks for opening up my perspective!
I adore your reading voice. Its like warm chocolate melting in your mouth. And kitty is adorable and comforting to watch. You pick the most interesting stories to read, and I love your breakdowns and interpretations. Thanks to you I've discovered Shirley Jackson and now have a list of her works to read through myself.
Your readings and especially analyses of Shirley Jackson’s other short stories from this collection inspired me to buy it and I read them in October and I LOVED them! I cannot wait for your analysis of this one. For me the joy of Jackson is how little she spells out and how she gives you space for your own interpretation. It makes it so fun to discuss with others as everyone brings their own selves to it. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on “Seven Types of Ambiguity” and “The Dummy”, though any choice from that collection would be a delight! Thanks to you and your kitties. 😊
You did a really good job reading this!! Another commenter really hit on the "perceiving then still messing up social cues" feeling the story gave -- this hits really close as someone with autism that has morphed into agoraphobia. Jackson's work often hits really close to home in this social territory, though. Even the man laughing as she asked to confirm plans rather than saying yes or no -- that was hard to hear/read. I think something that this story hits on is the feeling of a sunk cost when you do something "risky" socially -- it's easy for an outsider to see that the guy probably never intended to marry her, but I think the implication is that they were sleeping together before marriage, something even more taboo then than it is now. I think thats part of why she tore up the letter at the beginning -- the shame of how they met. That being said, now she feels like she can't believe anything else because that would shame her. It's perfectly reasonable to think he got lost -- otherwise she's a foolish woman who made a mistake. (This also ties into how SHE is the butt of the joke and ridicule for caring, not the man for being awful to her)
Jackson does a wonderful job of leaving open the possibilities of who or what Jamie could be. He could be the mysterious young man staying at the Royster's apartment; he could be the man hurriedly buying flowers and entering a shabby building; he could be a figment of the woman's imagination; he could be a charlatan taking advantage; he could be something supernatural. Despite living in a city, the protagonist is completely alone. Nobody offers to help her. She is judged by the men she interacts with as harshly as she judges herself. At the end, she finds an apartment mid-renovation - potentially symbolizing the start of a new beginning with Jamie - but there is a foul and disgusting rat, a creature long associated with the supernatural. Jackson has a gift of bringing the reader along in suspense to unsettling, but also inconclusive finale. The protagonist and the reader remain haunted.
It is a scenario that plays out over and over again . The people she talks to. The conversations she has with them …. They know her and play along with the ‘ village crazy Lady ‘ . Every now and then , a month in between , she follows the same way searching for a non existent lover…. Maybe she lost him years ago just before the marriage, maybe she was left on her marriage day by her then fiancé years ago …. There is trauma here . We are left guessing what it is. She cleans the apartment because everything must be perfect … but nothing is perfect about her wedding dress… waiting without preparation in the clean apartment, she becomes frightened… reality is showing a little bit , a nagging sense that she is delusional, just out of reach …. The people she speaks to play a long with the whole thing . They pity her and mock her at the same time. The poor crazy but harmless Lady on the block .
Aaaaaaaa! This has so much anxiety! Ma'am i cant watch sitcoms because of their reliance on this vibe! Aaaaaaa! I want to crawl out of my skin!! What a jerk!
It definitely made me uneasy. It gave me Yellow Wallpaper vibes but without giving me the same resolution that Yellow Wallpaper gives. Is she just crazy or was she ghosted.
The flowers existed at the place they were said to go to. The boy did not lie. The address the lover gave had a mysterious man staying there. The couple don't seem the sort to trust strangers with their property, and seemed confused about his origin and existence, but did confirm a man had been there, though he'd left not a shred of evidence. Some interpret this as part of the protagonist's delusion, making the whole story an extended metaphor. I hate those. I hate dishonest writers. So I will accept the clues as real. The couple that allowed the daemon into their residence seemed as bamboozled as the protagonist was. The wife felt she could trust him ("I just know"). The husband could think of no reason not to. An actual supernatural entity or a con artist. Why did the boy follow the man with flowers all the way up the stairs? It seems over the top for a mischievous beggar. The boy seemed to intuit romance in the man's demeanor, wondering if the protagonist would divorce him. Perhaps believing the protagonist was the man's true wife and was seeking to find out if the man had a mistress. Assuming the daemon was the man with carnations, what occasion is appropriate for carnations? Different colors mean very different things (Green means Irish or gay, Yellow means friendship, Yellow or striped means rejection). Carnations are traditional in the US for Mother's Day, May Day, military occasions, and funerals. In ancient Greece, carnations might be used for hair crowns, which were used on ceremonial occasions. Greek Orthodox weddings involve putting crowns on the heads of the groom and bride to be. Ancient Greek legends about carnations have two variations: Artemis, the virginal goddess of the hunt, falls in love with a shepherd, who rejects her. She killed him and his blood grew carnations. The other version is that Artemis had a bad hunt. Upon coming across a shepherd, she blamed him for it, and killed him. In both, she puts out his eyes. In the second, carnations grew from his eyes, perhaps as an apology. The Greek name for carnations was Dianthus, which combines 'god' and 'flower', so carnations were 'flowers of the gods.' 'Daemon' is Greek, as well, so one of the Greek connections might be the key. If we wish to craft whole stories hidden in this story, we could imagine the protagonist as the virginal huntress. Her love, her victim, is associated with carnations. In both legends, the virgin kills him. Did the protagonist hear the laughter, enter, discover a wife or mistress hidden by the man? Might she have killed both of them, then left, and blotted the whole thing out of her mind? Does she come back every week to knock at the door, behind which are decaying victims? On the face of it, the story is a trickster lover. Perhaps her sheets are dirty because they spent the night together. Once he got what he wanted, he vanished. This doesn't need supernatural elements. The protagonist being delusional doesn't need supernatural elements either. Both interpretations are unsatisfying to me and a bit boring. If Lovecraft or Poe had written this, I'd go with 'actual mischievous spirit person' and that would be it. I like the forgotten double murder possibility. A con artist, or mischievous entity that took someone else's guise, then was found with another woman. The protagonist did something about it, but can't face what happened. In a sense, the protagonist might be said to have 'divorced' her lover, just as the boy suggested.
I wonder if there's a correlation between the fear of a daemon lover taking a lustful woman to hell and today's more accepted monster romances in the light of women's sexuality being less ostracized...
Is this a universal feeling, the mortification you get when the person you thought was polite but friendly, and what it really was was them laughing at you.
This story spoke to me (hissed at me) when I was young and heartbroken, and its chill has lingered for many years. (In my head, "daemon lover" was perfect shorthand before people began using the verb "to ghost.") The protagonist's shame-tinged neediness, other people's dismissiveness ... sad, enraging - feminist rocket fuel. Thank you, looking forward to your follow-up!
All the little concrete details about the barrenness and loneliness and poverty of her wedding day make me sad. No jewelry or new (or at least new to her) clothes or shoes or purse to wear. No flowers, no nice meal planned, no one to be with her and help her prepare.
I think it was especially sad that she "used" to be a good cook. She doesn't cook for herself and there is nobody she can cook for.
I remember feeling so bad for this lady. I was thinking the whole time, "Is she just crazy? Did she make him up? Is that why everyone is acting weird around her?"
Is everyone just waiting for her own 'daemon lover'? Does the 'right guy' actually exist for anyone?
Can't wait to hear your thoughts!
YES SHIRLEY!!! your video on Jackson was my first real introduction to her and she has since become one of my favorite authors. Thank you so much for your analysis and beautiful words about her work!
Gotta say, it's fascinating how the main character interprets the folks around her. It's almost as if she simultaneously sees their social cues, misses them, and knows she missed them, but can't react.
The florist offering flowers, but she took it as offering facts about her partner. The newspaper stand attendant was telling her what she wanted to hear so she'd leave. The boy wanted to get her money, so told her anything
It's hard to not feel bad though. I must wonder how it feels to be jilted before the alter even came into play. Did she imagine him? Or is he, as the title suggests, a daemon?
Or maybe, just a guy who played a cruel joke on her. Or, perhaps, it was all in her mind but with a person who existed for real and had no clue of how she translated his polite friendliness/ friendly flirtiness. 😊😅
@ΕλληΦεαρινου that would be interesting! The whole thing seems so dreamlike with how quickly things happened
The boy was right about the flowers existing, at least.
I think it is worth noting that Jackson uses the specifically archaic spelling of Daemon--as this has the additional connotation of the classical Greek interpretation, that of an intermediate being between gods and humans, an "Inner attendant being or inspiring force." That particular definition is key to my interpretation, which is that the "Daemon" as it is, is in fact a manifestation of the narrator's mind.
The first clue I think we have to this is in the letter to the sister. Clearly, the wedding was on very short notice, as the narrator apparently waits until mere hours before it is supposed to happen in order to write the letter. This can imply a myriad of contextual clues, my personal inclinations actually lean toward the nature of the relationship with the sister, as sister-sister relationships hold a very interesting place in many of Jackson's works--but that could be an essay all on its own, and this comment is going to be annoyingly long as it is. The more important thing to note about this letter is where and how it ends. "You won't believe how it happened--" and then she stops, gets distracted, seemingly completely forgetting she was composing the letter in the first place. This, alongside the remarks such as "she could not remember his voice or his face clearly[...]" plant a seed of doubt as to the actual existence of Jamie.
We'll come back to that, but I want to jump to what I believe is the heart of the story--the cause of the manifestation. All morning, we see her bustling about to make things "perfect". No unwashed dishes, clean sheets and towels, constantly checking to make sure she is on time. When it comes to getting dressed, she is initially drawn to the patterned dress as more appropriate attire for a celebration, but then feels it is "too young", not "the right season". The pocketbook that goes with that dress is "shabby"--perhaps bought long ago. She feels the same about her makeup. She feels caught between trying to mark an important occasion and trying too hard to look younger than she is. This is made all the more significant by the sudden, easily-missed mention that she is 34, but the "license" (implied marriage, but not specified) says 30. She laments only having coffee and cigarettes all morning, but she can't have the food she has on hand--because that's for the future, after she is married. She prepares for the consequences of this, by placing aspirin in her bag. Then, after she visits the drugstore to get something to eat but finds she has no appetite, the air stale from the morning activities, she falls asleep, and wakes up too late for her wedding. At one point she recalls a memory of telling Jamie she used to be a good cook, and she could get back to that state. I think this whole first half of the story is telling the story of her life--that she spent her youth learning what made a "good woman", what made her marriageable. That she saved her nice dress, her bread and butter, herself, for one person, who didn't come when she was told he was supposed to. That she did make a small attempt to look at other options, and had no interest in them. Then, as she waited, she grew comfortable, and the time passed without her notice. It was then that she realized how late she was for her own wedding--and that she would have to find her betrothed herself, and that meant going out into society.
We see how the people treat her as she looks for this man. The way people would treat a woman who Should Be Married By Now. Who should have been married by ten o'clock, but now it's creeping into the late afternoon. Some are dismissive, others are judgmental, some pity her, some try to use her desperation to their advantage. Again, I don't want to digress too much, but I'm confident each of these interactions could be very thoroughly dissected into something significant to the story. All of this I think contributed to a mental break wherein the narrator fabricated--though I don't believe wholesale--a fiance, whom if she could only find, if she could only marry, would insulate her from her growing fear how spinsterhood would affect her. And I am certain that the fear is absolutely rooted in societal judgement rather than a particular sense of loneliness. I don't believe she has any particular interest in marriage itself--her quick distraction from thinking about why she would want clean sheets, her disinterest in other "food", her somewhat bland description of her fiance ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"), all seem to me like hints at the fact that were it not for societal pressure to "be on time" as it were, she would be perfectly happy to pop a few aspirin and keep drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
No we go back to the existence of Jamie. A few of my blunter observations include:
1) She has little to no solid traits about him. He is tall. He is fair (either lighter skinned or good looking, neither is particularly notable). He wears a blue suit often ("you know how many men wear blue suits?"). Later, after someone says they do remember someone in a blue suit buying flowers, he was carrying flowers.
2) She is hesitant to start conversations knowing she must ask about him, and once she does, she takes every affirming suggestion someone makes as to identifiers, the only times she does not is when someone suggests he lied.
3) The confirmation we get is people who can only give the same general identifiers she does ("you know how many men wear blue suits?").
4) The address she was given by him is within a walking distance of her apartment; she does not know about anyone renting out the apartment before the couple until someone mentions it to her, and no one knew that tenant's name. All the stops she supposed he might have made are also pretty walkable, and she sort of ends up going in a circle. The house he supposedly went into with the flowers is across the street from her, and abandoned. Nowhere that he has supposedly been in town would it be difficult for her find an address for or see a person, or have other people see a person, matching such identifiers ("you know how many men wear blue suits?").
I think it's reasonable to assume that under the stress of waking up realizing she was late for her own wedding, so to speak, she manifested an "Inner attendant being" to allay those fears. It is unquestionable that the narrator believed that the man existed--and it is also quite possible that he did, to some extent. Perhaps he was based on someone who courted her in her youth, that perhaps she had rejected, either because she felt she had plenty of time or she did not believe she would ever want to be married, only to later change her values or falter under societal pressure. Perhaps he was based on that actual tenant, who she had had a brief encounter with which her imagination ran away with, and thus later had been seen around town. I would believe he mentioned how long he would be in town, that he would be leaving around ten that day, which solidified the date and time in her head, even allowed some part of her to know she wouldn't be "caught" in her own delusion because he would be gone. Like I said, I don't believe our narrator really wants to be married. In fact, I think its that very ambivalence, the expectations of those around her in conflict with her own desires, that causes this manifestation. It is easier, perhaps, for her to tell the story, to herself and others, that someone walked out on her, that she tried and it was not her fault she failed, than to be labelled as a contrarian, to be shunned as a bad woman. I think our narrator, after a morning, after a youth, of creating the appearance of a life exactly as things should be, could not accept that she didn't want things that way at all.
Anyway if you read all of that good job and thank you, I'm excited to go through the comments and see other interpretations, what I might have missed, and eventually see the followup video :D I love Shirley Jackson and it's been so long since I've been able to have a good discussion about stuff like this.
I think you made the next video lol
Just her going through her day in the beginning was making me anxious.
The unspoken word at the beating heart of this story is *spinster*. Gasp!!
Part of me wondered if the daemon lover turned into the rat. A cat would certainly be offputting to such an entity. A good reason for a spinster to keep a cat. I don't trust Men who don't like cats.
Spinster or divorcee (perhaps even worse).
This story felt so familiar and unsettling at the same time, the jokes always on me.
I really enjoyed this, please keep reading to us.
This was a very good reading as always. Thank you. I think the story is one of the saddest stories I’ve listened to in a while. All that love, hope, waiting, wishing, planning, all that effort. And it came to nothing
Looool the way you plug omelas at the end as though we weren't already in tears 😂
I’ve read this story several times, but listening to you read it really helped me notice things I hadn’t seen before. What struck me this time was her imagined conversation with the policemen when she thinks “there’s more than what you think when you look at me.” Then I listened to you read it a second time and noticed all the ways she is trying to cling to her sense of self in the midst of her belittling by others. Thanks for opening up my perspective!
I adore your reading voice. Its like warm chocolate melting in your mouth.
And kitty is adorable and comforting to watch.
You pick the most interesting stories to read, and I love your breakdowns and interpretations.
Thanks to you I've discovered Shirley Jackson and now have a list of her works to read through myself.
Your readings and especially analyses of Shirley Jackson’s other short stories from this collection inspired me to buy it and I read them in October and I LOVED them! I cannot wait for your analysis of this one. For me the joy of Jackson is how little she spells out and how she gives you space for your own interpretation. It makes it so fun to discuss with others as everyone brings their own selves to it.
I’d also love to hear your thoughts on “Seven Types of Ambiguity” and “The Dummy”, though any choice from that collection would be a delight! Thanks to you and your kitties. 😊
Yess I'm so excited to listen to this as I paint!
I’ve been so hoping you would tackle this story! It’s the best possible early Christmas present!
You did a really good job reading this!!
Another commenter really hit on the "perceiving then still messing up social cues" feeling the story gave -- this hits really close as someone with autism that has morphed into agoraphobia. Jackson's work often hits really close to home in this social territory, though. Even the man laughing as she asked to confirm plans rather than saying yes or no -- that was hard to hear/read.
I think something that this story hits on is the feeling of a sunk cost when you do something "risky" socially -- it's easy for an outsider to see that the guy probably never intended to marry her, but I think the implication is that they were sleeping together before marriage, something even more taboo then than it is now. I think thats part of why she tore up the letter at the beginning -- the shame of how they met. That being said, now she feels like she can't believe anything else because that would shame her. It's perfectly reasonable to think he got lost -- otherwise she's a foolish woman who made a mistake. (This also ties into how SHE is the butt of the joke and ridicule for caring, not the man for being awful to her)
Jackson does a wonderful job of leaving open the possibilities of who or what Jamie could be. He could be the mysterious young man staying at the Royster's apartment; he could be the man hurriedly buying flowers and entering a shabby building; he could be a figment of the woman's imagination; he could be a charlatan taking advantage; he could be something supernatural. Despite living in a city, the protagonist is completely alone. Nobody offers to help her. She is judged by the men she interacts with as harshly as she judges herself. At the end, she finds an apartment mid-renovation - potentially symbolizing the start of a new beginning with Jamie - but there is a foul and disgusting rat, a creature long associated with the supernatural. Jackson has a gift of bringing the reader along in suspense to unsettling, but also inconclusive finale. The protagonist and the reader remain haunted.
well that was sad :(
i love your videos so much 💕💕💕
Shirley never missed!
New story! Yes!
It is a scenario that plays out over and over again . The people she talks to. The conversations she has with them …. They know her and play along with the ‘ village crazy Lady ‘ . Every now and then , a month in between , she follows the same way searching for a non existent lover…. Maybe she lost him years ago just before the marriage, maybe she was left on her marriage day by her then fiancé years ago …. There is trauma here . We are left guessing what it is. She cleans the apartment because everything must be perfect … but nothing is perfect about her wedding dress… waiting without preparation in the clean apartment, she becomes frightened… reality is showing a little bit , a nagging sense that she is delusional, just out of reach …. The people she speaks to play a long with the whole thing . They pity her and mock her at the same time. The poor crazy but harmless Lady on the block .
THIS WAS SO SAD!!! I think he was real. :( This upset me the most out of all the readings so far.
Aaaaaaaa! This has so much anxiety! Ma'am i cant watch sitcoms because of their reliance on this vibe! Aaaaaaa! I want to crawl out of my skin!! What a jerk!
One of my favorites, along with The Tooth :)
Please do a video and critique of “The cat” by Mary Wilkins Freeman.
❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
This is the fear of female loneliness. 34, unmarried, judged by men. 😢
An antiquated fear, thank goodness.
@Badficwriter Is it?
oh hello mouse!
good'un 👍
It definitely made me uneasy. It gave me Yellow Wallpaper vibes but without giving me the same resolution that Yellow Wallpaper gives.
Is she just crazy or was she ghosted.
The flowers existed at the place they were said to go to. The boy did not lie. The address the lover gave had a mysterious man staying there. The couple don't seem the sort to trust strangers with their property, and seemed confused about his origin and existence, but did confirm a man had been there, though he'd left not a shred of evidence.
Some interpret this as part of the protagonist's delusion, making the whole story an extended metaphor. I hate those. I hate dishonest writers. So I will accept the clues as real. The couple that allowed the daemon into their residence seemed as bamboozled as the protagonist was. The wife felt she could trust him ("I just know"). The husband could think of no reason not to. An actual supernatural entity or a con artist.
Why did the boy follow the man with flowers all the way up the stairs? It seems over the top for a mischievous beggar. The boy seemed to intuit romance in the man's demeanor, wondering if the protagonist would divorce him. Perhaps believing the protagonist was the man's true wife and was seeking to find out if the man had a mistress.
Assuming the daemon was the man with carnations, what occasion is appropriate for carnations? Different colors mean very different things (Green means Irish or gay, Yellow means friendship, Yellow or striped means rejection). Carnations are traditional in the US for Mother's Day, May Day, military occasions, and funerals. In ancient Greece, carnations might be used for hair crowns, which were used on ceremonial occasions. Greek Orthodox weddings involve putting crowns on the heads of the groom and bride to be.
Ancient Greek legends about carnations have two variations: Artemis, the virginal goddess of the hunt, falls in love with a shepherd, who rejects her. She killed him and his blood grew carnations. The other version is that Artemis had a bad hunt. Upon coming across a shepherd, she blamed him for it, and killed him. In both, she puts out his eyes. In the second, carnations grew from his eyes, perhaps as an apology. The Greek name for carnations was Dianthus, which combines 'god' and 'flower', so carnations were 'flowers of the gods.' 'Daemon' is Greek, as well, so one of the Greek connections might be the key.
If we wish to craft whole stories hidden in this story, we could imagine the protagonist as the virginal huntress. Her love, her victim, is associated with carnations. In both legends, the virgin kills him. Did the protagonist hear the laughter, enter, discover a wife or mistress hidden by the man? Might she have killed both of them, then left, and blotted the whole thing out of her mind? Does she come back every week to knock at the door, behind which are decaying victims?
On the face of it, the story is a trickster lover. Perhaps her sheets are dirty because they spent the night together. Once he got what he wanted, he vanished. This doesn't need supernatural elements. The protagonist being delusional doesn't need supernatural elements either. Both interpretations are unsatisfying to me and a bit boring. If Lovecraft or Poe had written this, I'd go with 'actual mischievous spirit person' and that would be it.
I like the forgotten double murder possibility. A con artist, or mischievous entity that took someone else's guise, then was found with another woman. The protagonist did something about it, but can't face what happened. In a sense, the protagonist might be said to have 'divorced' her lover, just as the boy suggested.
I wonder if there's a correlation between the fear of a daemon lover taking a lustful woman to hell and today's more accepted monster romances in the light of women's sexuality being less ostracized...
IVE DIED!!!/LH