4. The Sundial

 By Shirley Jackson

I’ve only read two Shirley Jackson novels, The Haunting of Hill House, which I read before this blog was started, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but am a great admirer of both.  About a year ago, shortly after the pandemic started, Olman got me Monster She Wrote:  Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction, which he added to one of his orders from his fave local bookstore, Argo.

I quickly read the profiles on my fave authors:  Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson.  The writers spoke highly of The Sundial, which I put on my list and ended up ordering online after Christmas.  When I got around to reading The Sundial, I had also watched the 1973 British film, The Homecoming on the Criterion Channel, which reminded me of aspects of the book.  The film was a rather unsubtle and claustrophpobic portrayal of unlikeable, resentful family members verbally abusing each other for 1 hr 40 min.  It was bloody awful.

The Sundial was more nuanced and allegorial.  There was no verbal or physical abuse, but there was psychological subterfuge and warfare, which was subtle compared to The Homecoming! 

The Halloran clan were gathered at the Halloran house (mansion) for the funeral of Lionel, the only son.  There’s Orianna, the self-involved and anti-maternal matriarch, her aged, wheelchair-bound husband, Richard, the middle-aged spinster Aunt Fanny, Lionel’s widow, Maryjane, and her 10 year old daughter, Fancy, who’s as sociopathic as her grandmother, Orianna.   We know this because:

Not a servant, or an animal, or any child in the village near the house, would willingly go near her.

There’s also Miss Ogilvie, the governess, and Essex, hired help of vague position but somehow quite familiar with Orianna, whom she once demeaningly referred to as a courtier.  

 The Wikipedia summarized the plot quite efficiently: 

Immediately upon the death of her son, Orianna seizes ownership of the house and begins to exert her power over its occupants: Miss Ogilvie and Essex are to be dismissed, Maryjane sent away, and Fanny allowed to live in the house only by Orianna's good graces. Young Fancy, who Orianna claims will inherit the house upon her grandmother's death, will remain. Amid the uproar following this announcement, Fanny receives a vision whilst walking in the Halloran gardens: the ghost of her father warns her that the world is soon to end and that only those in the Halloran house will be spared. As Fanny tells the others of the coming destruction, a snake seems to manifest on the floor; this is taken as an omen from the ghost of Fanny's father. Orianna, shaken, reconsiders and allows everyone to remain in the house. 

Soon after this, Orianna sends for Mrs. Willow, "an old friend" of Orianna's. Mrs. Willow arrives with her two daughters, Julia and Arabella; all three women seem intent on winning their way into the Hallorans' money, but become frightened when they hear of the coming destruction and refuse to be sent away. A few days after, the teenaged Gloria arrives, a daughter of a cousin of Orianna, who asks to stay with the Hallorans whilst her father is out of the country.

With all these disparate persons stuck in the mansion together knowing the world was going to end, there were some darkly comical situations and verbal interplay, especially from Orianna and Essex, the most sardonic of the adults versus the rest of the neurotic characters who haven’t a clue how to survive an apocalypse.  Sure enough, the end of the world came in the form of a big storm, and the novel ended before we found out what of became of these people. 

I didn’t know what to think of The Sundial.  To be frank, I was hoping for another We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Sundial was certainly not that, even though it featured a creepy old mansion and at least one disturbed female character.  I certainly wasn’t expecting a dark comedy about the end of the world, which The Sundial was in a way.   There’s a passage where Frances/Fanny and Miss Ogilvie go into town to order supplies to prep for end times.  In the town library, Fanny rather unsubtly asked the elderly librarians for books on “surviving the wilds.”  The librarians were confused, thinking Fanny was ordering books for her niece. The more sensitive Miss Ogilvie gently interjected:

“Aunt Fanny… Miss Inverness and Miss Debora have always been so kind… so thoughtful. Would it not be an act of friendship to include them in our future?”

“I confess I had thought of it,” Aunt Fanny said. “But I do not think it will offend Caroline or Deborah if I point out, frankly, that our need will be for emore sturdy, more rugged personalities.  Remember, our little group must include builders and workers as well as—” she blushed faintly—“the mothers of future generations.”

All the characters seem to have their dysfunctional way of dealing with impending doom, none of them practical.  Example: burning the books in the library to make room for 'necessities' like corn cob pipes and toiletries.  This book also reminded me of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia - the depressed protagonist manages to deal with the end of the world better than her more functional sister.

On second thought, pigeonholing Fancy as sociopathic was unfair, as her young mind had been informed by very flawed adults around her while her Self was unformed due to privileged isolation and lack of stimuli. 

“People growing up . . .” Fancy’s voice faded; she seemed to be trying very hard to phrase something only very imperfectly perceived; she laughed timidly, and reached out to touch Gloria’s arm. “It’s easier, being young and growing up,” she said haltingly, “when there are other people around doing it with you. You know, when you can think that all over the world there are children your age, growing up, and all of them somehow feeling the same. But suppose . . . suppose you were the only child growing up.” She shook her head. “You were lucky,” she said.

“I haven’t altogether grown up yet.”

 “Gloria, won’t you miss things like dancing, and boys, and going to parties, and pretty dresses, and movies, and football games? I’ve been waiting a long time for all the things like that, and now . . .”

 “I can only think we’ll have other things as good. Anyway, we’ll be safe.”

“Who wants to be safe, for heaven’s sakes?” Fancy was scornful. “I’d rather live in a world full of other people, even dangerous people. I’ve been safe all my life. I’ve never even played with anyone, except my dolls.” Once again she was thoughtful, moving her hand along the corner of the doll house in a gesture oddly reminiscent of her grandmother. “If I could,” she said at last, “I would make it stop, all of this.” 

And I loved Jackson’s depiction of the Halloran House.  Houses are her recurring motif – all the houses in Jackson books I’ve read were as much a character as their human inhabitants.  There’s even a maze (could this 1958 novel have influenced The Shining?) where Aunt Fanny got lost in – physically and metaphorically.

Once she saw the way out clearly, and even reached her hands almost through the hedge into daylight but could not get through.  But this is my own maze, she told herself, this is the maze I grew up in; I could not be a prisoner here; I know the way so perfectly, and she turned and was further lost. 

The Sundial is full of meta houses:  meta-phorical ones such as Fancy’s dollhouse or dream houses like in Mrs. Halloran’s mind.  And actual meta as in a house-within-houses, like Aunt Fanny’s obsession with the secret inner apartment within the Halloran House.  Fanny’s desperate need for control reminded me of Toni Collette’s character in the horror film, Hereditary.  Annie’s desire for control wa expressed through her profession as a dollhouse maker and miniatures artist, but the control was illusory and futile in the face of impending fate and matriarchal evil. 

In the end, I didn’t love The Sundial, like I did the other Jackson books, but I’m glad I read it. 

A place of my own, Mrs. Halloran thought, turning restlessly and dreaming in the great rosy bed with silk sheets, a place all my own, a house where I can live alone and put everything I love, a little small house of my own. The woods around are dark, but the fire inside is bright, and dances in moving colors over the painted walls, and the books and the one chair; over the fireplace are the things I put there. I will sit in the one chair or I will lie on the soft rug by the fire, and no one will talk to me, and no one will hear me; there will be only one of everything—one cup, one plate, one spoon, one knife. Deep in the forest I am living in my little house and no one can ever find me.

Here is a thoughtful review:  http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/2019/06/23/shirley-jackson-the-sundial/