Draft

The traditional approach in the “possibility of evil” divides into two aspects: historical, bibliographical and moral.

Shirley lives during the movement of the feminist when females in American try to fight for their own voting rights. This campaign becomes the starting point for the American females to express their own opinions in public. Those ladies ultimately won their right to vote in 1920. Besides, the author experienced the second world war at the age of thirties, during which women play an important role. They started getting involved in the occupations that they've never done before. Those strong ladies are confident about devoting their powers for the winning of the war. At that turbulent era, people tried to survive under the poor living conditions. The human nature exposed without any disguise. In consequence, Shirley is highly affected by the feminist movement, and, thus, she is more likely to be inclined to observe people’s behaviours and think about the dark side of human nature. Those aspects are clearly displayed in her works.

For herself, Shirley does not live a happy life during her lifetime, even if she was born in an affluent family. After two years of life in the university, she withdrew it as a result of the tendency to depression, which would haunt her for the rest of her life and would grapple Shirley with mental health issues, including psychosomatic illnesses. On the way she pursues hard work and developed campus magazine “The Spectre” with two of her classmates, one of the boys called Stanley Edgar Hyman, who is a literary critic, becomes her husband after several years. His opinions also strongly impacted her. Jackson died of a heart disease in sleep at the age of 48. As a heavy smoker, Shirley was also overweight. These made her suffered from health and mental issues for years. Such problems lead her into thought pessimistically, which is shown in her work as the bad side of the society.

Therefore, because of the background of the society at that time and the special experience of the author, this story generates and reflects the real world in the short fiction, which causes many people’s resonate. Probably each figure in Jackson’s work can correspond a real person in the reality of the world. That is why she is able to describe so many details of the behaviours and people’s inner world in such a real way.