disintegration? Regardless, she was deeply demoralized by her failure at college. And living at home could not have helped. Her mother pressured her constantly to find a boyfriend who would become a suitable husband—preferably someone rich who could support her in the style to which Geraldine and Leslie were accustomed, a life of country clubs and ski trips. At the same time, Geraldine continued to be highly critical of her daughter’s figure, her looks, her personal style. She warned Shirley that she would never meet a man unlessshe lost weight and dyed her hair. All Shirley’s life, Geraldine had been telling her that she was unsuitable, undesirable, unattractive. Now the University of Rochester had rejected her too. A psychiatrist who treated her in the 1960s would later say that she had her first breakdown during college.
Major depression often emerges in late adolescence. Sylvia Plath—whose novel The Bell Jar , which also depicts a young woman’s breakdown, was likely influenced by Hangsaman— tried to kill herself for the first time at age nineteen, the same age as Jackson was during much of her second year at Rochester. (Plath, who also struggled with her relationship with a domineering mother, admired Jackson and hoped to meet her during a summer internship at Mademoiselle in 1953.) Was Jackson’s depression serious enough that she tried to kill herself, as the memoir quoted earlier suggests? It is certainly possible. She had suicidal thoughts as early as sixteen. Her college diaries reveal that her mental suffering was intense. Back in February 1935, that month of “evil omen,” she called her life “deadening” and wondered, “Will there ever come a break, and will there be any life to jump at the break when it comes?” She did well for several months after Jeanou left, but by November 1935 her “old fears of people” had returned. The following spring she suffered from “nerves and overwrought temperament.” A poem tucked into her 1935 diary is written from the perspective of a person who might be about to jump off a bridge, looking at “the fearful cold waters below.” (Several years earlier, as Jackson probably was aware, the poet Hart Crane had committed suicide by jumping off a boat bound to New York from Mexico.) The story “Janice,” written during her first year at Syracuse University, depicts a girl at a party who casually tells friends that she attempted suicide because she wasn’t able to return to college. In another story Jackson wrote around the same time, a girl tells a male friend about her brush with suicide—she had planned to jump off a bridge:
“you were just going to slip off into the water?” asked victor.
“very softly,” i said.
“with no more than that?” asked victor.
“no more than that,” i said.
“tell me,” said victor, “why didn’t you die?”
“i forgot,” i said. “i went home and wrote a poem instead.”
But it is telling that the girl in Jackson’s bridge story talks about committing suicide rather than attempting it. In “Janice,” too, the girl does not go through with the deed. Talking, or writing, takes the place of action.
On her last day at the University of Rochester—June 8, 1936—Jackson wrote herself a letter, addressed to “Shirlee” and signed “Lee”: the name of a new persona. Lee explains that she is leaving her old self behind: “You don’t mind my outgrowing you, do you?” If she once was suicidal, she is no longer. “I still want to live, as you did,” she writes. “And now I think I know how. . . . Through you, and all the rest in that desk, I have learned to be willing.” The rest in that desk —the little black datebooks, the “Debutante” diary, all the pages on which she tried out new writing styles and new characters—were instruments she used to find her voice.
As her classmates returned to campus in the fall, Jackson spent what would have been her junior year at Rochester in her bedroom at her
Major depression often emerges in late adolescence. Sylvia Plath—whose novel The Bell Jar , which also depicts a young woman’s breakdown, was likely influenced by Hangsaman— tried to kill herself for the first time at age nineteen, the same age as Jackson was during much of her second year at Rochester. (Plath, who also struggled with her relationship with a domineering mother, admired Jackson and hoped to meet her during a summer internship at Mademoiselle in 1953.) Was Jackson’s depression serious enough that she tried to kill herself, as the memoir quoted earlier suggests? It is certainly possible. She had suicidal thoughts as early as sixteen. Her college diaries reveal that her mental suffering was intense. Back in February 1935, that month of “evil omen,” she called her life “deadening” and wondered, “Will there ever come a break, and will there be any life to jump at the break when it comes?” She did well for several months after Jeanou left, but by November 1935 her “old fears of people” had returned. The following spring she suffered from “nerves and overwrought temperament.” A poem tucked into her 1935 diary is written from the perspective of a person who might be about to jump off a bridge, looking at “the fearful cold waters below.” (Several years earlier, as Jackson probably was aware, the poet Hart Crane had committed suicide by jumping off a boat bound to New York from Mexico.) The story “Janice,” written during her first year at Syracuse University, depicts a girl at a party who casually tells friends that she attempted suicide because she wasn’t able to return to college. In another story Jackson wrote around the same time, a girl tells a male friend about her brush with suicide—she had planned to jump off a bridge:
“you were just going to slip off into the water?” asked victor.
“very softly,” i said.
“with no more than that?” asked victor.
“no more than that,” i said.
“tell me,” said victor, “why didn’t you die?”
“i forgot,” i said. “i went home and wrote a poem instead.”
But it is telling that the girl in Jackson’s bridge story talks about committing suicide rather than attempting it. In “Janice,” too, the girl does not go through with the deed. Talking, or writing, takes the place of action.
On her last day at the University of Rochester—June 8, 1936—Jackson wrote herself a letter, addressed to “Shirlee” and signed “Lee”: the name of a new persona. Lee explains that she is leaving her old self behind: “You don’t mind my outgrowing you, do you?” If she once was suicidal, she is no longer. “I still want to live, as you did,” she writes. “And now I think I know how. . . . Through you, and all the rest in that desk, I have learned to be willing.” The rest in that desk —the little black datebooks, the “Debutante” diary, all the pages on which she tried out new writing styles and new characters—were instruments she used to find her voice.
As her classmates returned to campus in the fall, Jackson spent what would have been her junior year at Rochester in her bedroom at her
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