When I was deciding what to include in this anthology, I remembered being troubled by a Jackson story about a woman knocking at a door and not being admitted to a party. I’d completely forgotten the set-up, which involves her getting ready for her lover to come and collect her so that they can go and be married. When I was reading this story again, I wondered if my memory of it was mistaken, because the description of her choosing her dress, deciding what to eat or not, and becoming gradually more anxious was rather tiresome, irritating, a bit patronising. Then she goes to try and find him, and that’s when the anxiety becomes existential. There’s an awful inevitability about how the narrative unfolds and it’s not a spoiler, I think, to say that the wedding doesn’t happen. But the real kicker is in the final couple of sentences, when Jackson drops us and her character into a horrid abyss. I don’t enjoy this story, but I do admire it.
First published in The Lottery, or The Adventures of Jim Harris, Farrar, Straus, 1949. Available to read online here
