This paper discusses the work of Shirley Jackson. She is a psychological novelist who uses setting to investigate the psyches of the protagonists in her stories. In the two works explored here, we find that those settings can either be to the good or ill of its inhabitants. In "We Have Always Lived in the Castle", Jackson's Blackwood House provides an appropriate setting for the strange world of its inhabitants Merricat, Constance, and Julian Blackwood. By contrast, "The Haunting of Hill House's", Hill House only provides more anguish for it's unfortunate protagonist, Eleanor Vance. Both stories prove that through setting a writer is providing far more information than just the location where the action takes place.
