Naming the Split Self: Trauma, Doubling and Fragmented Identity in Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman and The Bird’s Nest

Abstract

Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman and The Bird’s Nest present female subjectivity as unstable, divided and shaped by forces that exceed individual will. Through Natalie Waite and Elizabeth Richmond, Jackson develops two distinct but related representations of the split self, linking psychic fragmentation to trauma, repression and gendered expectation. In Hangsaman, Natalie’s fractured identity emerges through ambiguity and fantasy, especially in relation to the elusive figure of Tony, whose uncertain status blurs the limits between projection, dissociation and desire. On the other hand, in The Bird’s Nest, Elizabeth’s divided consciousness is deemed explicit through the multiple identities she has and exposing the tension between inner fragmentation and the external efforts to name and classify female disturbance. Read together, the novels reveal a sustained interest in forms of selfhood that cannot be stabilized inside the cultural demands of normative femininity. They also show why split characters remain critically important in literary studies since they make visible the fragility of identity, the aftermath of traumas and the social pressures that shape psychological experience. Jackson’s divided female characters are therefore complex narrative sites through which questions of gender, power and psychic survival become legible.

Keywords: Shirley Jackson, dissociation, female trauma, divided self

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/111-05

Publication date: May 30^th 2026