Postmodernism began shortly after the end of World War II during a time of complete anarchy, with the senses of fragmentation and disillusion still present from the Modernism era. One key difference between Postmodernism and Modernism is, whereas the Modernist were attempting to correct anarchy, the Postmodernist were simply celebrating it. Postmodernism viewed the world in a chaotic matter, with eclectic writing styles reflecting this such as pastiche, parody, antihero, antinovel, magic realism, and multiculturalism. Some of which are found in Haunted, a piece by postmodernist Joyce Carol Oates. She embraces the mystery that comes with life in a psychological approach causing a sense of isolation and fragmentation in her characters. She creates an open work in which the reader can supply their own connections, provide their own alternative meaning and interpretation to the story, but Oates (as the author) ascribes little if any "meaning" to her characters suffering.
Haunted is a gothic piece, with violent and grotesque descriptions, with several different images of isolation. The protagonist, Melissa is an adult who lost her husband over a year ago and has children who are too busy to come see her. She has started writing in a notebook and is telling a story she's never told anyone before, one about her childhood and friend Mary Lou Siskin. A story that she wishes she could start out as once upon a time, for she tries to, but runs into hesitation, haunted by a memory.
Melissa and Mary Lou used to venture into old, abandoned houses out of fear and excitement that one would be haunted. The houses were always accompanied with a sad story of a farmer going bankrupt, or someone dying in the family and the farm couldn't be kept up. They were friends, almost like sisters, but Melissa had some animosity toward Mary Lou. Mary Lou was a pretty girl with long blonde hair. Melissa's jealousy is quite clear in this comparison she makes between herself and Mary Lou; "I wasn't ugly really: just sallow-skinned, with a small pinched ferrety face. With dark almost lash-less eyes that were set too close together and a nose that didn't look right. A look of yearning, and disappointment." Then she continues with her description of Mary Lou; "Mary Lou was pretty, even rough and clumsy as she sometimes behaved. That long silky blonde hair everybody remembered her for." Melissa was also jealous that older boys would whistle at Mary Lou and the bus driver would call her blondie, while she didn't get called anything. It's almost like Melissa was obsessed with Mary Lou; she did everything Mary Lou asked, she even had dreams about Mary Lou and dreamt that her beautiful blonde silky hair was actually hers. When she would awake from the dream she would be confused and couldn't remember if the hair belonged to her or someone else.
"As I write I can hear the sound of glass breaking, I can feel glass underfoot. Once upon a time there were two little princesses, two sisters, who did forbidden things. That brittle terrible sensation under my shoes-slippery like water." Melissa wrote about the first time the girls visited the Minton place. All the abandoned houses had a story, but the Minton house was the worst. Mr. Minton had beaten his wife to death and then killed himself with a .12-gauge shotgun. They found Mr. Minton in a bedroom upstairs with his head blown off. They were in 7th grade and it was the summer Mary Lou started dating Hans, a boy she wasn't supposed to be with. When the two would go off together, Melissa was in a state of isolation and claimed she liked being alone. Mary Lou accused Melissa of being jealous of her and Hans. When they entered the Minton house, they climbed through a window and crept around the place slowly like they were expecting to see Mr. Minton's ghost. Melissa described the house as smelling of mouse droppings, mildew, rot, and old sorrow. There were strips of wallpaper torn from the walls and newspaper and broken glass scattered about. While in the house Melissa had been hearing a low persistent murmuring coming from upstairs, but when she would be very still it would vanish. She continued to hear the voices upstairs and she kept waiting for Mary Lou to hear them too, but she never did. As the girls left the house Mary Lou made an ironic comment about the Minton house being special. Hans and Mary Lou stopped dating after her dad found out about them. The girls liked the Minton place the best and started having picnic lunches there, where Melissa remembers someone at an upstairs window watching them. She didn't know if it was a man or a woman, but she knew someone was standing there listening hard.
A few days later, Melissa returned to the Minton house alone. She remembered the ravaged cornfield: the stalks dried and broken, the tassels burnt the rustled whispering sound of the wind. She picked up a willow switch she found outside and headed in through the back window. She kept hearing someone whispering, telling her to go upstairs, to walk on the inside of the stairs so the steps wouldn't collapse. While upstairs, Melissa was looking out the window at Elk Creek when someone told her to come away from the window. She saw an old mattress laying on the floor and she saw a cockroach scurry out of the mattress, but she wasn't allowed to jump back. Someone was saying to her, "suppose you have to lie down on that mattress and sleep, suppose you can't go home until you do." Her eyelids were getting heavy and her head was pounding. She was told to lie down on the mattress and that she was going to be punished. Melissa knelt down on the floor beside the mattress and saw a woman she had never seen before standing in the doorway. The woman was older, wearing men's clothes; she was tall like a man, with wide shoulders and legs. She had thick gray, short hair like a man's. Her eyes were small, and black, set back deep in their sockets with bruising around them. Melissa was frightened; the woman leaned over her and asked her what her and her sisters' name was. Melissa told the woman Mary Lou wasn't her sister and that she didn't know her name. The woman told Melissa she would have to be punished then. Melissa began to cry and the old woman persistently kept asking for Mary Lou's name and kept calling her Melissa's sister; until Melissa yelled she's not my sister and gave the old woman her name. The old woman made Melissa pull her pants and panties down, while she lay on the mattress to receive her punishment. She then took the willow switched and spanked Melissa. Melissa was sobbing and lost control of her bladder. The woman told her to keep everything a secret and to send her pretty sister tomorrow.
At school the next day, Melissa told Mary Lou something had happened at the Minton house, but that she had to keep it a secret. Mary Lou became very curious and repeatedly asked Melissa what had happened. Mary Lou got mad at Melissa and told her on the bus that she hated her and she always had. Melissa never saw Mary Lou again; she was found murdered ten days later. Her body had been mutilated and thrown into Elk Creek. Hans was blamed for the murder, but was set free because there wasn't enough evidence. The murderer was never found.
This memory haunted Melissa for the rest of her life. It even caused restraints between her and her own husband. She talks about them taking a drive into the country; he wanted to make love, but she was afraid. She went running through the cornfield, frightened. The cornstalks were making a dry rustling sound, a dry rustling sound like whispering voices you can't quite identify. He husband caught her and tried to hold her, but she pushed him away telling him to leave her alone.
Oates never reveals who murdered Mary Lou, she leaves that up to the reader to decide. We'll never know if it was a drifter, Hans, or if it was really Melissa herself who couldn't handle the jealousy between her and Mary Lou. Like, in earlier gothic literature, some elements are still there in postmodern stories. There are isolation and grotesque situations, but the hero has been replaced with an antihero and there's magic realism because we'll never know if Melissa was telling the truth or not. In Haunted we see the postmodern emphasis on the isolation of individuals within an intrinsically violent and grotesque society, a society constantly encountering and running away from its fears. The primary darkness found in postmodern gothic literature is the psychological makeup of the characters.
