Bad Housekeeping

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This is Bad Housekeeping: the podcast that explores the life and work of Shirley Jackson, master of mid-century domestic horror. Join us, Dr. Kasia Van Schaik and Miriam Richer, as we investigate stories of unsettled and unsettling domesticity. Each episode will dip into Shirley Jackson’s archive to parse what we’re calling “Bad Housekeeping”: the feminist impulse to question the happy housewife, abandon the dishes in the sink, and ask: what if women stopped trying to keep it all together? What if we could do domesticity differently? For lovers of domestic horror and keepers of messy homes.

Oct 29

Introducing: Bad Housekeeping

This podcast theorizes bad housekeeping as a form of feminist refusal: an impulse to question the happy housewife, abandon the dishes in the sink, and seek out alternative modes of domesticity. The first season of Bad Housekeeping takes Shirley Jackson’s work as its lodestar, using her stories about domestic disturbances to explore the contradictions of the postwar fantasy of the good life—an ideal predicated on the dream house, nuclear family, upward mobility, and strict gender roles. Although the war had extended women's roles in public life and the workforce, postwar America revived Victorian ideals of separate public and private spheres, even as the suburban home and its ever-expanding array of appliances promised fulfilment through domestic order. Jackson’s stories, memoirs, and novels expose the anxieties and ambivalences beneath this promise, unsettling the figure of the happy housewife and rendering the home and its social scripts uncanny and often frightening. Through conversations with scholars and writers, Bad Housekeeping traces the forms domestic disruption takes in Jackson’s fiction and the broader context of the postwar period. We ask: what does bad housekeeping make legible about the fantasy of the good life? From the postwar dream house to today’s trad-wife revival, how do domestic ideals continue to shape women’s lives, and what happens when we question or refuse them—even if only through fiction? With Shirley Jackson as our guide, the podcast considers the generative possibilities of stories about uncanny and unruly homes.

1 Trailer

Trailer

Introducing: Bad Housekeeping

This podcast theorizes bad housekeeping as a form of feminist refusal: an impulse to question the happy housewife, abandon the dishes in the sink, and seek out alternative modes of domesticity. The first season of Bad Housekeeping takes Shirley Jackson’s work as its lodestar, using her stories about domestic disturbances to explore the contradictions of the postwar fantasy of the good life—an ideal predicated on the dream house, nuclear family, upward mobility, and strict gender roles. Although the war had extended women's roles in public life and the workforce, postwar America revived Victorian ideals of separate public and private spheres, even as the suburban home and its ever-expanding array of appliances promised fulfilment through domestic order. Jackson’s stories, memoirs, and novels expose the anxieties and ambivalences beneath this promise, unsettling the figure of the happy housewife and rendering the home and its social scripts uncanny and often frightening. Through conversations with scholars and writers, Bad Housekeeping traces the forms domestic disruption takes in Jackson’s fiction and the broader context of the postwar period. We ask: what does bad housekeeping make legible about the fantasy of the good life? From the postwar dream house to today’s trad-wife revival, how do domestic ideals continue to shape women’s lives, and what happens when we question or refuse them—even if only through fiction? With Shirley Jackson as our guide, the podcast considers the generative possibilities of stories about uncanny and unruly homes.

This is Bad Housekeeping: the podcast that explores the life and work of Shirley Jackson, master of mid-century domestic horror. Join us, Dr. Kasia Van Schaik and Miriam Richer, as we investigate stories of unsettled and unsettling domesticity. Each episode will dip into Shirley Jackson’s archive to parse what we’re calling “Bad Housekeeping”: the feminist impulse to question the happy housewife, abandon the dishes in the sink, and ask: what if women stopped trying to keep it all together? What if we could do domesticity differently? For lovers of domestic horror and keepers of messy homes.

Creator

Bad Housekeeping
Years Active

2026
Episodes

1
Rating

Clean
Show Website

Bad Housekeeping

Bad Housekeeping

Episodes

Introducing: Bad Housekeeping

Trailer

Introducing: Bad Housekeeping

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