The topic should be limited to fit the scope of the paper and should give your reader direction. Don't try to say everything possible about any text. The title of the text you are discussing cannot also be the title of your paper since this implies that you are going to say everything that can be said about the text. Successful topics are found by focusing on one particular aspect of a literary work or group of works. If you aren't sure whether your topic will work, please discuss it with me.
Every successful essay has a clear thesis.
Don't confuse the topic with the thesis. Your thesis is the main point you make about your topic. That is a topic. While both Jackson's and Morrison's stories deal with haunted houses and both use their settings to comment implicitly on problematic aspects of women's experiences in the past, the authors' treatment of their material reflects their different attitudes about the relation of art to what might be called women's history. While Jackson seems most interested in evoking a nostalgic longing for a world we can no longer inhabit, Morrison conjures up a world of past horrors from which we cannot free ourselves.