We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Encyclopedia
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
, published in 1962, three years before her death in 1965. In 1966, the novel was adapted into a play by Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Callingham Wheeler was an English-born playwright, screenwriter, librettist, poet, and translator. He resided in the United States from 1934 until his death and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. He had attended London University.Under the noms de plume Patrick Quentin, Q...
. In 2010 Adam Bock
Adam Bock
Adam Bock is a Canadian playwright currently living in the United States. Adam was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an artistic associate of the Shotgun Players, an award-winning San Francisco theater group. His play Medea Eats was produced in 2000 by Clubbed Thumb, who subsequently...
and Todd Almond premiered a musical version at Yale Repertory Theatre
Yale Repertory Theatre
The Yale Repertory Theatre at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut was founded by Robert Brustein, dean of the Yale School of Drama in 1966, with the goal of facilitating a meaningful collaboration between theatre professionals and talented students. In the process it has become one of the...
.
Plot summary
The novel, narrated in the first-person by 18-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, tells the story of the Blackwood family. Merricat, her elder sister Constance, and their ailing uncle Julian live in a large house on large grounds, in isolation from the nearby village. Constance has not left their home in six years, going no farther than her large garden. Uncle Julian, confined to a wheelchair, obsessively writes and re-writes notes for his memoirs, while Constance cares for him. Through Uncle Julian's ramblings the events of the past are revealed, including what has happened to the remainder of the Blackwood family: six years ago both the Blackwood parents, an aunt (Julian's wife), and a younger brother were murdered — poisoned with arsenicArsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...
, mixed into the family sugar and sprinkled onto blackberries at dinner. Julian, though poisoned, survived; Constance, who did not put sugar on her berries, was arrested for and eventually acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
of the crime. Merricat was not at dinner, having been sent to bed without dinner as punishment. The people of the village believe that Constance has gotten away with murder and the family is ostracized. The three remaining Blackwoods have grown accustomed to their isolation and lead a quiet, happy existence. Merricat is the family's sole contact with the outside world, walking into the village twice a week and carrying home groceries and library books, where she is faced directly with the hostility of the villagers and often followed by groups of children, who taunt her.
Merricat is protective of her sister and is a practicioner of sympathetic magic
Sympathetic magic
Sympathetic magic, also known as imitative magic, is a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence.-Similarity and contagion:The theory of sympathetic magic was first developed by Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough...
. She feels that a dangerous change is approaching; her response is to reassure herself of the various magical safeguards she has placed around their home, including a book nailed to a tree. After discovering that the book has fallen down, Merricat becomes convinced that danger is imminent. Before she can warn Constance, their estranged cousin, Charles, appears for a visit.
Charles quickly befriends Constance, insinuating himself into her confidence. Charles is aware of Merricat's hostility and is increasingly rude to her and impatient of Julian's weaknesses. He makes many references to the money the sisters keep locked in their father's safe, and is gradually wooing Constance, who begins to respond to his advances. Merricat perceives Charles as a threat, calling him a demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
and a ghost, and tries various magical and otherwise disruptive means to drive him from the house. Uncle Julian is increasingly disgusted by Charles, and Constance is increasingly caught between the warring parties.
One night before dinner Constance sends Merricat upstairs to wash her hands, and she pushes Charles' still-smoldering pipe into a wastebasket filled with newspapers. The pipe sets fire to the family home. The villagers arrive to put out the fire, but once it's out, in a wave of long-repressed hatred for the Blackwoods, they begin throwing rocks at the windows, smashing them and surging into the house to destroy whatever they can, all the while chanting their children's taunting rhyme. Merricat and Constance, driven outdoors, are encircled by some of the villagers who seem on the verge of attacking them, en masse. Merricat and Constance flee for safety into the woods. In the course of the fire, Julian dies of what is implied to be a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
, and Charles attempts to take the family safe. While Merricat and Constance shelter for the night under a tree Merricat has made into a hideaway, Constance confesses for the first time that she always know Merricat poisoned the family. Merricat readily admits to the deed, saying that she put the poison in the sugar bowl because she knew Constance would not take sugar.
Upon returning to their ruined home, Constance and Merricat proceed to salvage what is left of their belongings, close off those rooms too damaged to use, and start their lives anew in the little space left to them. The house, now without a roof, resembles a castle "turret
Turret
In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...
ed and open to the sky". The villagers, awakening at last to a sense of guilt, begin to leave food on their doorstep. Charles returns once to try to renew his acquaintance with Constance, but she now knows his real purpose is greed and ignores him. The two sisters choose to remain alone and unseen by the rest of the world.
Major themes
The theme of persecution of people who exhibit "otherness" in small-town New England, by small-minded villagers, is at the forefront of We Have Always Lived In The Castle, and is a constant in Jackson's work, her short story "The LotteryThe Lottery
"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. Written the same month it was published, it is ranked today as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature"....
", being perhaps the most vivid example of this. In her novels The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
For the Richard Matheson novel, see Hell House, made into a film titled The Legend of Hell House.The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the twentieth century,...
and, to a lesser extent, The Sundial
The Sundial
The Sundial is a 1958 novel by author Shirley Jackson.-Plot summary:The Sundial tells the story of the residents of the Halloran house, opening on the evening of the funeral of Lionel Halloran, the house's master...
, this theme is also central to the psychology of the story. In all these works, the main characters live in a house that stands alone on many acres, and is entirely separate physically, socially, as well as ideologically, from the main inhabitants of the town. In his 2006 introduction to the Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
edition, Johnathan Lethem states that the recurring town is "pretty well recognizable as North Bennington, Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
," where Jackson and her husband, Bennington
Bennington
-People:* Chester Bennington, lead singer of rock bands Linkin Park and Dead by Sunrise* Geoffrey Bennington, Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University* Ron Bennington, co-host of the Ron and Fez radio show...
professor Stanley Edgar Hyman
Stanley Edgar Hyman
Stanley Edgar Hyman was a literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary texts. Though most likely to be remembered today as the husband of writer Shirley Jackson, he was influential for the development of literary theory in...
, encountered strong "reflexive anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism."
All of Jackson's work creates an atmosphere of strangeness and contact with what Lethem calls "a vast intimacy with everyday evil..." and how that intimacy affects "a village, a family, a self." Only in We Have Always Lived In The Castle, though, is there also a deep exploration of love and devotion despite the pervasive unease and perversity of character that runs through the story. Constance's complete absence of judgement of her sister and her crime is treated as absolutely normal and unremarkable, and it is clear throughout the story that Merricat loves and cares deeply for her sister, despite her otherwise apparently sociopathic tendencies.
The novel has been described by Jackson's biographer, Judy Opphenheimer, as "a paean to agoraphobia," with the author's own agoraphobia and nervous conditions having greatly informed its psychology. Jackson freely admitted that the two young women in the story were liberally fictionalised versions of her own daughters. Written in deceptively simple language, by an entirely unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, the novel implies that the two heroines may choose to live forever in the remaining three rooms of their house, since they prefer each other's company to that of any outsiders. Lethem calls this reversion to their pre-Charles stasis Merricat's "triumph."