We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Even though - or perhaps because - she was acquitted (for reasons that are never made clear), the residents of the village ostracize the family.” ‘She was the most precious person in my world, always.’ Protective of her little sister, Constance took the blame, washing out the sugar bowl immediately to hide the evidence, and stood trial. She chose the poison deliberately to spare Constance (who does not use sugar on her berries), ten years older, whom she adores: The novel teasingly withholds confirmation that Merricat was the murderer, but there can be no question in the reader’s mind. The rest of the Blackwoods are dead, poisoned six years earlier at the dinner table by someone who put arsenic in the sugar that the family members used to sweeten blackberries served for dessert on that fateful night. Eighteen years old, she lives with her sister Constance and their uncle Julian, an invalid, in their longtime family mansion. “ Castle is told entirely from the perspective of Mary Katherine Blackwood (Merricat, as her sister calls her), Jackson’s most ambiguous heroine. In the 2016 biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin, the book is introduced as follows: Everyone else in my family is dead.”Īnalysis of We Have Always Lived in the Castle I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantaganet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance.

The opening paragraph of We Have Always Lived in the Castle is iconic, and pure Shirley Jackson: This critically acclaimed novel is considered one of Jackson’s masterpieces and it has been an inspiration to authors that came after who write in the thriller and mystery genres.

The Blackwoods have been shunned by the neighbors in the nearby village due to a tragedy - murder by poisoning - that occurred some years earlier. The narrator, Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, lives with her sister and uncle on an isolated estate in rural Vermont. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) was the last published work by Shirley Jacksonduring her lifetime.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson