review of: we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

★★★★.25

content warnings: fire, death, murder, death of parent, bullying, mental illness, dementia, toxic relationships, confinement, violence, child death, grief, chronic illness, terminal illness, panic attacks/disorders, abuse (emotional), gaslighting, classism, misogyny, schizophrenia/psychosis, ableism, and undertones of incest, forced institutionalization, medical content, and cannibalism.

plot summary:

this is a modern classic of a gothic novel and is often called one of shirley jackson's best works. i can certainly see where people are coming from.

our point of view character in this story is 18 year old mary katherine blackwood, nicknamed 'merricat'. she's a wild child with violent thoughts who lives in a large ancestral home on acres of unused farmland with the only surviving members of her family, constance, her older sister who takes care of most things and is fairly kind, and uncle julian, a mentally and physically disabled man obsessed with the murders that taint the blackwood's existence. see, six years prior to the events of the book, every single other blackwood dies after eating sugar that had arsenic in it one evening. contance doesn't eat sugar, merricat was sent upstairs without dinner that night, and while uncle julian did eat the sugar, he survived it but became disabled becasue of it and is now wheelchair-bound. constance, as the cook of the family and the one who washed the sugar bowl before the authorities arrived, was the one accused of the murder, especially because merricat was only 12 at the time. while she did go to court, she was aquitted because of the lack of evidence but that doesn't stop everyone from blaming her for their deaths. the nearby village people despise the family and they hate them right back, or at least merricat does. the blackwood's land is locked from the public and only merricat leaves and goes into the village twice a week for groceries and library books. they are isolated but they seem fairly happy even though their lives are stagnant and reclusive.

the story is split into roughly 3 acts, in my opinion. the first act sets up the status quo of our characters, their daily lives. we see merricat go home from the village, being mocked and harassed by most people as she goes and fantasising about their violent deaths in return. we watch as she interacts with her family and their few polite guests, cleans the house with her sister, runs wild with her cat, jonas, and follows a very strict routine. we also learn that our protaganist is something of a witch. she spends one morning a week ensuring that various items she's nailed to trees and buried as protection talismans are still where they should be. she also tends to make up stories about life on the moon that constance indulges.

the second act begins when the girls' cousin charles blackwood arrives. he claims that his parents were the ones who cut him off from them and that after he died he finally was able to come and check on them. merricat immiedately does not trust or like him and neither does uncle julian, but constance attempts to be a good host and seems to trust him at his word. we then follow merricat as over the course of a couple days, she gets increasingly frustrated with his presence and how he disrupts their careful routine, as well as how he seems to be attempting to get constance to adapt to normal society once more. his obsession with the blackwood's wealth does nothing to endear him. merricat attempts various things to get him to leave, both magical and mundane, but nothing seems to work. to her, charles is a ghost demon she needs to exorcise from her home to protect her family. so, she one day she goes into her father's room where charles is staying, removes all of her father's belongings, fills everything with leaves and mud and pours water on the bed in the hopes that it would disorient the demon enough to make him leave. then she leaves for the woods. upon returning, she is greeted with a very much not gone and still very angry charles who proceeds to berate her for her bahaviour and argues with the family. when he suggests punishment for merricat, she gets seriously upset and runs off to the woods, where she fantasises about her deceased family worshipping her. she returns for dinner and is sent to clean up before dinner. however before she does so, she goes into charles' room and throws his still smoldering pipe into the wastebasket. it starts a fire, of course. when everyone realises there is a fire, their reactions vary. uncle julian goes off to gather his papers in his room and does not leave, charles runs to the village for help, and merricat and constance huddle in the shadows and try not to be seen by the villagers, going so far as for constance to cover her face with uncle julian's shawl. the villagers arrive and though the firefighters put out the fire (to the tune of charles screaming for them to get the safe), everyone is very reluctant about it. after the fire is out, the chief puts his hat away, and starts throwing rocks through the house's windows. everyone promptly joins in, destroying what is left of the bottom floor of the house. while the sisters do attempt a run for it, they are spotted and pushed around, mocked, and terrified by the villagers. the destruction only stops when a doctor arrives and discovers that uncle julian died of a heart attack, and this announcement is enough for everyone to leave and for the sisters to leg it into the woods for the nights. constance makes some comment about merricat being the one to poison everyone in their family, which is a ery nonchalant way to bring up such a story twist but it fits.

the last act is the aftermath. the sisters return to the house. they clean, lock off rooms, shut the curtains, and lock themselves in the house, hiding away from people who attempt to check in on them. they start returning to normal life, except for that whole pesky never leaving the house except for early in the morning and late at night thing. they barricade the windows and plant a rose bush where uncle julian used to sit in the garden. the men of the village start leaving them baskets of food their wives cooked with notes apologising for the damage to the house and children start playing on their lawn despite warnings from parents that the sisters will eat them. they make a new routine. charles arrives in a last desperate attempt to fix things but they laugh as he leaves. merricat, constance, and jonas, are very happy on the moon.

my thoughts:

i really enjoyed this book, its a really good gothic story overall. its not the first book of shirley jackson's i've read, i think it might be my fourth at this point. i've rated all of them around 4 stars so its not a suprise that this one got that kinda rating from me too. it wasn't anything life changing or anything but i did enjoy it.

the 'twist' that merricat was the one that killed their family wasn't really a twist for me, i could kinda see it coming. that's not a bad thing though! it just means it's very well written and even though no one een suggests that she did it until the reveal, her behaviour is good foreshadowing and works well with the realisation that she was the one at fault. her constant explanations of different poisonous plants can be dismissed as things she picked up from constance prior but after we learn the truth they are cast in a bit of a different light. her violent thoughts were pretty relatable at times but with the whole context they do sound a lot less like impossible fantasies and more like she's barely restraining herself from killing every single person in her life at all times. wasn't really shocking but was well written, so i don't mind too much.

uncle julian's statement that merricat died in the orphanage is really fascinating to me. i can't remember a single moment in the story where uncle julian speaks to merricat directly. in the line he specifically calls her mary katherine so perhaps it means something like mary katherine, the young innocent girl, metaphorically died in the orphanage and merricat has taken her place. he says 'she did not survive the loss of her family' which could mean that mary katherine did not survive the loss of her innocence but that merricat did. i could be wrong but i find that such a small moment can be so interesting sometimes. maybe this is just uncle julian not remembering things correctly again but well, who knows?

so. charles. bad guy, right? like clearly, he's a dick who wants to steal their money. that parts obvious and obviously bad. however, he is kinda right when he encourages constance to leave the house, or tells her that merricat hasn't been raised properly, or that uncle julian should probably be in a hospital. like he's not completely wrong about all of that. it isn't healthy for them to stay cooped up in the house, just dwelling on the past all day. merricat should have been raised differently since clearly she still has a much younger mentality than she should. while reading, she sounded maybe 14 to me? not the 18 years old that she is, so clearly something went wrong there. uncle julian's obsession with the murder of his family isn't the best sign, and constance is just enabling everything that goes on in the house and is very agrophobic, like unhealthyly so. so while charles is a greedy guy, he also makes some very valid points about the way that his cousins have been living for these last 6 years. that last scene we have of him, he clearly is acting to some degree but that one line he says 'i've got to see her once more. i was the cause of it all.' that feels genuine to me. he's not directing that at the door, he's talking to the journalist behind him. i really do believe him when he says that he didn't mean for this to happen. he's greedy, obviously, but he does seem to hold some kind of fondness for constance and he's not outright hostile to merricat until she's hostile to him. i think he was being sincere in that.

that ending, huh? i saw an interpretation of it that talked about the feminist themes of the book and how the ending symbolised the victory and freedom of the women as the last intact area of the house was the kitchen and the basement, both traditional feminine spaces in the novel. in this interpretation, charles represents patriarchy, which i can definately see. he's very traditional and attempts to take on the patriarch of the house role so i can definately understand this interpretation. personally, i think the ending really cements this book as a tragedy. constance, the more responsible, reasonable sister has finally fallen to her sister's madness and indulgence. while the two sisters are happy at the end, we as the readers can easily tell that it's not really a happy ending, objectively. they're completely lost to reality, isolated, and rotting away in a broken down home.

i found merricat perspective to be very immersive. i wasn't ever quite sure if she was narrating truthfully or not, which helps the atmosphere of the book immensely. intersetingly enough, she read to me as a much younger girl, which i think could be indictive that constance babied her all these years or that she never quite matured past the age she was when her family died. her whimsical narration and dialogue really sweeps you away into a gothic wonderland and sets an excellent tone for the entirety of the story. she was very relatable and real at points, which i think is a sign of fantastic character writing. i found all the characters in the book enjoyable to read and merricat's perspective and observations about them were an integral part of my enjoyment.

jonas best charcter. jonas only good character, actually. worship merricat? no. worship jonas the actual cat.

there's plenty of thoughts i have about the book that i can't quite express but instead of me throwing that word vomit out there, i'll give you this video instead. overall the book was tense, immersive, enjoyable, and explored themes of witchcraft, feminism, classism, and family, in very intruiging ways. i highly recommened everyone to read this book, even if i did just spoil it for you. my summary doesn't come close to the atmospheric writing of shirley jackson.