We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Told by the 18-year-old misanthrope Mary Katherine Blackwood (a.k.a. Merricat), Shirley Jackson's gothic novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle details Merricat's life with her older sister Constance and her Uncle Julian six years after Constance is acquitted of poisoning four relatives. Tortured by the townspeople to the point of self-quarantine, the three subsist together in the old family mansion where Constance cares for their deluded, aging uncle while agoraphobic Merricat protects her beloved sister from the outside world with witchy superstitions and vengeful fantasies. Jackson amps up the suspense when the Blackwoods' greedy cousin Charles unexpectedly arrives and threatens to end their reclusive lifestyle. Merricat appears tenderly, yet creepily, devoted to Constance, and it is Jackson's greatest accomplishment that we are both afraid of and for Merricat. Penetratingly critical of the small-minded villagers and erratically malevolent—the girl imagines stepping through grounds lined with dead enemies, for crying out loud!—Merricat provokes a wariness of human beings—including Merricat herself. As such, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is, at its heart, an assertion of paradox: it is Jackson's thrilling warning that to be human is to be both vulnerable and cruel.