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We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was Jackson's final work, and was published with a dedication to Pascal Covici, the publisher, three years before the author's death in 1965.
- Shirley Jackson
- 1962
- A Literary Cousin of Natalie Waite & Cassandra Mortmain
- Introducing Merricat Blackwood
- Shunned by The Villagers
- Sympathetic Magic
- Merricat and Constance
- The Perfidy of Cousin Charles
- Up in Flames
We Have Always Lived in the Castlewas well received at the time of its publication – the reception of Jackson’s books got warmer with each new one she published – and has been well-regarded ever since, generally being considered her best work. But it is strange that little attention has been paid to the similarity in title and content to Dodie Smit...
Jackson understood teenage girlsand saw how really crazy they could be. In this case, the crazy girl is the narrator so that we see the story, indeed the whole world through her rather myopic, out of focus eyes. The opening paragraph is often quoted, and rightly so, as one of the best opening paragraphs in modern fiction; it is worth quoting again....
The remaining three family members live in a large rambling house on the edge of the village (presumed to be based on the New England town of Bennington where the Jacksons lived; her husband taught at the local college, a prestigious school for girls at the time). The inhabitants of the fictional village resented the old and wealthy family, who hav...
Merricat seems to have a degree of what would now be called OCD; whenever she leaves the house she plays a superstitious kind of children’s game of gaining and losing points depending on which route she can take. “The library was my start and the black rock was my goal. I had to move down one side of Main Street, cross, and then move up the other s...
“I liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it and a garden outside (what would flourish, growing on the moon? I must ask Constance).” Constance, who is more like a loving mother than an older sister, always indulges Merricat in her fantasies. Merricat and Constance are extremely fond of each other, complementing each other perhaps to t...
The finely balanced domestic harmony is shattered when the sisters’ cousin Charles comes to visit and seems intent on staying. Merricat had already foreseen something: “All the omens spoke of change.” Change of course being the last thing that Merricat wants; she never wants to come of age. “There’s a change coming,” she says to Constance. “It’s sp...
Merricat is appalled at the way Charles brings newspapers into the house; they have no phone, never open mail and have received no news since Constance was released from prison. Another of Charles’ annoying habits for Merricat is his pipe-smoking, which leaves smell and mess in the pristine house – ever since the poisoning the two sisters have “nea...
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle was inspired by the unsolved poisoning death of an English lawyer. Charles Bravo died of antimony poisoning in April 1876, just four months after his wedding.
- Shirley Jackson worried that We Have Always Lived in the Castle was “as unoriginal as an old sponge.” According to correspondence reviewed by Franklin, Jackson struggled with early drafts of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
- The main characters are loosely based on Jackson’s daughters, Sarah and Joanne. According to Franklin’s book, Jackson told her older daughter, Joanne, that Constance and Merricat were loosely modeled on Joanne and her sister, Sarah.
- The sisters were originally named Constance and Jenny, and they were plotting to murder Jenny’s husband. Jackson changed the story out of concerns that readers would mistakenly assume one or both of the sisters were lesbians.
A concise biography of Shirley Jackson plus historical and literary context for We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Always Lived in the Castle : Plot Summary. A quick-reference summary: We Have Always Lived in the Castle on a single page. Always Lived in the Castle : Detailed Summary & Analysis.
Sep 6, 2024 · “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson is a gothic mystery novel centered on the reclusive Blackwood family, who live in isolation following a tragic poisoning that killed most of their relatives. The story is narrated by 18-year-old Merricat Blackwood, who lives with her agoraphobic sister Constance and their ailing Uncle ...
The narrator, Mary Katherine Blackwood (known as Merricat) introduces herself and reveals that all of her relatives are dead, except for her sister Constance. She then begins her story some time earlier, on the day she brought home the library books that still sit on her shelf, long overdue.
In addition to her dark, brilliant novels, she wrote lightly fictionalized magazine pieces about family life with her four children and her husband, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Shirley Jackson died in 1965.
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