NEVER WERE THERE SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS : THE BOND BETWEEN MERRICAT AND CONSTANCE BLACKWOOD

 

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am 18 years old and I live with my sister Constance." (421) So begins Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The novel is a story of sisters, bound together by fear - other people's fear of them, and their fear of the wider world. Constance acts as Merricat's caretaker, but by the end of the novel, the sisters roles and perspectives on their lives, will reverse. Even with the horrific events the sisters endure, their bond strengthens.

Merricat ventures out into the world to provide an necessities - library books and food. Constance  "never went past her own garden." (421) Merricat receives harsh treatment from the townspeople. The family, as the town's wealthiest citizens, were never very much liked. The novel hints that there is fear linked to the hatred when children taunt Merricat -

"Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? 

Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? 

Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!" (435)

(ask Lizzie Borden about the power of a good rhyme.)

Merricat idolizes Constance. She depends on her for support and survival. Merricat says of Constance "When I was small I thought Constance was a fairy princess. I used to try to draw her picture, with long golden hair and eyes as blue as the crayon could make them, and a bright pink spot on either cheek ; the pictures always surprised me, because she did look like that ; even at the worst time she was pink and white and golden, and nothing had ever seemed to dim the brightness of her. She was the most precious person in my world, always." (438) Constance in turn dotes on Merricat, telling her "I'm always so happy when you come home from the village,  .... partly because you bring home food, of course. But partly because I miss you." (439)  Constance is a nurturing person; she tends to her flower and vegetable gardens and cares for their infirm Uncle Julian. Constance cooks for the family; food is important to her.  The Blackwood sisters are united against the world as a sorority of two.

Yet Constance longs to return to a more open life. When their mother's friend Helen Clarke comes to tea, Constance seems bolstered by Helen's encouragement to live more openly and actively. The idea of frightens Merricat. During the visit Uncle Julian reveals what keeps the sisters homebound and why the town fears them. Constance was suspected of murdering their parents and Uncle Julian's wife. She was thought to have put arsenic in the sugar bowl. Constance added further suspicion to herself by washing the sugar bowl before the police arrived (she claimed there was a spider in the sugar.)  Everything readers learn about Constance to this point contradicts her being a murderer.

Merricat performs rituals as safeguards to protect herself and Constance - burying a box of silver dollars among other things. Constance never shames Merricat for her behavior - in fact, she would sometimes give Merricat a small token to bury. The sisters keep their home clean and organized, trying to keep some semblance of their past. Constance preserves the vegetables she grows, as did the generations of women before, a metaphor for their family preserving their home and place in the community.  

The sisters lives are interrupted by Cousin Charles, who arrives suddenly and makes himself at home by wearing their father's clothes and sleeping in his bed. Charles tends to the girls' needs in the village, displacing Merricat from her responsibility. Constance cooks special food for Charles and agrees that Merricat should cease her rituals. When Merricat takes drastic action to get rid of him, Charles abandons the home. Charles leaves the sisters alone and vulnerable at the worst possible moment. In the aftermath Merricat admits a gruesome truth :  

"I put it in the sugar."

"I know. I knew then." 

"You never used sugar." (543) 

The sisters set about returning their lives to normalcy.  They refuse to admit the outside world, resolute in their existence again as a sorority of two - "Oh Constance." I said, "we are so happy." (559)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jackson, Shirley.  "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." Novels and Stories. The Library of America, 2010, pgs 421-559.

DON'T BUY A TICKET TO HER LOTTERY

 

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." So wrote author Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House. Shirley Jackson's reality was one of mental hardship and cruelty inflicted on her by those close to her. She chose to make that her millieu - that it is not monsters human should fear, but ordinary humans. Her works reflected a variety of societal ills and the need for natural separation from society.

Born December 14h, 1916 in San 

Francisco, Shirley Jackson never fit in with other children. She preferred to read or write instead of pursuing friendships. Her mother became pregnant early in her marriage and resented Shirley for taking her focus away from her husband. She berated Shirley for her weight and appearance and for being an outcast. The family moved to New York when she was a senior in high school. After graduation in 1934, Shirley studied journalism at Syracuse. She met her future husband while they both wrote for the school literary magazine, and they married in 1940.

Her husband became a professor at Bennington College in Vermont. He often carried on affairs with his young female students. Shirley and her husband had four children and Shirley balanced her family, being a writer, being a faculty wife and being well read - their home library contained 25,000 books. In 1948 she published her short story The Lottery in the New Yorker. The magazine and Jackson received hate mail, as the story exposed a darker side of humanity. (I read the story for eighth grade 36 years ago and still can't shake it. )

Shirley wrote several novels and short story collections. She based her second book on the Paula Jean Weldon disappearance (still unsolved today.) Jackson's work continued into the 1950s. In 1959's The Haunting of Hill House, four people (a Paranormal Investigator, a wallflower young woman, a Bohemian artist, and a young man) must stay in a haunted house. The four experience supernatural events in the home. The Haunting of Hill House was made into a film in 1963 and 1999, and as a TV series in 2018.

Jackson wrote her final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle in 1962. Two sisters live alone in a crumbling old mansion.  One sister is suspected of murdering their family. When a long lost relative arrives, the sisters resent the intrusion. Jackson's health began to decline. She developed chronic asthma due to her smoking habit. She faced severe anxiety and agoraphobia exacerbated by her illnesses. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep in 1965 at 48 years old. Jackson was a master in fear and taught the world not to be afraid of  outcasts - instead be afraid of those who cast out.

SOURCES ~

shirleyjackson.org

Shirley Jackson. Wikipedia.

FURTHER MEDIA ~

BOOKS :

The Haunting of Hill House

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

HALLOWEEN T T T

 

T T T ~ on my history blog I chose as October's theme : Ghostly, Ghastly, Witchy, and Bitchy ~ here are 10 books that fit those four categories -

Ghostly

The Haunting of Hill House 

Shirley Jackson 

Four people enter a haunted house but will they make it out alive? 

The Turn of the Screw

Henry James

A nanny cares for two children in a creepy spooky old house but are they the only occupants?

Ghastly

In Cold Blood 

Truman Capote 

Nonfiction novel masterpiece about murder on the Kansas plains

The Murderess 

Lori Notaro

Historical Fiction novel about Winnie Ruth Judd, known as The Trunk Murderess

Witchy

The Practical Magic Series 

Alice Hoffman 

Two sisters, after the death of their parents, go to live with their  mysterious aunts who may or not be witches, and may or may not be cursed in love

Bitchy

Rebecca 

Daphne du Maurier

Atmospheric Gothic thriller about an unnamed young woman who marries a man on a whim. Her new husband takes her to his mansion that maybe inhabited by the ghost of his not so nice ex-wife, and is inhabited by his not so nice housekeeper

See What I Have Done 

Sarah Schmidt

Lizzie Borden took a hatchet ... not exactly a catchy children's rhyme - but was Lizzie Borden really as bitchy as her reputation claims?

THE AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO MURDER ~ BEATRIZ WILLIAMS / LAUREN WILLIG / KAREN WHITE ~ REVIEW

 

(Book for review courtesy of NetGalley ~ William Morrow ~ November 12)

The Author's Guide to Murder offers a fun look into being a writer and the obsession with true crime. Three writers (probably based on the authors themselves) team up to write a book about an unsolved murder at a Scottish castle. What they really hope to do is to solve the murder themselves. They attend a writers' retreat in the castle, sponsored by a male author who neglects to make an appearance. Cassie is a mom of six kids, unsure she should even be there. Emma is the historian of the trio. Kat is a sex-pert in thigh high stiletto boots. The novel flits between the three writers being interviewed by police about a current murder, then goes back to before the murder. The prose tends to be a bit cliche - BFFs and bestie are bandied about - A LOT. Sometimes the prose forces a "we're hip and in the know cuz we're authors" vibe. Overall the book is a fun, light-hearted read.

THE MURDERESS ~ LAURIE NOTARO ~ REVIEW

Book for review courtesy of NetGalley ~ Little A ~ 10 / 8

Laurie Notaro's novel The Murderess tells the story of Winnie Ruth Judd, who, in 1931, murdered her two best friends and then shoved their bodies into trunks.  Ruth was attractive, but prone to bouts of mental illness. She married young to a 

W W I veteran many years her senior ; they had one child. Her husband deposited her in Phoenix, Arizona where she worked as a medical secretary. She began an affair with Jack Halloran, a well-known playboy in Phoenix.   She made friends with two young women, Anne Le Roi and Hedvig Samuelson and they also had an affair with Jack Halloran.

Was Ruth's motivation strictly jealousy, or was she in the throes of a mental health episode?  Notaro's prose is brutally honest and does not hold back in the descriptions of the state of the bodies and the gruesome nature of Judd's crime. The Murderess offers a glimpse into the psyche of a damaged young woman and the reasons she would commit such a horrible crime.

SPOOOKY LADY-TOBER : THE WRITEN-ING

 

October is about a lit lady whose work lurks in dark corners ...

Don't sugar your berries, visit old houses, or attend town traditions