We Have Always Lived in the Castle by
Shirley Jackson
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Previously I have only ever read
Shirley Jackson's famous short story
The Lottery and I promised myself that one day I would read her novels.
The
first thing that struck me about Mary Kathleen was her age. 18! Never!
She's a child. A child with OCD at the very least. The second thing that
struck me was just how well Shirley Jackson showed that character. I
loved the touch of humour, its honest craziness was wonderful. 5* on
character portrayal. Made my think of the Adams Family. The characters
just leap of the page and some of the scenes are incredibly visual eg
when Uncle Julian is showing Mrs Wright round the dinning room.
"
“Madam.”
Uncle Julian contrived a bow from his wheel chair, and Mrs. Wright
hurried to reach the door and open it for him. “Directly across the
hall,” Uncle Julian said, and she followed. “I admire a decently curious
woman, madam; I could see at once that you were devoured with a passion
to view the scene of the tragedy; it happened in this very room, and we
still have our dinner in here every night.”
"“Alas,” Uncle Julian
said. “Then, on either side of my brother, his daughter Constance and my
wife Dorothy, who had done me the honor of casting in her lot with
mine, although I do not think that she anticipated anything so severe as
arsenic on her blackberries. Another child, my niece Mary Katherine,
was not at table.” “She was in her room,” Mrs. Wright said. “A great
child of twelve, sent to bed without her supper. But she need not
concern us.”The choreography of it is superb. As it is in
the scene of the girls escape from the burning of house. I am intending
to watch the movie version
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5952138/
and I hope it translate well, although I know for me the actor playing
Uncle Julian is nowhere near frail or old enough to match my impression
of him from the book.
I agree Mary Katherine is not your
traditional unreliable narrator because act actually what she sees is
she does so with incredible clarity - she sees through Charles
immediately. I listened to the audio which was well read by
Bernadette Dunne , and I noticed
that at the point where she starts the first the narrator slowed down as
if to emphasize Mary Katherine's thought process in action. I'm not
sure whether if I had just been reading the text I would or would not
have put that sway to it. I'd be interested to hear how those of you
just reading the text saw that episode - did she do it deliberately or
just clumsily?
I am left unsure of why both women are such
damaged characters. Was Constance an agoraphobic only after the trial?
What caused Mary Katherine to be so? If we believe Mary Katherine did
the poisoning knowingly then what caused her to be so disturbed at an
age before the deaths? I've listened to the link Dan supplied and still
feel she is less a 'witch' than a stumbling child using the burying of
trinkets as somewhat of an extension of the "Step on a crack, break your
back / step on a line, break your spine" chants we all heard in
childhood as a means of establishing order in what she perceives as a
chaotic world, establishing her safety zone just as Constance
establishes her by never leaving the house.
And why does Uncle
Julian keep asking whether it happened or not? It here I suppose is the
poisonings nothing anything else. His moments of coherence and moments
of incoherence/forgetfulness, staged and not, make him unreliable or
more reliable? If anyone is living in an alternate reality it is
Constance with her food fetishes, cooking frenzies, and hot flushes for
Charles.
The ending needs consideration as well. Here the
alienated sisters have returned into their new decrepit half destroyed
safe zone, shored up by vines and hidden behind cardboard and junk,
seeing the real world only through a peephole. What minimal contact they
had had with the outside world dwindles away until they become the
ghosts of other's childhoods. It is in many ways a very sad ending - and
oh that last phrase "
Oh, Constance,” I said, “we are so happy.”
The mad women have sequestered themselves away; and they will be happy
there until they die; and when they die, no one will ever know.
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