Words&Dirt

Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read; I don’t quite know what to make of it. This is my first Jackson novel, and it’s clear that she is a talented writer. I did not, however, find myself satisfied by this particular story.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is about a young woman named Mary Blackwood who lives with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. They are the extant members of a wealthy family that owns a manor on the outskirts of a small village. Jackson quickly reveals that the other Blackwoods died in a brutal and sudden fashion, and we start to suspect foul play from within the family. What ensues is a hypnotic, wandering “whodunit” narrative that lacks focus and drive. But it’s creepy––really creepy.

Mary turns out to be a strange girl with bizarre ideas about the world. She is fond of making up “magic” words and spells, playing with her cat, and burying family heirlooms in the woods surrounding the Blackwood estate:

All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth the my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us. (41)

Mary’s internal monologue is variously innocent, thoughtful, deluded, and vicious. She idolizes her sister Constance, and does her best not to upset her sick uncle. But she hates everyone else––especially the residents of the nearby village. Rejecting the world she finds herself in, Mary obsesses about taking Constance and Julian “to the moon”:

On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts. On the moon Uncle Julian would be well and the sun would shine every day. You would wear our mother’s pearls and sing, and the sun would shine all the time. (75, emphasis hers)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle contains very little plot, and what plot there is I did not find engaging. The book’s strong points are all tonal; Jackson derives an unnerving sense of darkness from Mary’s disaffected ramblings and groundless dissatisfaction with her surroundings. There is a thematic nod to socioeconomic disparities and the dangers of over-valuing material wealth, but––like most elements of this story––the details are underdeveloped. By the end, the only conclusion we can draw is that Mary’s world is decidedly different from the one inhabited by people outside the Blackwood bubble––and not in a good way.

I believe there are opportunities for meaning here, and perhaps even closure, but I did not discover them. This book, short as it was, felt overlong at just shy of 150 pages. It made me feel a lot more than it made me think. What I felt was vivid, but remarkably unpleasant.

Rating: 5/10