We Have Always Lived in the Castle

4.5/5

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is often described as a psychological horror or a gothic mystery, but neither label quite fits. This is not a puzzle to be solved so much as a closed world to be understood — one governed by its own internal rules, rituals, and moral logic.

At the center is Merricat Blackwood, a narrator who feels younger than her age, emotionally arrested and intensely rule-bound. Her worldview is shaped by superstition, repetition, and an unwavering division between what is safe and what is dangerous. Jackson never invites us to diagnose her, and that refusal is crucial. Merricat is not incoherent or random; she is frightening precisely because she is consistent. Her actions follow a logic formed by fear, show more trauma, and the need for absolute control.

Her sister Constance provides a quiet counterweight. Gentle, domestic, and deeply constrained, Constance’s agoraphobia is not treated as weakness but as a rational response to public scrutiny and social punishment. She can move only within a small, protected space, and she fills that space with care, routine, and food. Where Merricat enforces boundaries, Constance sustains life within them. Together, they form a fragile but functional system.

One of the novel’s most unsettling threads is how normal social expectations press against this household. The outside world insists on propriety, order, and “help,” but Jackson shows how easily those values slide into control. Politeness becomes intrusion. Concern becomes entitlement. What looks like benevolence often demands performance, gratitude, or submission in return.

Jackson’s prose is deceptively calm — even playful at times — which makes the underlying violence and fear more disturbing. There is a sharp, dark humor in watching outsiders react with offense or anger when they are denied the emotional response they expect. Kindness that requires applause curdles quickly.

By the end, the novel takes on an almost mythological quality. It is less about justice or resolution than about equilibrium — about what remains when survival becomes the only priority. No one is redeemed. No one is neatly condemned. The world simply settles into a shape that can hold what’s left.

This is not a comforting book, but it is an extraordinarily controlled one. Jackson asks uncomfortable questions about gender, power, fear, and the stories societies tell themselves to avoid responsibility. It lingers not because of what it reveals, but because of what it refuses to resolve.

A novel that rewards patience, rereading, and time — and one that feels quietly more radical the longer you sit with it. show less

The old Blackwood house was once home to a large family, until most of them were poisoned one night at dinner. Now there are three of them left: pleasant, domestic Constance, who was acquitted of the murders but can no longer bring herself to leave the house; young Mary Katherine (aka Merricat), much given to magical thinking and wishing people dead; and their old Uncle Julian, who survived ingesting the arsenic, but has never been the same since. The family's relations with the nearby village have never been the same, either, as they are hated, and gawped at, and feared.

It's a weird, weird book. A wonderfully creepy one, too, but it's a kind of creepiness that, well... creeps up on you. It starts out as a gentle sort of creepiness, show more more intellectual than visceral, but as I reached the last page, I was literally shuddering. What's odd is that I'm not sure entirely why I was shuddering. It feels like there are depths here that my conscious mind only dimly understands. Uncomfortable depths, hinting at uncomfortable realities.

It's pretty darned brilliant. show less

This was one of my favourites from 2018. Every word counts in this short book of dysfunctional family, and a lot is packed in. The sisters, especially Merricat, are truly memorable characters in their weirdness and insularity. It's all very unsettling and spooky as well as funny. The first paragraph is just brilliant and sets the tone perfectly.

I re-read it a couple of years later and loved it even more. Knowing what was coming in terms of plot meant there was less suspense and uncertainty, but so many more things to notice. I also really enjoyed the character of Uncle Julian this time around. I really must read more Shirley Jackson.

This was a lot better than I thought it would be. I picked it up on a whim based solely on the creepy cover. I skipped the introduction (because introductions spoil everything) and so, had no idea what the book was about.

The narrator, Mary Katherine Blackwood, grabbed me from the first sentence, and the more I read, the more I got drawn into her world. She started out a little odd and became increasingly stranger as the book went on, yet she is still an immensely likable narrator despite it all. Even though she is eighteen, she speaks like someone much younger, which made me wonder as to what exactly is her mental state, and if she was always this way.

The other characters are just as interesting. Mary's sister, Catherine, appears to show more be dependable and strong at first, and while some things about her don't change, her behavior becomes a little more perturbing later on. Julian, the invalid uncle, provides the reader with clues about the house's shady past, and while loopy, he is still rather likable. Charles is transparent and greedy, but at the same time, he is the sanest character in the house.

Somehow Jackson managed to make me root for Mary Katherine, despite everything, and an aura of unsettling creepiness surrounds the book and its setting. The time period of it isn't very clear, which only makes the book creepier.

Anyways, it is a short, but very interesting read that I enjoyed a lot. Definitely check it out if you have time. show less

It was a pleasure revisiting Shirley Jackson's Blackwood family after so many years away. I first read "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962) when I was in college. Now in my late-in-life campaign to reread a few old favorites, I recently selected this aging paperback, and I think I enjoyed it more than I did in college.

Neither a horror story nor a ghost story, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is simply weird and macabre, something on the order of a Charles Addams cartoon. Most of Blackwood family died from eating poisoned food before the story opens, and Constance Blackwood, who does the cooking for the family, has already been tried for murder and acquitted. Now she lives with her younger sister, Mary Katherine, our narrator, show more and their elderly Uncle Julian in the crumbling Blackwood house on the edge of town. Most of the townspeople still think Constance a murderer, and they keep their distance. They do have a few callers, people too curious about this strange family to stay away. Mary Katherine runs the family errands, but keeps her time away from the house to a minimum because other people make her nervous.

They are content in their isolation until Charles, a cousin, comes to call and then stays and stays. He sweet-talks Constance, but Mary Katherine suspects his real interest is the money hidden in the Blackwood safe. She plots to chase him away. Then comes a fire that destroys much of the house, another death and further isolation. All this makes Mary Katherine's closing words, "'Oh, Constance,' I said, 'we are so happy,'" seem like just about the creepiest thing in the book. show less

***NO SPOILERS***

We Have Always Lived in the Castle isn’t a scary story or even all that creepy. It's an unsettling tale of devolution. Here is how an exceedingly strange, publicly shunned family living in an old house devolves into the stuff of town legend: those scary people dwelling in that spooky house on the outskirts of town.

As is true of Jackson's The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle flows from its distinctive characters. The story revolves around the lives of a kind of kooky nuclear family consisting of sisters Constance and Mary Katherine (“Merricat”) and their weird uncle, Julian. A pet cat with its own personality rounds out the mix.

Merricat narrates this story in the past tense. On page one she states that show more she’s eighteen years old, but--notably--she speaks and behaves like a twelve-year-old. Her easy conversational style endeared her to me almost immediately, but she also has a startlingly warped outlook.

Jackson balanced this character with the more stable Constance and some unexpected humorous scenes between Uncle Julian and a despicable cousin, Charles. This is never not an uneasy tale, but some of the normalcy and lightness throws things off balance to add to the absurdity of it all.

The story unfolds smoothly through telling dialogue. Jackson didn’t explain occurrences--namely, backstory--outright. I was distracted by the phrase, “...and I was chilled,” which Jackson overused, but was otherwise appreciative of her bare-bones, straightforward style; We Have Always Lived in the Castle is not the least bit overwrought. This author focused on telling a well-spun, character-driven story, not on proving to the world how scholarly she is through the use of obscure words and three-lines-long sentences.

This is a quality page-turner that, despite being just over 200 pages, is memorable. It certainly helps, also, that the story ends on the perfect note (once again, like The Lottery).

Update, 10/29/16: An article in The New Yorker discusses how Jackson lived a miserable life and explains how much this informed her work. It's an illuminating and interesting read. (Warning that the article contains SPOILERS for "The Lottery" and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/the-haunted-mind-of-shirley-jackson show less

A Claustrophobic but Mesmerizing Story

What happened to the Blackwood family? As this bizarre tale opens, we meet paranoid, superstitious Mary Katherine (Merricat) and agoraphobic Constance, young women who live in an old mansion with only their infirm Uncle Julian. As the story unfolds the reader learns that after their family tragedy six years ago, the trio has been ostracized by their small town. The sisters stick to their rigid routine, rules, traditions and superstition s unit an unsettling change occurs.
This short book had me on the edge of my seat. Who and what caused the family tragedy? What underlying problems produced the damage to the sister? The story is told through the unreliable voice of Merricat, and that proves to be a show more creepy and claustrophobic point of view! show less