“I’m going to put death in all their food and watch them die.”
Spolier alert!
Shirley Jackson made a name for herself in 1948 when she first published “The Lottery”, a short story depicting the flaws of following tradition and having a small-town mentality. About a decade later she wrote The Haunting of Hill House, now a Netflix original, which is a haunted house tale that is told from the perspective of a young lady whose narration is a bit unreliable due to her loose grasp on reality- a Gothic literature trope that is also present in her 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
In this novel, readers fall victim to the haunts of one’s mind, the demented thoughts that dictate a person’s perspective, and in turn, their reality, as we follow the last remaining members of the Blackwood family.
At the start of the book, readers are introduced to Mary Katherine Blackwood, an 18 year old girl whose mind is clearly more childlike than her age would suggest, for she decorates the grounds of their home with assorted totems and charms as forms of protection, reciting magical verses to ensure the safety of her family, well, her family that is still alive. The Blackwood home was once filled with the vast Blackwood family, but the occupants were reduced the night a majority of the family was poisoned after ingesting the arsenic that was mixed in the sugar bowl.
She lives with her two remaining relatives- Constance, her older sister that has not left the house since her name was cleared for the murders, and Uncle Julian, a man whose body and mind continues to deteriorate after surviving the murders. It was the manner of their survival, however, that prompted police to charge Constance with the murders; Merricat, Mary Katherine’s nickname, survived because, as a small child, she was sent to bed early that night without dessert, therefore making her absent during the murders, while Uncle Julian barely survived after only using a small amount of sugar.
Despite being acquitted of all legal charges, Constance’s ruling from the court of public opinion maintains that she is the likely culprit, for she did not have sugar in her tea at dinner, and she happened to wash the sugar bowl prior to the police arriving on account of seeing a spider inside the bowl, destroying the evidence. And, well, the Blackwood family has always been a bit odd, and small towns love a reason to gossip.
While the darkened past of the remaining Blackwood family members would be enough to fuel the tension between themselves and the village people, Merricat explains that they have always been hated and she hates them just as much- even so far to consistently wish for their deaths just so she can watch as they die. Merricat’s narration is interspersed with these violent thoughts as she details her daily life, but readers are fully aware that these are the thoughts of a naive child and should not be taken seriously. Well, until we fully understand just what Merricat is capable of as the novel progresses.
Despite being piraiahs in their small town, Constance, Uncle Julian, and Merricat are visited by their cousin Charles, who proves to be a rather disruptive presence in the household. Charles is loud, smokes indoors, drives a flashy car, and is quick to scold Merricat for her quirks. While Charles is clearly the antagonist of the story, Jackson is skilled at making readers aware that Merricat and her family behave rather strangely, oftentimes showing their actions to be off putting. This is shown in my favorite scene that happens about midway through the book, as the four of them sit down for a meal prepared by Constance. Charles watches as Constance feeds Uncle Julian, commenting that he wonders how she is able to stand it because, honestly, the way it is described is just kind of gross.
To make things even more uncomfortable, Uncle Julian addresses Charles, and due to his slipping deeper into senility, he mistakes Charles for his own brother as he says, “That was my dead wife’s chair on your left, young man… I well recall the last time she sat there.” If alluding to the night when the entire family was poisoned is not enough to make readers cringe, Merricat really knocks it out of the park when she begins to speak about the poisonous properties of Amanita phalloides. Merricat breaks down how this plant poisons the body, sparing no horrific details, concluding with, “Death occurs between five and ten days after eating.” Truly, it is nothing less than a perfect scene.
With Merricat being immediately unsettled by Charles staying with them, Uncle Julian, whose grasp on reality is already thin, constantly at odds with Charles, it is Constance that is quickly wooed by Charles and allows him to remain as their guest. Disgusted by what they deem normal in the Blackwood mansion, Charles makes his intentions clear regarding the future of not only the home, but of the Blackwood fortune as well, as he shakes up the dynamic that Merricat has slowly managed to cultivate ever since that fateful, poisonous night. Tensions increase the longer Charles stays at the Blackwood family home, building to a breaking point that helps to destroy the very home he was so keen to reside… well, with a little help from Mary Katherine Blackwood.
Kacee Cooper
As an English literature teacher obsessed with words and phrases and the delicacy of their combination, I grew up reading many Jane Austen novels whose protagonists are well-spoken and even better on the page. I remember these characters expressing their truest feelings in the most thoughtful manner, detailing their love and desire for each other. But then I discovered horror. Just like any other creature with an insatiable love for the dead (and all the scary parts before and after it), I have found that profound literature isn’t something that exists only in classic literature.
