From "The butler did it!" I had never read any of Jackson’s work until I read The Haunting of Hill House for a book club a few months ago I did not really enjoy the book at all, but it did provoke a lot of discussion and I almost felt like reading it again with the author’s life more in mind. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!” Not affiliated with Harvard College.GradeSaver "We Have Always Lived in the Castle Quotes and Analysis". Very talented wI listened to this after reading her memoirs and thought I heard the voice of her daughter in Merrikat. Rather than mourning her family members, Constance immediately blamed herself (as she later does for the fire at the end of the novel.) Merricat’s statement that she never regrets such thoughts can also be linked to her lack of remorse over the killings, though it also indicates that she understands on some level that these thoughts are wrong, indicating that she perhaps isn’t as confident in her mentality and past actions as she presents herself as being.“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!”The recurrent nursery rhyme that the villagers chant embodies the sinister girlhood behind the murders—though in reality Merricat, not Constance, is the guilty one. “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Our most loved daughter must have anything she likes……‘You must never be punished. That her fantasy includes Uncle Julian being well is notable because she, after all, is the cause of his ill health—his physical and mental disabilities are the result of surviving the poisoning.
I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. Yet despite losing his wife and brother in the poisoning, Uncle Julian treats it with a cheerful tone and seems to enjoy having been a part of an infamous crime. While the villagers ruin the house, he makes a pile of the junk that they throw outside.
Mary Katherine "Merricat" BlackwoodThe Protagonist, whose perspective the novel is told … Pretty language and creepy atmosphere mix with a plot I was expecting a little more from. Currently 18 years old, she was 12 when most of her family died after being poisoned. I appreciate the confirmation. I'm drawn to interestingly insane women, and though of course you would poison me in the end, what a maddening and mysterious time I would first have. Equally revealing is the fact that Constance said her family deserved to die, since she doesn’t seem to hold much resentment towards them otherwise (though she doesn’t mourn them much, either.) Maybe they even have a suicide pact.
Yet while the sisters previously hid from the villagers in fear, they now laugh as they do so, delighting in being the cause of so much fear and mystique.We Have Always Lived in the Castle study guide contains a biography of Shirley Jackson, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.Copyright © 1999 - 2020 GradeSaver LLC.
I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. The Haunting of Hill House is probably better, and "The Lottery" is perhaps the best 20 pages of prose ever written, but I find myself daydreaming of We Have Always Lived in the Castle the most.This book was my first exposure to Shirley Jackson and, perhaps consequently, holds an abnormally large portion of my heart. The Simpsons eat your heart out. Ah Merricat, silly Merricat, I do believe I love you. They are hated by the villagers. Her elaborate fantasy of seeing all the townspeople in the store dead, even the children, foreshadows the revelation that she, not Constance, killed her family—including her 10-year-old brother. Oh, this is one delicious yarn with plenty of turns--with a terror that comes to us only by the Literary Mistress of the Dark Herself, Shirley Jackson.