We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

But instead, Merricat sets the fire to reclaim ownership of the house and complete the sisters’ transformation into “neighborhood witches.” During the fire, Charles is more concerned with saving the sisters’ wealth than saving their lives, proving that the house is the only safe place for Constance and Merricat. One would think this was a means to liberate the sisters from the house, thus following the trajectory of classic feminist retellings like Wide Sargasso Sea. Ultimately, Merricat sets her own house on fire to expel Charles from it. And Charles, a handsome cousin and potential suitor whom Constance sees as a potential avenue to a traditional lifestyle, makes it abundantly clear that he’s after the sisters’ money when he comes to visit. The villagers are cruel to Merricat when she comes into town, singing songs about Constance murdering the women’s parents. But instead, Jackson takes great pains to remind us that the house is the best place for the sisters.

By the end of the novel, the reader would expect to see the women “liberate” themselves from the house and join the world again. In a more typical feminist retelling, the house would be akin to a prison, where the women are trapped in domesticity because they do not conform to societal expectations. But the women do have tenuous ties to the community: Merricat regularly ventures into town to buy food and books (although she spends a considerable portion of that time wishing all the villagers dead), and visitors occasionally stop by the house. We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows two sisters, Merricat and Constance Blackwood, who already have a somewhat “witchy” reputation at the beginning of the book: most of their entire family died of poisoning a year before, and the women spend most of their time locked in their house with their uncle, away from the villagers who ostracize and despise them. But where most feminist retellings complicate familiar stories, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle takes an inverted approach: the novel starts with relatable (if spooky) characters, and then tracks their transformation into the “neighborhood witch” archetype. From Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties to Madeline Miller’s Circe, prominent women writers have recently been reworking problematic feminine archetypes from male-centric myths.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson