We Have Always Lived In The Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Constance, her younger sister Mary Katherine (called Merricat) and their wheelchair bound elderly Uncle Julian live on the edge of a small town. A few years back, a tragedy occurred in their house. The entire rest of the family (the girls' parents, younger brother and Uncle Julian's wife) died from arsenic poisoning. The arsenic was mixed into the sugar and the family used it generously over their desert fruits - except for Constance, who never takes sugar, and Merricat, who has been sent to her room without dinner. Their Uncle simply ate to little of it.

Constance was tried and acquitted for the crime and the trio are shunned by the town folk, who wish they would simply disappear. They even made up a small rhyme about the incident. It is tomboy Merricat's responsibility to go for groceries once a week, an outing during which she is given sideways glances and is bullied. Conversations stop wherever she enters. Visits to the house are limited to one woman coming to tea on a regular basis.

The delicate balance gets upended when Cousin Charles visits the girls and their Uncle. Initially he is pleasant enough but soon he starts feeling and behaving like the head of the family. Merricat disliked him from the get-go and wished him away, while Constance is more open to welcoming him into their lives and more patient with listening to his ideas. She does, however, change her mind gradually.

Charles has the annoying habit of smoking a pipe that eventually causes a fire at the house. He brings the local fire department and with it a mob of town people, who all want to witness the dreaded house's total destruction. Much to their disappointment, though, the fire fighters do their job properly. But as soon as the fire is extinguished, the mob starts throwing stones at the house and pushes inside to cause some serious destruction, until a handful of reasonable people get them all to stop and leave.

Poor Uncle Julian, frail even before the fire, dies during the incident. The sisters return to what remains of their house and make the remaining rooms inhabitable again and lock themselves in and shut themselves away, finally, from the outside world.

The people of the town, feeling guilty for their behavior, start dropping off food at the doorstep as penance. The story of the family tragedy drifts more into legend and the house is set to become the stuff of lore, the kind of house children dare each other to go up to.

A most excellent read.

8/10