I spent the day with Mary Katherine Blackwood
Saturday, 20 February 2016 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59In Marilyn's House The Milk Cartons Were Put Away So Promptly That They Never Sweated, And The Mayonnaise Was Treated Like Some Hopelessly Insane Relative That Was Never Allowed Out. *
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For reasons I can't remember, I decided a few days ago I needed to re-read We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I wanted to read it all in one afternoon, so I waited for today. I mostly read it in the car, though it did get dark and so I had to come in the house. (In between reading, I did some shopping.)
If you haven't read it, you should. Go now and read it. It's only one hundred and fifty pages or so. Do not read this first; there are spoilers.
I was thirteen when I first read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a year older than Merricat when she poisoned her family. (This happens before the novel starts.)
I fell in love with her immediately. (This was also the first Shirley Jackson I'd ever read; After You, My Dear Alphonse wouldn't come along for another year, and we didn't read either The Lottery or Charles in my grade school or high school.) I was grabbed by the title, held by Merricat, whose life I understood. We were sisters in superstition and torment.
The first scene in the novel is the best description of what it's like for a depressive or agoraphobic to go out. She's walked into town for groceries and library books, and her route is problematic: crossing the street where the cars don't stop (and might actually want to hit her); walking past the men who sit outside the general store and comment on the Blackwood family; stopping in the diner for coffee to show them she's not afraid of them. She pictures the town as a game board, moving over the squares: lose one turn when it takes too long to cross the street, go back to the beginning if you drop the groceries. She pictures the townspeople dead or dying.
That feeling of being watched by malignance nicely sums up my grade school experience, and it seems to run in my family; my grandmother was sure the neighbors were watching and it's my opinion she wasn't wrong. It attacked again after my house was broken into the first time—and I wasn't wrong then. My house—and my cousin's—were broken into by people who lived behind us.
I've found that people who write about this book tend to be disturbed by Merricat. Yes, she killed most of her family for not giving her the kind of adoration she wanted, and in the novel itself, she burns down most of the house to get rid of an unwelcome cousin who is threatening to evict her. And I'm sitting here thinking, why is there a problem with this? But there's a pervasive idea that we're only allowed to like characters we agree with, admire, would want to be like, or be friends with. I've never understood that. I had read Wuthering Heights the year before, memorized great hunks of it, adored Cathy and Heathcliff—but never had any interest in being like either of them, let alone knowing someone like them. Sometimes that's what literature's for, but not always. Sometimes it's so you can enjoy things you don't want to happen.
I'm much, much more tender-hearted than Merricat or Cathy and Heathcliff. I don't have to want to be Merricat to find her story satisfying. She takes action; she doesn't let herself be stepped on. When you live a life where you can't do that, reading about someone who does is wonderful.
Merricat wasn't even my first child-murderer. That would be Josephine Leonides, another young girl who killed her family members, in Agatha Christie's Crooked House. That was my first Agatha Christie, and I loved it so much, I started buying the books. And yet I've somehow never killed anyone. Maybe that's why I've never killed anyone.
Shirley Jackson, like Emily Bronte, wrote magical, dream-like prose, and reading it always takes me somewhere where the world is strange and dark and primal, and things might not end happily, but they are satisfying.
*(George), E. L. Konigsburg
-:- -:- -:- -:-
For reasons I can't remember, I decided a few days ago I needed to re-read We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I wanted to read it all in one afternoon, so I waited for today. I mostly read it in the car, though it did get dark and so I had to come in the house. (In between reading, I did some shopping.)
If you haven't read it, you should. Go now and read it. It's only one hundred and fifty pages or so. Do not read this first; there are spoilers.
I was thirteen when I first read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a year older than Merricat when she poisoned her family. (This happens before the novel starts.)
I fell in love with her immediately. (This was also the first Shirley Jackson I'd ever read; After You, My Dear Alphonse wouldn't come along for another year, and we didn't read either The Lottery or Charles in my grade school or high school.) I was grabbed by the title, held by Merricat, whose life I understood. We were sisters in superstition and torment.
The first scene in the novel is the best description of what it's like for a depressive or agoraphobic to go out. She's walked into town for groceries and library books, and her route is problematic: crossing the street where the cars don't stop (and might actually want to hit her); walking past the men who sit outside the general store and comment on the Blackwood family; stopping in the diner for coffee to show them she's not afraid of them. She pictures the town as a game board, moving over the squares: lose one turn when it takes too long to cross the street, go back to the beginning if you drop the groceries. She pictures the townspeople dead or dying.
That feeling of being watched by malignance nicely sums up my grade school experience, and it seems to run in my family; my grandmother was sure the neighbors were watching and it's my opinion she wasn't wrong. It attacked again after my house was broken into the first time—and I wasn't wrong then. My house—and my cousin's—were broken into by people who lived behind us.
I've found that people who write about this book tend to be disturbed by Merricat. Yes, she killed most of her family for not giving her the kind of adoration she wanted, and in the novel itself, she burns down most of the house to get rid of an unwelcome cousin who is threatening to evict her. And I'm sitting here thinking, why is there a problem with this? But there's a pervasive idea that we're only allowed to like characters we agree with, admire, would want to be like, or be friends with. I've never understood that. I had read Wuthering Heights the year before, memorized great hunks of it, adored Cathy and Heathcliff—but never had any interest in being like either of them, let alone knowing someone like them. Sometimes that's what literature's for, but not always. Sometimes it's so you can enjoy things you don't want to happen.
I'm much, much more tender-hearted than Merricat or Cathy and Heathcliff. I don't have to want to be Merricat to find her story satisfying. She takes action; she doesn't let herself be stepped on. When you live a life where you can't do that, reading about someone who does is wonderful.
Merricat wasn't even my first child-murderer. That would be Josephine Leonides, another young girl who killed her family members, in Agatha Christie's Crooked House. That was my first Agatha Christie, and I loved it so much, I started buying the books. And yet I've somehow never killed anyone. Maybe that's why I've never killed anyone.
Shirley Jackson, like Emily Bronte, wrote magical, dream-like prose, and reading it always takes me somewhere where the world is strange and dark and primal, and things might not end happily, but they are satisfying.
*(George), E. L. Konigsburg