The Establishment and Preservation of Female Power in Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle"

Abstract

When Mary Katherine Blackwood, at age of twelve, poisoned her family by putting arsenic in sugar, she was careful not to endanger her sister Constance, whom she calls the most precious person in my world, always. 1 Now, six years later, with everyone dead but invalid and feeble-minded Uncle Julian, Constance has become head of Blackwood family, which consists of Constance, Mary Katherine (affectionately called Merricat by her sister), Uncle Julian, and Jonas cat. When events at beginning of Mary Katherine's narrative take place, they live in seclusion in Blackwood house, surrounded by extensive Blackwood property, barricaded against intrusion of outside world. They might have continued to live contentedly enough, had their neighbors allowed it. But female self-sufficiency, Jackson suggests, specifically women's forceful establishment of power over their own lives, threatens a society in which men hold primary power and leads inevitably to confrontation. Jackson's portrayal of institution of patriarchy and its terrifying power over women predates by more than five years Kate Millett's introduction of terminology of contemporary feminist criticism in Sexual Politics. Her rendering of a modern confrontation between witches and witchhunters anticipates by more than ten years writings of Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly on gynocide of witchhunt as one patriarchal response to female rebellion.2 Jackson's last completed novel and a best seller, We Have Always Lived in Castle is her most radical statement on causes and consequences of female victimization and alienation, a theme that runs throughout her work. The novel may represent a personal culmination for Jackson, who suffered a nervous breakdown shortly after its publication in 1962; her journal from that period records longings for freedom and security, self-control, and refuge that echo novel's central concern with self-determination of women in a safe environment.3 When book opens, masculine authority has already suffered a decisive defeat at hands of Mary Katherine Blackwood, its narrator (although identity of poisoner is not revealed or confirmed until climactic scene much later): poisoning has resulted in a transfer of power from Blackwood men to Blackwood women. The motive for poisoning is not clear at first, but we are given clues in characterizations of victims throughout narrative. Of men, most clearly drawn figure is John Blackwood, father of Merricat and Constance and head of Blackwood family. A redoubtable patriarch, was a man of property who, as Uncle Julian relates, took pride in his table, his family, his position in world (p. 47). He gave sparingly and grudgingly of his wealth and viewed all such transactions as financial investments to be taken down in his notebook, where, according to Merricat, he used to record names of people who owed money, and people who ought, thought, to do favors for him (p. 77). When quarreled with his wife night before their deaths, Uncle Julian assumed quarrel was about money (p. 32). In short, John Blackwood's power in his family and his community derived not only from his gender but also from his material wealth. Six years after his death,

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