Shirley Jackson and the Evolution of Gothic Concerns

BA : English - Senior Capstone Paper

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The Gothic literary style is defined by mystery, horror, psychological distress, and the supernatural, as well as a deep association with fear, heightened emotion, and on occasion, distorted psychological perspective. While the term Gothic has a particular connotation with the development of the novel in the late eighteenth century, the elements that constitute the genre transcend any particular historical moment. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson, taps into the core of Gothic sensibility by utilizing its most recognizable elements, such as distorted psychological perspective, mystery, and heightened fear, among others. The book denotes social class tensions as the primary concern of the twentieth century; its film adaptation, a twenty-first century work, addresses gendered and domestic abuse as its primary concerns. It exhibits key differences from the novel, tailored to the more pressing concerns of the modern age as to retain the Gothic sense of terror and horror. We Have Always Lived in the Castle’s adaptability to contemporary fears over time is evidence that the long history of the Gothic extends into modernity, no one period of time holding claim to its aspects. The genre’s adaptability and persistence over time gives us insight into the zeitgeist of society’s most pressing fears at any given era and age since the conception of the Gothic.

The context in which the term Gothic was used throughout history largely influenced what it meant, and means, to be Gothic. The term Gothic, used aesthetically, was applied to an art style before it was to literature. Italian Renaissance writers used it to relate a style of medieval architecture to the “barbarian Gothic tribes that had destroyed the Roman Empire and its classical culture” (“Gothic Art”). Though the Goths had nothing to do with the art style, the word Gothic hence gained a reputation as a derogatory term with negative associations related to the destruction of society (“Gothic Art”).

Later, the same word was used to refer to a literary movement from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, it being “much harder to identify its close, if indeed the movement did come to a close at all” (“Gothic Literature”). Gothic retained its negative connotation, with a focus “on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason,” also paying “attention to the dark side of human nature and the chaos of irrationality” (“Gothic Literature”). As the term’s use evolved, so did its connotations.

Anne Radcliffe further developed Gothic’s meaning by creating a distinction between terror and horror. Her input becomes essential to the study of Gothic. In the dialogue of “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” she writes:

“Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in the uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreaded evil?”

Terror occurs as a sort of precursor to horror, the feeling of fright or anticipation that comes before seeing the object of the feeling—that is, when that object is still shrouded in “uncertainty and obscurity.” This creates that “awakening” sensation. Horror happens when the source of terror is confronted, and the feeling is more of disgust than anticipation. This is the contracting, the freezing. The interplay between terror and horror becomes an important aspect of how a Gothic story is told.

The Gothic’s long history, extended into modernity, has provided a lot of opportunity for the genre to evolve over time. From the conception of the first Gothic novel to today’s Gothic stories, each narrative adapts the idea of the Gothic to express its own unique horrors. As the genre’s lifespan extends ever further into the present, patterns can emerge in the production of such narratives. For any story to become successful, it must appeal to some aspect of the audience: in the Gothic’s case, resonating with their personal and collective thoughts and fears. Addressing a popular concern of the masses almost guarantees interest. As such, tracing We Have Always Lived in the Castle’s narrative adaptation through time shows society’s change through time with regards to its fears and negative associations. As a quintessential example of Gothic and all of its key features, the novel is representative of the entire genre’s capacity to inform society about ourselves.

Shirley Jackson’s novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is as much a Gothic tale as any of the original classics, like Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, or Shelley’s Frankenstein, proof in and of itself that the genre never truly reached a close. Written in 1962, this novel expresses characteristics that are classic to the Gothic sensibility: distorted psychological perspective, mystery, a heightened sense of fear, the supernatural, and societal chaos. This societal chaos, present in severe class distinctions and tensions, becomes one of the most prominent terrors in the novel, and is the only issue that manifests into true horror. Merricat’s antagonism with the village and anyone outside of her immediate family unit becomes the main gesture of the book, something Jackson seems to be quite preoccupied with.

In the movie, made a century later, Charles fills the role of the main antagonist, his behavior stealing the attention away from the relationship between Merricat and the villagers. Stacie Passon, the director, refocuses the main concerns of the movie so that class tensions become background noise that help build a Gothic atmosphere. Charles’ violent outbursts and the general reluctance of the characters to treat women fairly or even as respectable human beings dominate the film as the most pressing issue to be addressed. This change in plot between centuries demonstrates the evolution the Gothic genre takes on to retain its threatening aura as societal concerns change and develop over time.

In the novel, the Blackwood house provides as grand of a Gothic setting as any. It is a private estate on a large plot of fenced land, shrouded in mystery. The Blackwoods come from money, and the property is evidence of such, set apart from the contrastingly poor and dirty village. As the site of a massacre, there could hardly be a more appropriate setting for a Gothic story to take place. Of course, Merricat helps set the mood at the Blackwood estate by planting totems all over the property, buried in the woods, nailed to trees. By the end of the book, Merricat and Constance are living in a true Gothic ruin, reminiscent of the very origin of the term. Between the fire and the havoc wrought by the villagers, the house and the land quickly earn a horrific history that rapidly becomes mythology. Legend spreads that the women in the house “‘see everything that goes on’” (Jackson 146), and that they come out at night to catch and eat children (141).

The house takes on a whole new significance in Passon’s film. The freshly revived ghost of domestic abuse the Blackwood girls face in the film mark their “haunted house as the reflection of a collective, traumatic history” (Michlin 2). As Charles moves into the house and the main plot of the story, it becomes increasingly apparent that the Blackwood estate is not only a site of terror, even horror, but also a source. The very lawn uproots Merricat’s spells of protection, the paintings on the walls watch as the cycle of abuse continues within the house. As the new addition to the house, Charles continuing the same toxic behavior as his predecessors has the power to “simultaneously make us feel that [the girls] have come home to [their] deepest terrors and that [they] are trespassing into thrillingly forbidden territory” (50) in a place that is both familiar and growing strange. The girls cannot seem to escape their trauma until the house burns, its history and meaning and power alongside it. It only truly becomes their home when they have made their own space out of its ruins. The contemporary Gothic tale “has been given a new life…dealing with childhood trauma due to abuse” (5), which is played out over again throughout the course of the movie.

Merricat’s delusional state of mind also does a lot to establish the Gothic sensibility in the story. Despite being eighteen, her mind is more like that of a much younger girl, not quite achieving the maturity and logical capacity she should have. Even if she were only a young girl, her thoughts and feelings would still be troublesome, fraught with violence and highly narcissistic attitudes.

One of the most consistent examples of Merricat’s deep-seeded issues with violence is attitude towards anyone outside of her little family circle of Constance and Uncle Julian. The villagers certainly aren’t nice to her, what with the mysterious murder that hangs like a shadow over her family, but her opinion of them seems to be far worse. When she goes to town, she says, “I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from the inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village” (Jackson 6). Not even the spaces that exist outside of her home are exempt from her criticism. As for the villagers, she thinks, “I wish you were all dead” (8), and “I am walking on their bodies” (10). Even about the children, she says, “Their tongues will burn, I thought, as though they had eaten fire. Their throats will burn when the words come out, and in their bellies they will feel a torment hotter than a thousand fires” (17). Maybe she doesn’t have a sense for others’ feelings and reasoning, or maybe she doesn’t care. Either way, there’s a disconnect that gives her a terrifying lack of concern for humanity.

Merricat does, on occasion, let her violent mind get the better of her. Twice she catalyzes a catastrophic event that results in destruction and death. The first was the genocide of the Blackwood family. While the town may think the murderer to be Constance, Merricat was the one to put the poison in the sugar, because she knew Constance wouldn’t eat it. As just a small child, she commits premeditated murder because she feels that she doesn’t deserve to be belittled in any way, like being sent to bed without dinner.

Merricat also starts the fire that burns down half of the Blackwood house. She brushes Charles’ lit pipe into a basket of newspapers, the final act in her plan to remove the stranger from her home. This, like every move she makes against Charles, is a power play to restore herself as the master of her world, her home, a reordering of the class system. She smokes him out, but the fire also brings the village to their doorstep, and the villagers destroy as much as they can of the rest of the house. By the end of the catastrophe, Uncle Julian has died, and the lofty estate has been reduced to a ruin.

Merricat does all this without fear of consequences. She seems to think herself above the rules of the society around her; she does a lot of work to remove herself from and condemn that society. In fact, she regularly contemplates the idea of living on the moon and what her life would be like there, the master of her own world. By the end of the novel, when she and Constance separate themselves completely from the rest of humanity, she says to her sister, “We are on the moon at last” (112). She becomes the only authority figure in her own life, sets up her own norms and rituals, like watching strangers from the boarded front door, and answers to no one from then on out. Even before achieving independence, though, she never much minded the consequences of her actions—maybe because the major, sometimes minor, calamities she caused never resulted in any personal loss for her. She is as disconnected from the results of her actions as she is from reality and normalcy.

Merricat’s delusional tendencies may also work in combination with her narcissistic qualities to build her distorted worldview. When she visits the summerhouse, she imagines her pre-genocide family all together for dinner. When they speak, they say things like “‘Mary Katherine should have anything she wants,’” “‘See to it that our most loved daughter Mary Katherine is never punished’” (Jackson 95), and “‘Bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine’” (96). Merricat believes herself to be infallible and thinks that people should understand and cater to this prospect. The way this scene plays out, she even appears to consider the idea that she should be worshipped. This may be one of the issues that intensify the class tensions in the book to the point of breaking: Merricat is insistent upon being on the highest pedestal, the queen of the castle, underling to no one and with nobody to punish her. This is what drives the terror and horror in the story. If the division between the rich Blackwoods and the poor villagers wasn’t bad enough, Merricat thinks herself above them all. Her character is designed to overturn the social class structures by demanding ultimate control, with or without the rights to make such demands.

Merricat’s violent tendencies, occasionally realized into catastrophic incidents accentuated by death, distorted worldview, and narcissistic mindset all add up to main character that satisfies the standards for Jackson’s Gothic story, which comments on class tensions. As a narrator, Merricat is sure to imbue the narrative with eerie, unsettling commentary, especially on her stature within the power structure she has designed.

Uncle Julian also lives in his own version of reality, though the details aren’t quite as clear. He never truly recovered from the night his family was poisoned, as he is sickly, and believes Merricat to have died in an orphanage after the incident. It is harder to gauge what he makes of the world around him, since he doesn’t even know what to make of it. He grasps desperately to fragments of his past, his papers, but can’t do anything with them. He is lost in what has become Merricat’s world, another victim of her outrage.

In the movie, Merricat’s relationship with Uncle Julian may also be a sort of act against male dominance. Julian is the only man Merricat allows into her house willingly—or at least without complaint—and that is only after he survives her attempted poisoning and loses his mind to it. His confinement to a wheelchair and inability to maintain a train of thought is a result of her symbolically castrating him to a point that she is not threatened by him, making him a suitable member of the family.

From the first paragraph of the book, this story is immersed in the supernatural, another staple of the Gothic. One of the first things Merricat expresses is her desire to have been born a werewolf, introducing the reader into her reality where the supernatural is legitimate (Jackson 1). From there, the connection only deepens.

The primary reference to the supernatural in the novel is Merricat’s occult use of objects to accomplish her own will. She uses contextually charged objects, sensing “the invisible and immaterial value of things: the scents of meaning above and beyond what is raw and material,” and attempts “to wield and use that spirit for their own protection and betterment. The occult, in this sense, is the application rather than mere curation” (“Adolescent Occultism” 3). For instance, the book she nails to the tree, which was her father’s, “is useable as a ward because it corresponds to debts and favours owed. Its history of use directly influences its supernatural capacity” (“Adolescent Occultism” 9).

Whether Merricat’s magical practices hold any true power is unclear, but the arrival of Charles may point more towards the efficacy of her practices. When Charles moves into the Blackwood house, he starts ripping up and displacing all of her totems. He manages to find and dig up the box of silver dollars and takes for himself the gold chain she nailed to a tree. The loss of these items may have allowed for the eventual destruction of the estate.

The presence Merricat’s pet cat, Jonas, has in the novel even alludes to the idea of the supernatural. He functions as a kind of witch’s familiar. Merricat talks to him as if he can understand her, and at times he seems attuned to her sense of supernatural forces. When Merricat decides to visit the summerhouse, “Jonas would not follow” (Jackson 94), supposedly because “something had gotten into the wood and stone and paint when the summerhouse was built and made it bad” (94). He seems to react to the system of beliefs she establishes, attuned to her world of magic.

In the movie, the supernatural becomes a real, more threatening element, perhaps for the sake of contemporary interest in things like witchcraft, crystal healing, tarot, and astrology. Whatever the reason, the adjustment is meant to appeal to its contemporary audience. While Jonas the cat hardly appears in the film at all, Merricat’s spell work and rituals take effect in a way that dissolves any doubt that she is involved with the supernatural.

Some signs are subtle. The day Charles arrives, for instance, Merricat is walking back from her trip into town. She notices the book she has nailed to a tree is laying on the ground. It does not appear to be wet or damaged, and the nail is still poked through it, straight and silver and without rust (Passon). It certainly could have fallen from the tree on its own, but such a case doesn’t seem likely, especially since, in the novel, Merricat notes that the book falling was due to the nail rusting away (Jackson 53-54). Immediately after discovering it, the movie shows that she enters the house and Constance promptly introduces Charles to her (Passon). The proximity of the events seems a little too close to be incidental.

The scene where the magic is most explicitly demonstrated to be real comes after Charles confronts Merricat about making a mess of his room. It is Tuesday, and Charles approaches Merricat with a fistful of sticks, demanding answers. An argument breaks out that grows ever more intense as Constance tries to deescalate the situation and Uncle Julian begins to yell at Charles. Merricat speaks up at the wrong time and Constance and Charles both turn to yell at her. She flees the house and runs into the woods. There, she discovers a pile of jars that she had buried; something has unearthed them. They are broken and their contents—marbles, spoons, and other household items—are strewn across the ground. Merricat’s voice narrates: “Some terrible force has brought everything I’ve ever buried to the surface, like the opposite of a spell.” She desperately tries to bury what remains. “What could be the opposite of a spell? A curse” (Passon).

From behind Merricat comes a male voice that says, “You should have a new book.” She turns to see her mother and father sitting next to each other in dining room chairs, there in the forest. Her father continues, addressing her mother:

(Father) Should Mary Katherine have a new book?

(Mother) She should have anything she wants. Our most loved daughter should have

anything she likes.

(Father) Mary Katherine… we love you. You must never be punished. You are to see to it

that our most beloved daughter is never punished. (Passon)

Merricat’s mother looks at her, then down at the ground, silent. Merricat smiles, and the scene ends (Passon). While the conversation with her parents may be written off as a cinematic device used to express Merricat’s inner dialogue, which cannot be translated directly from the book to the film, the uprooting of her jars and spells undoubtedly solidifies the presence of magic in this world. Charles, in his dialogue and actions, expresses no sense of knowing anything about the jars and therefore could not have dug them up. There are only two times he discovers something she buried—the first being when he catches her in the act of burying her father’s gold watch, and the second when he finds the box of silver dollars sitting directly beneath the boards of the broken step he ripped up in order to fix it. His reactions to those discoveries are dramatic, and always makes a point of chastising Merricat for everything she does that he doesn’t like (Passon). If he had been the one to find the buried jars, there would have been no doubt about it. His failure to express any knowledge of the event therefore makes the case that the culprit could only have been some supernatural curse.

No such event occurs in Jackson’s novel, however. Charles does dig up or take a few of Merricat’s totems from the yard, but there is no apparent supernatural force that opposes her spell work. She also hears her family’s voices when she visits the summerhouse, but they do not appear to her in a vision. It seems that in the novel, the presence of actual magic is not necessary to create the sense of the Gothic, but simply the idea that Merricat would attempt magic by using objects in occult ways appeals to the sense of terror that the book builds up. Such subtlety does not have the same impact in the twenty-first century movie though, so to achieve the same disquieting mood the magic must be made tangible, and the distinctions between reality and truth must be softened more to appeal to contemporary audiences. Moments of real magic move the fear from imagined terror to an explicit horror with an inherently bigger impact.

Much like with the Roman Empire and the Goths, the Blackwood estate finds itself under attack by the villagers near the end of the novel. The anxiety—or terror—of societal collapse becomes real—horror—for the village and the Blackwoods. Long-suppressed dissatisfactions and jealousies and fears are finally acted upon. The “combination of ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’” (Hogle 8) reaches its breaking point as the village gathers to watch the Blackwood house burn down, hoping it will.

In a true Gothic style, the villagers “project modern concerns into a deliberately vague, even fictionalized past” (Hogle 16), blaming Constance for a murder she didn’t commit and using that excuse to take all of their pent-up insecurities out on her and her estate. When the fire doesn’t finish the job, the villagers prove that they formulate a society “of primal sin and darkness pervading a world where forgiveness is lacking … where hatred and hostility are all too ready to surface into action” (Parks 26). They start throwing rocks, then move into the house to destroy what’s left, smashing furniture and throwing dishware.

Merricat and Constance try to escape to the back of the house but are caught by the rampaging villagers. They circle and trap the girls, hysteric, making fun at them, relentless until Julian’s death is announced to the crowd. The mob mentality breaks, and the crowd disperses. Merricat survives the night of horror and wins her freedom to exist completely in her supernatural world, apart from any normal or rational society, in the ruins of the Blackwood home. The ruin symbolizes not only their crime, but also the crime of dark retribution perpetrated against them in anarchic passion by the maddened villagers. The real horror of the novel comes not so much from the unpunished murders by a twelve-year-old child, but largely from the inexplicable madness and violence of the so-called normal and ordinary people of the world outside the Blackwood home. (Parks 27) This ultimate climax into horror from the building terror throughout the novel speaks a lot to the nature of Gothic literature, especially since it refers greatly to the kinds of sociological and psychological struggles that the genre formed as a response to (“Gothic Literature”). The poor, bitter villagers are pitted against the rich, mysterious Blackwoods, the rumors and slander and the antagonism between them peaked.

In the movie, the fall of the Blackwood estate is a lot more physically violent, making prominent the concerns of domestic abuse and violence against women. The horror starts after Merricat sits at the dinner table, having just dropped Charles’ lit pipe into the wastebasket upstairs. Merricat instigates an argument with Charles:

(Merricat) Amanita phalloides contains three poisons.

(Charles) Don’t.

(Merricat) Mushroom Amanitin, which is slow but potent.

(Charles) Enough!

(Merricat) Phalloidin, which attacks the liver and kidneys, and Phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles.

(Charles) I mean it. I won’t stand for it.

(Merricat) The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours—

(Charles) Not another goddamned word!

(Merricat) Constance? (Passon)

At this point, Charles lurches up from the table and grabs Merricat by the throat, dragging her out of the room while she kicks and screams. He drags her up the stairs and for a second she breaks away, but he grabs her and climbs on top of her. She starts yelling, “Father, stop! No!” while Charles repeats “Shut up!” (Passon). The screams continue, accompanied by the sounds of hitting and punching, as the camera cuts to different shots around the house, like the lifeless eyes of painted portraits. When it comes back to the struggle Charles is on top of Merricat with his hand over her mouth while she cries. It is then that he notices the fire and frees her. He runs out of the house screaming fire and goes to get help, while Constance comes to Merricat’s aid (Passon). This is one of a few references towards the girls’ abusive father. For Merricat to accidentally call Charles ‘father’ as he attacks her, associating him with physical violence, their father must have hurt her fairly regularly. Later in the film, Constance says, “He was wicked. He was a very wicked man, our father. He was very wicked to me” (Passon), implying that he was also physically abusive towards her. His misconduct seems to have never stopped haunting them, and Charles’ actions split the old wounds open again. In the novel, no such idea of domestic violence is mentioned. When the fire starts, the four living in the house are having dinner. Charles and Merricat are tense as usual, throwing a couple terse remarks at each other, but Julian remarks that he is feeling better. The mean is interrupted by the smell of smoke, and the only yelling is Charles screaming fire and demanding that they all run (Jackson 100-101). Charles does not swear or make outstanding threats at Merricat, he makes no great act of violence, and there is no reference to the girls’ father before the onset of the chaos caused by the fire. Constance doesn’t bring him up either, merely apologizing for bringing up how Merricat had poisoned the family and calling herself wicked (130).

The villagers’ attack on the Blackwood estate is also more physically violent in the movie. A few men grab Merricat and Constance as they try to flee and drag them out into the yard. One man holds Merricat back while the others throw Constance to the ground and tackle and shove her and rip at her dress. A woman screams at them, even being a villager herself. The violence doesn’t stop until someone fires a gun into the air, demanding that everyone scatter in the wake of Julian’s death (Passon). Not only is the physical violence against the Blackwoods haunting, but the violence against women in general is startling. Members of their own community were against the physical harm the village men inflicted, despite their all being unified in their hatred for the family. Even worse, the men ignored the women’s complaints against their actions. If to be Gothic really is to “project modern concerns into a deliberately vague, even fictionalized past” (Hogle 16), then the twenty-first century has certainly expressed concerns about crimes committed against women. Jackson’s novel does not show this. Merricat actually points out that the villagers “were trying not to touch [them]” (Jackson 108), and nobody does. No physical contact is made between the villagers and the Blackwoods, they simply circle the girls—men and women alike, no conscious or subconscious distinctions between genders occurring, all caught up in the fury brought on by the class system.

In the film, the climax of the display of gendered violence actually comes after the fall of the Blackwood estate. In a last desperate attempt at the family’s money, Charles returns with a knock at the door, calling, “Connie? I’m back. Constance?” (Passon). The girls are in the kitchen. There’s still a broken window the girls have yet to board up, so they hide beneath the kitchen table. Charles walks around to the back of the house and peers in through the window. “I want to be friends again. Will you open the door?” He continues pleading, becoming increasingly frustrated. He goes to the door and struggles against the lock. “Nobody’s gonna love you. Is that what you want, Connie? I don’t deserve to be treated like this.” He starts yelling and eventually kicks down the door. He marches in and corners Constance, climbing on top of her. She screams and they struggle until Merricat smashes a snow globe over his head. He collapses and blood splatters across the floor. She drives the broken glass edges of the base into his head to be sure he’s dead (Passon). Finally, the violence has ended. These explicit displays of horror become far more common in the movie, contrasting the novel’s reliance on the eerie subtlety of terror. By using such a strategy, Passon certainly works to make apparent the most important aspects of the story she tells. Directly confronting the audience with the horrific elements guarantees an immediate emotional response from the viewers. Of course, as a primarily visual method of storytelling, it is certainly natural for the cinematic retelling of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to be more visually and physically violent, but the popularity of impact over subtlety in film does not necessarily mean that impact is the only route. The violence in the film cannot be entirely explained away by its format; the way Passon chose to tell the story and how she chose to change and adapt it does have more of a societal context.

According to the book, Charles only returns once after the fire. He comes with another man, and much of their visit is spent discussing the fall of the Blackwood estate between themselves. The man convinces Charles to try and get the girls to come out so that he can take a picture by promising him some of the money if he sells it to a paper or magazine. Charles begs, but the girls do not come out, and he does not enter the house (Jackson 141-144). In the end it still comes down to money for Charles. When he cannot use any relationship with the girls to get any, he disappears.

The movie steps up the threats and the stakes from the novel, class tensions taking a backseat compared to the threat Charles poses. To say that Charles is the only problem is too shortsighted, though. Between their father, Charles, and the village men, the Blackwood girls suffer a lot of damage at the hands of men, even those that were supposed to be on their side. This gendered violence is the real terror that haunts the length of the film, blooming into horror at the end. Charles is only a face, a symbol, of real domestic and gendered violence that haunts a real-world audience. The terror, the horror, is effective because it is all too plausible, too real. It takes overcoming that violence, their abusers, for the girls to have their happy ending. Unfortunately for them, that meant both enduring a shocking level of abuse, and matching, even pushing beyond the very threats they faced by becoming the dangerous abusers themselves. In the end, villagers leave food by the front doors, saying apologies, and Charles is buried in the backyard.

The idea of what is Gothic has been around for a long time, enduring a long history. That history is still growing, as proven by Shirley Jackson in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and director Stacie Passon’s movie adaptation of the book by the same name. The novel taps into the core of the Gothic sensibility; Merricat is the violent, murderous, delusional, witchy main character, living in a Gothic ruin which was destroyed in a moment of horror by the bitter villagers of the surrounding town. The differences in social class between the Blackwoods and the villagers strike up the tension that gives the novel its moments of horror. The Gothic elements evolve in the film adaptation to reflect more modern concerns: more moments of horror that do more than creep around in the background, violence, murder—employing the genre’s adaptability. This adaptability shows us how society—especially in its primary fears and concerns—changes over time, perhaps corresponding with current events. The concerns of the twentieth century are not the most pressing matters in the collective whole of society today, and the Gothic literature written during that time reflects that. Those stories are mile marker for a period of culture that has passed into history. Tracking today’s Gothic tales, like Passon’s 2019 adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, can tell us more about ourselves in the present, without the time lag of waiting for hindsight. The change in the story can tell us how we have grown and changed in our evolving world.

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Works Cited

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