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Merricat’s Opening
Mary Katherine is called Merricat. Merricat has a cat, Jonas. She is quite similar to a cat herself; peculiar, unreadable. She lives with her sister Constance, who is ten years older. She thinks that she could have been a werewolf.
A werewolf is an interesting thought because Merricat likes to bury things, out of superstition, of course. In a way, she isn’t completely real. What she does is not matched up with reality. Which is why she belongs in the Castle. Merricat is a dark legend in the town; werewolves are legends.
But she isn’t a werewolf and has to be content with what she had. She wasn’t lucky enough to be a werewolf; what is wrong with being Merricat? She has the Castle, and Constance. So is she real?
I wonder if she is real because she has to be content with what she had. Why doesn’t she have it anymore? She is no longer “not born a werewolf;” that is in the past. Poor Merricat, is she real?
She doesn’t like many things. But she likes the death-cup mushroom. She loves plants. Plants that hurt people.
Everyone in her family is dead.
Merricat is peculiar.
Who Lives in the Castle?
Merricat Blackwood is 18 years old and lives in the Castle.
She goes to the store two times a week to get groceries and library books. Merricat hates going to the store because the townspeople are suspicious of the Blackwoods. In fact, more than suspicious; they are hateful. But this is not without retort. Merricat hates the townspeople; she wants many of them dead. Merricat doesn’t care for children.
Merricat buries things. She is superstitious, even paranoid. She does it for luck, spells even. She likes to frighten people; it brings her joy. Poor sweet Merricat, who has always lived in the Castle.
Constance Blackwood is agoraphobic. She does not leave the Castle. She is sweeter than Merricat, perhaps more well-tolerated personality wise. Yet she is the subject of the heckling; the townspeople think she killed her family.
Constance does the gardening and the cooking, and she even taught poor Merricat about all of the poisonous plants under the sun. Constance is a wonderful cook. She takes care of Uncle Julian. And she truly adores sweet Merricat who speaks in fantasy. She always agrees, silly Merricat, she says. Never mad, never harsh. Silly Merricat.
Uncle Julian was poisoned once upon a time. Now he is in a wheelchair and is not in reality. I suppose he is reality adjacent. He exhibits the symptoms of confusion, delusion, and forgetfulness. He thinks Merricat is dead.
The Blackwood family died from arsenic poisoning. Someone put arsenic in the sugar, which went on the blackberries. Julian was poisoned, but not too much. He lived, unlike the rest. But his life is not a real life. He wants to write a book about the poisoning but he can’t seem to keep any parts of his reality straight. Poor poor Julian.
Cousin Charles comes to visit the Castle, and Constance is feeling bold. Her agoraphobia seems to be getting better. She welcomes Charles. Merricat does not want to welcome Charles.
Perhaps Merricat is real because she sees what Charles wants: money. Constance treats Charles well, as she is a naturally maternal figure. She is a mother to Merricat, sweet child-like Merricat.
Charles is angry that Merricat buries so much money in the soil. But this is what she does. She likes to bury things.
Charles ruins many things; he doesn’t live in the Castle.
Merricat’s World
Merricat paints the world in primary colors. She is childlike, not eighteen. She doesn’t really seem eighteen years old. The Blackwoods died six years ago. Perhaps she has not really aged since their death. Ambiguity is omnipresent.
But, it is important to mention that Merricat is violent. She wants to see the townspeople, who have never liked the Blackwoods, in pain. She wants to see children in pain. She really is violent, Miss Merricat. But the townspeople have always hated her, really.
Merricat doesn’t think much about her parents’ death, her family’s death. She was sent to bed without dinner that night. She didn’t eat any. Constance didn’t take sugar on her blackberries; she was charged with the crime. Constance, however, was acquitted.
Merricat has to make sure that she takes the necessary precautions in the Castle. She nails a book to a tree; this is important to her. The book falls before Charles arrives; Merricat sensed danger.
It is true that Merricat wants Charles gone. She thinks he is a ghost. He looks like her father. She wants him gone.
But really Charles is not only a ghost but a demon. She resents him; and he really looks like her father. So much so that he must be a demon. Her father sent her to bed with no dinner on the night that he died.
Haunted
I think that the Castle needs Planchette. We do not know who is alive, who is real. Merricat thinks that Charles is a demon.
Constance trusts Charles.
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Charles looks like their father.
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Constance was charged with murder, and acquitted.
One night Merricat is angry with Charles. She has done many things to try to make him leave; she has dumped water on his bed, made his life unsavory. One night she puts his pipe in the trash. The Castle goes up in flames.
The townspeople, who really do hate the Blackwoods, come to help put out the fire. But they really are frightened of the Blackwoods. They think that Constance is a murderer. And what do cowards do? They hate. When do cowards prey? When people are weak.
So the townspeople vandalize the Castle; they destroy it more than the fire would have. Sad, really. Charles tries to steal the safe. The townspeople help him.
They do this because the Blackwoods are legends.
Like werewolves; not real, but if they are, then evil.
It really must be sad to be a coward.
To fear a legend.
Merricat and Constance are almost attacked; they hide, and they sleep outside.
They hear the familiar song,
“Merricat said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”
So the next day Merricat and Connie get to work. They board up the Castle, they hide away for good. When townspeople come by out of an immense bout of guilt, they remain hidden and silent; they do not speak a word.
They become legends once again, even more so perhaps. Children fear them like a ghost when they come to the Castle to see whether they might catch a glimpse of the poor souls.
We know only Merricat’s voice; not the townspeople, nor Constance’s. Julian really thought Merricat had passed away.
The townspeople mustn’t all be not sane.
They think the sisters are legends.
Are they real?
So I think that the Castle needed Planchette. For I am not sure anymore who is real. I suppose Charles is real. Or was he a demon. Did the sisters survive the fire? It is hard to trust silly Merricat, she sees the world in a peculiar way.
Shirley didn’t want Planchette in this story, perhaps. She wanted us to be uncomfortable, asking what is wrong with Merricat, can we trust Merricat?
Is she real?
I wonder if Uncle Julian was right, and Merricat passed away after her parents passed. Perhaps this whole world is Constance’s creation; dealing with the guilt and trauma of her murder charge and her family death.
Or maybe it is Merricat’s world; nothing is real and she is the only one living. For maybe Charles is not real, and he is really Mary’s father. And he is a manifestation of guilt. He is a demon. Merricat imagines him.
We really cannot certainly know who is real, alive, if anything is, haunted?
Belonging, Distorted
Sometimes I remember sweet Nellie from Hill House; she did not belong. Merricat and Constance have always lived in the Castle. They belong in the Castle, like many Blackwoods before them. They belong here and they do not like to leave here because the Castle is safe. It is kept in good condition and it was safe.
But when Merricat goes into town she likes to stop at a coffee shop to prove that she can. Those at the coffee shop tend to heckle her; they make her leave, almost against her will. She doesn’t belong in the coffee shop.
Constance is agoraphobic. This we know. But she really truly is; she doesn’t leave the Castle. They think that Constance murdered her family. I wonder how they would treat Constance if she went into town.
The Blackwood sisters do not belong in their town; they belong in the Castle. The town has made them fear it; they are not welcome there. The townspeople do not welcome them. They have always hated the Blackwoods, maybe even before the tragedy. The Blackwoods are wealthy. They hated Mr. Blackwood.
Wealth is sought after; Charles tries to steal the safe. I think that the townspeople hated the money, and then they hated the girls for the tragedy. They would find a way to hate them no matter what. Like a game:
“Merricat said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”
Perhaps there is a game in hatred. There is something fun in collective hatred. People like to hate others because it means they belong. If someone else really truly doesn’t belong, then you must belong. Pure logic of elimination.
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Bam!
Shirley did not belong. Shirley lived in North Bennington, Vermont, where her husband worked. People were not always friendly to Shirley. She often stayed home.
Maybe the Castle was haunted. Maybe Merricat wasn’t real. But it seems that whether or not there were psychic phenomena in the Castle, the events of the Castle were uniquely human. Hatred is human. Shirley knew this well.
The Castle
Unlike Hill House, the Castle seems sane. Seems so at least. It seems sane because the Castle is where they belong and it does not scare them. It is outside that scares them.
But maybe it is haunted because there was a murder in the house.
But it seems that if anything, the outside is more haunted. It seems this way because Merricat casts spells in order to stay safe; to keep things out and to keep her and Constance in.
Inside or outside, where do we belong?
It is certainly true that Merricat is more fearful of outside than inside. But do we trust Merricat? First we need to talk about what she did.
Merricat killed her family. And Constance was charged. And Merricat knew that Constance didn’t like sugar so Merricat put the arsenic in the sugar, when she was a child. So perhaps Merricat is not sane; why is Constance not mad at her? Constance knew.
So if Merricat was a homicidal child and if she is now a homicidal adult who believes in spells and burying money and all things peculiar, can we trust her? This is the risk we take in reading from her perspective.
So maybe unlike Hill House, the Castle is sane. Or maybe the Castle made all of the Blackwoods not sane, and the Castle really is not sane. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
What we learn from the Castle is perhaps allegorical.
What we learned from Hill House may be allegorical, as well.
Psychic phenomena, whether they exist or not, does not really matter. What matters is what we see, how we view things. Ghosts or not, the fear persists. We do not know whether they exist because we cannot trust ourselves.
Does it make it less real if we imagine the haunting?
Shirley teaches you that perception is reality; haunting is not far from reality; haunting is allegorical, but sincerely real.
It doesn’t matter if you are haunted. It matters what is in your head.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, 2018
The film stayed somewhat true to the plot. It tried to use the dialogue from the book. It tried to recreate the Castle.
In the film, Constance was quite dressed up. Merricat looked frumpy. Constance was the perfect 1950s housewife; she presents absolutely perfectly domestic. Merricat appears strange. Constance wears bright colors while Merricat wears muted tones. Merricat does not look like she belongs. Constance looks like she is in a fake world.
The film does not hold back on the heckling. The townspeople hate the Blackwood sisters.
But the film presents Merricat in a new way; more occult. She is much more haunted. It is like Hill House; in the film you fear the house, in the book you fear yourself. In the film you fear Merricat and her occult. You fear her father because the film makes it clear that he abused her. You fear all the things that you are supposed to fear. But in the book you fear the world; you fear others, humanity, if it can even be called that.
Strangely enough, the film also paints the camaraderie between Constance and Charles quite differently; they flirt incessantly. They make him much more of a villain; abusing Merricat. And Constance sides with Charles and does not support Merricat. These are not the sisters from the novel. Constance is lovestruck with her cousin. Eerie for sure, but veering from the point of the novel.
Merricat murders Charles in the novel. She becomes the legend that the children fear, she takes it upon herself to become such a villain. Constance could never kill Charles in the film. Charles lives in the novel because the sisters do not leave the Castle. They’re an unprovable legend; in the film you can prove their villanhood.
The film is wonderful, eerie. It does not try too hard to be horror. It tries to be Shirley. But I must criticize, yet again, the mere fact that we are told to fear the wrong things. The legends. We should not fear the werewolf; we should fear humanity - those who hurt us and do us wrong. Merricat’s killing of Charles established an act of repentance on behalf of the townspeople, who do not deserve this credit.
