#Merricat reads

[talefoundryshow]

NEW VIDEO - The Quiet Horror of Home Life

Be warned, this one is chilling.

[grogv]

books i’ve read ❥ we have always lived in the castle / shirley jackson

❝ we moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame. ❞

[dearorpheus]

“In much of Shirley Jackson’s fiction food is fetishized to an extraordinary degree; ironic then, that the Blackwood family should be poisoned by one of their own, out of a family heirloom sugar bowl. That the food fetish has its erotic component is suggested by the means of poison—Amanita phalloides—and by the way Merricat so totally depends upon her older sister as a food provider, as if she were an unweaned infant and not a “great child” grown into an adult. [...] ...the three remaining members of a once-aristocratic family have virtually nothing to do but inhabit their blighted house and “eat the year away” in meals which the older sister prepares for them, three times a day, like clockwork... [...] The hideous arsenic deaths constitute the secret heart of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as unspecified sexual acts appear to be at the heart of The Turn of the Screw: the taboo yet irresistible subject upon which all thinking, all speech, all actions turn. The sisters are linked forever by the deaths of their family, as in a quasi-spiritual-incestuous bond by which each holds the other in thrall. Food shopping (by Merricat), food preparation (by Constance), and food consumption (by both) is the sacred, or erotic ritual that binds them, even after the house has been partly demolished by fire and they are living in its ruins:

“It is a very happy place, though.” Constance was bringing breakfast to the table: scrambled eggs and toasted biscuits and blackberry jam she had made some golden summer. “We ought to bring in as much food as we can,” she said [...] “I will go on my winged horse and bring you cinnamon and thyme, emeralds and clove, cloth of gold and cabbages”. 

— Joyce Carol Oates in her afterword for Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle

[queenodorito]

It's my 13 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[echothelover]

I do not feel smart enough for Hangsaman. Time to read and watch as many essays as I can find

[desdasiwrites]

I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie.

– Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

[magicoleanders]

what if I used the opening paragraph of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to teach my students how to write a good intro to their narratives. I have no idea if they would get or appreciate it but it would be a little treat for me

[the-everqueen]

WE MADE IT TO THE BED, Y'ALL

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

introduced my gf to Shirley Jackson and she is firmly Unsettled

[talefoundryshow]

NEW ON NEBULA - The Quiet Horror of Home Life

There's nowhere else to go...

[ladyswartzrot]

“My niece Mary Katherine has been a long time dead, young man. She did not survive the loss of her family; I supposed you knew that.”

- Uncle Julian

We have always lived in the castle - Shirley Jackson

This would explain everything honestly...

[bare1ythere]

I just finished reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle and I'm kind of obsessed with it now

[tiixij]

reading negative reviews of we have always lived in the castle just to make myself mad

[kirkwallers]

I'm sometimes confronted with things like the words "the we have always lived in the castle Fandom" and I'm just. Not gonna engage. Under any circumstances.

[andreai04]

The people of the village have always hated us.

[actionkitty]

i don't know who to vote for

i left out the road through the wall because it doesn't really have any single main protagonist. and i know orianna isn't really the only female protag in the sundial but she is my favorite of its main women and this is my poll lol