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daliiida-deactivated20250407

apologize-to-no-one

malglories

i owe so much to graceling and fire

malglories

when i read graceling as a young girl i was astounded. it was the first time i had ever read a story about a woman protagonist deciding not to have children

moonandtrees

aaaaaarchive

strangewife

Gina Litherland

Portrait of Mary Katherine Blackwood (for Shirley Jackson), 2020

India ink and oil on panel, 20” x 16”

vampireianthe

when i say shirley jackson is my favorite writer i mean it soooo deeply and earnestly she gets me

link

rosalinesurvived

Merricat by the end of the novel saying children should be punished, like her father. Merricat taking on the role of her father in the household by consuming what he ate on the day she killed him. Merricat as a husband to Constance promising to remove her from the family despite mirroring their father.

opaque

we have always lived in the castle - shirley jackson

a-drifting-boat

In Merricat's creepy fantasy about her family worshipping her, one thing I noticed is the emphasis she places on being loved. And to her there's clearly a strong connection between "we love you" and "you must never be punished;" to Merricat, punishment or disapproval equals a lack of love. It's left ambiguous whether this is a result of egotism or whether she was a genuinely unloved child. I kind of lean towards the latter based on the very dismissive and uncaring way Uncle Julian talks about her supposed death and the hints that her brother was favoured over her.

And it's also interesting that they're not saying they won't punish her no matter what she does. They're saying that they won't punish her because she would never do anything to warrant punishment. She's not just concerned with avoiding punishment, she also doesn't want to deserve it.

I'm wondering whether Merricat undergoing frequent punishments as a child influenced her obsession with rules and rituals as an adult. She frequently says that she's "not allowed" to do things, and by the end it's heavily implied that these are self-imposed rules rather than ones enforced by Constance. And obviously a lot of the "not allowed" things relate to the murder of her family - preparing food, entering Uncle Julian's room, handling knives, etc - she's imposing certain strictures on herself to make sure she doesn't do the same thing to Julian or Constance. But also -

Her family punished her, she was always in disgrace, she's a murderer, the villagers hate her, she can't integrate into adult society or behave the way someone of her age is expected to. She's unable to adhere to the external codes of behaviour created by the people around her. By their standards she is at first a bad child who deserves punishment, and then someone who has committed a horrific crime. But she wants to feel like someone who would never allow herself to do anything wrong. So she develops her own code of behaviour, one that she can adhere to, one that is alien to everyone else in the world.

She creates rules for herself that she has to obey, she gives herself certain duties (protecting the house, being kind to Uncle Julian.) She can't be good and not deserving of punishment by the standards of her parents or the villagers or wider society - so she invents her own standards, by which she can. And she is narratively rewarded for living up to her own standards, I think - she chases away Charles, she stays in the house, she retains control of Constance, she gets everything she wants.