Murder and charm: 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'

The Haunting of Hill House is Shirley Jackson's best known novel, probably because it was adapted into two movies in 1959 and 1999 –both under the title House on Haunted Hill. But her best work is by (light-years) far her last one: We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I discovered Jackson in a horror short stories' anthology with 'The Lottery', a tale that uncovers a startling insightful mind for the deepest and darkest corridors –those that make us human: memento homo, 'remember that you are just a man', as the auriga whispered to the triumphant commanders when entering Rome after a great military victory– of that maze human nature is. A mind that made me thought of Jackson as Patricia Highsmith's sis, the one with a lyrical kind of madness –permit me here to declare that I learnt from ancient Greeks that madness is sacred. In this novel I met one of the most fascinating female characters I've ever found in fiction: Mary Katherine Blackwood aka Merricat. My pulse rate increases remembering her self-representation in the novel's first paragraph: 'I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise.' I could yell with insane joy praising such a self-depiction of a woman. Well done, darl!! Hatch stereotypes about yourself with cheek, nonchalance, and, uh, the truth. I agree with her just in two points. I like dogs.

Carson sniffing Jonas the cat

Merricat is the first person narrator of the novel. Her best –and only– friend after her sister Constance is Jonas the cat, with whom she has the most compelling conversations. Jackson's crystal clear prose conveys unspeakable horrors with the sense of innocence of a stroll in a prairie plucking blue-bells and having the glimpse of a fox tail among the bushes. Charming, lovely, overflowing with meaning about self-assertiveness and female confinement, this novel is one of those pieces of writing which persuade myself of a lunatic idea: when madwomen are let out of their attics, wondrous things happen, beginning with the loss of the boundaries for their forceful, irrepressible, overwhelming creativity.

Feel free to ask me of any, um, questions about madness, women, and literature!