We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

We always put things back where they belonged.

Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food. It

A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”

wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.

In this village the men stayed young and did the gossiping and the women aged with grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting

for the men to get up and come home.

The Carringtons own the paper mill but the Blackwoods own all the land between the highway and

All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it.

The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in

contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab an...

perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers.

whatever planned to be colorful lost its heart quickly in the village.

always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

The people of the village disliked the fact that we always had plenty of money to pay for whatever we wanted;

I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this;

I only wished they would come true. “It’s

there were not many things I could do to get back at them, but I did what I could.

Get back at them????