We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.

I was not allowed in Uncle Julian’s room.

I was not allowed to handle knives,

a poem by the Blackwood women.

Constance said it would kill us if we ate it.

Haha

I wanted to be kinder to Uncle Julian,

“There’s a change coming,” I said.

melody—in

Gloucester.

Also a Plantagenet, whom she likes- see p. 1

the doctor’s

Jack Mason

Dr. Levy.

Pegasus.

Like murder. Haha macabre

Haha ouch

I have often wondered why the arsenic was never put into the rarebit.

Haha

I thought that Uncle Julian was probably really very happy, with both Constance and Aunt Dorothy to take care of him,

Haha

“It’s in Father’s safe.”

Amanita phalloides,”

“there are mushrooms by the creek and in the fields and I made her learn the deadly ones.

“Miss Wickedness,”

Amanita phalloides.

Poison! Haha

I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings;

Haha - does a falling tree in the woods make a noise when there is no one to hear it? Why do the stars shine at night when there is no one to se them? (Asked Eve in Paradise Lost.) is that solipsism?

Perhaps the whole village would falter and slow, bewildered at the lack of Miss Mary Katherine Blackwood?

Solipsism

it might be a good time to search out a device to use against Charles,

Haha

Haha

No one but me noticed that he knew where it had been kept.

“He was a man very fond of his person,” Uncle Julian said. “Given to adorning himself, and not overly clean.”

Haha ewww

Cf. The Haunting of Hill House

Haha. True for us all!

“And Charles is also mending the broken step?”

Even the garden had become a strange landscape with Charles’ figure in it;

whenever I thought of his big white face grinning at me

I hammered with a shoe at the mirror over the dresser until it cracked across.

I was remembering these days to be kinder to Uncle Julian.

I was thinking that being a demon and a ghost must be very difficult, even for Charles;

Time was running shorter, tightening around our house, crushing me.

Simile very rare

one thing, at least, had been released from Charles’ spell and I thought that I had at last broken through his tight skin of invulnerability.

if I altered our father’s room, and perhaps later the kitchen and the drawing room and the study, and even finally the garden,

I was thinking of Charles.

Haha macabre

He made a black noise in our house and his voice was getting thinner and higher;

Haha

“It’s all my fault, anyway.” That was her new way of thinking.

Haha sad

I would remember to be kinder to Uncle Julian.