We Have Always Lived in the Castle Why Did Merricat Kill Her Family

In many means, Stacie Passon's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) is a remarkably true-blue adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel. Indeed, information technology is perhaps the most true-blue Jackson adaptation to date –certainly more true-blue than the three master versions of The Haunting of Colina Firm, for instance (Robert Wise'south 1963 film, Jan de Bont'due south 1999 film, and Mike Flanagan's 2018 series Netflix adaptation). In an interview, Taissa Farmiga (who plays Merricat Blackwood) explains "Office of the desire of everybody fastened—the director, the producers and actors—was to stick as close as possible to the novel. And when we couldn't, because things don't always interpret to the screen, we wanted to at least stay shut to the essence of what the book is about.

The seemingly small ways in which Passon's We Accept Ever Lived in the Castle diverges from Jackson's novel, however, make a significant difference. Indeed, they shift the terrain of the narrative entirely from the enigmatic and even weird  to the profoundly familiar. Passon's flick is nonetheless a very practiced moving-picture show in its own right, just information technology but doesn't challenge and baffle its viewers the way that Jackson'due south novel does.

The weird and enigmatic Merricat of Jackson'southward novel

At the eye of Jackson'southward novel are the Blackwood sisters, Constance (Alexandra Daddario) and Merricat, who live lonely with their disabled, mentally scattered Uncle Julian (Crispin Glover). Vi years ago, the balance of the Blackwood family—Constance and Merricat'due south father, female parent, blood brother, and aunt—mysteriously died of arsenic poisoning at a family dinner. Julian survived. Constance was tried for the murder of her family and acquitted, although everyone in the boondocks believes she is guilty. What we learn late in the novel, though, is that it was Merricat, twelve years one-time at the time, who poisoned her family. She put arsenic in the sugar because she knew that her beloved sister Constance did not employ sugar. Why Merricat poisoned her family is the strange terrain that Jackson's We Have E'er Lived in the Castle explores. And the answer is  never entirely articulate, although what is articulate is that Jackson never gives united states of america anything like a motive that would, from a normative perspective, either explain Merricat or justify her family slaughter.

Jackson'southward Merricat shows herself to be aroused, unruly, willful, and resistant to modify. She is as well violent, describing her hatred for the villagers she encounters in her twice-weekly trips to the village; she imagines them suffering and dead on the ground. She likewise seems obsessed with penalty. What does go clear is that her family unit punished her for her wild beliefs—for roaming the grounds, burying objects, wielding her magic spells of protection effectually the sis she loves. Early, Constance tells the one person who however visits the girls, a friend of her mother'due south, that Merricat "was ever in disgrace" and that she was a "wicked, disobedient kid" (34). Later, in a scene that is crucial in illuminating her character, Merricat hides outdoors and fantasizes her parents talking most how she must never be punished, must never be sent to her bed without dinner; they tell Merricat'south brother to give her his dinner and insist that Merricat must always be "guarded and cherished" (96). Ane can just assume this is pretty much the opposite of how Merricat'south parents actually treated her.

Passon'southward rendering of the scene in which Merricat fantasizes her parents; the terror on her face in this scene indicates Passon'due south narrative of corruption

Jackson walks a fine line here. On the one paw, Merricat seems to have a primal intolerance for what seem to be quite adequate forms of parental subject area. All nosotros know for sure of Merricat'due south by is that her parents punished her by sending her to bed without dinner. Merricat responds to these banal punishments with rage, and to the extent that she has a motive for killing her family, information technology seems to be precisely this intolerance for punishment.

There are also hints that Merricat was unfairly singled out by her parents considering of her divergence from gender norms. There's no sense that her brother—who spent at least some time, for instance, climbing trees—was bailiwick to the same field of study as Merricat. He got to consume his dinner. Merricat is clearly not a beautiful, charming immature woman like Constance, and she is not a boy like Thomas. Herein, perhaps, lies some of Merricat'south rage and some of her justification.

These justifications, though, do non dispel Merricat's strangeness—her demonic free energy, her predilection for magic and casting curses, her annihilating hatred of the villagers, her complete absenteeism of guilt for poisoning her family unit. Jonathan Lethem, in the introduction to the recent Penguin edition, claims that the novel may prevarication in the "bad seed," evil-child genre, and there is indeed something of Rhoda Penmark (from William March's 1954 novel The Bad Seed) in Merricat. The latter wants quite different things from Rhoda, whose desires are conventionally feminine (a cute brooch, for example), but Merricat has the same consummate lack of compunction virtually pursuing, at whatever toll, exactly what she wants. What Merricat wants is to be lone with her true cat Jonas and with Constance.

Taming Jackson's Novel

Passon's film captures some but by no means all of Merricat'south strangeness. Nosotros never see any sign, for example, of Merricat's burning hatred of the villagers, her desires to encounter them lying expressionless around her. Instead, from the beginning, Taissa Farmiga'south Merricat has something of the victim about her –and that is, ultimately, where Passon's We Have E'er Lived in the Castle goes. The reason Merricat poisoned her family: their father was abusing Constance and herself. We don't know for sure that it was specifically sexual corruption, just it's strongly hinted.

Merricat at the diner with the hostile Jim Donnell

Early, Passon makes Constance a sexual figure in a mode she is not in the novel. When Merricat stops in the diner on her style back from her errands, she meets Jim Donnell (just as she does in the novel). In the novel, though, Jim is older and married and hostile to the Blackwoods, just every bit all the villagers are—because of the poisoning and because of the Blackwoods' wealth and elitist scorn for the locals. In the moving picture, though, nosotros acquire that Jim and Constance had been together and that Constance was planning on leaving with him—until, that is, Merricat told their begetter: "I told father. And father was powerful." John Blackwood stopped the elopement and made certain Jim lost his machine and his task.

The primary style in which the film differs from the novel, though, is that it unambiguously suggests that the Blackwood patriarch abused his two daughters. This is non a part of Jackson's  novel, although it isn't explicitly ruled out. The film'south interpretation of Merricat'southward reason for  poisoning her family becomes clear after the sisters' cousin, Charles Blackwood (Sebastian Stan), arrives at the house—something that happens in both novel and film. Also in both novel and picture, he's very conspicuously later on the Blackwood money. He also, in both novel and film, seduces Constance—more powerfully in the picture, in which Constance is more than enamored of exploring the world beyond her village and the disrobed Sebastian Stan.

Charles attacks Merricat on the stairs every bit she tells "Father" to stop, under the portraits of "respectable" Blackwood men

Charles go uncannily positioned as the sisters' father, every bit he sleeps in his room and starts wearing his clothes (once again, in both novel and film). A crucial scene in the film, which is not in the novel, yet, is when he tries to drag Merricat from the dinner table up to her room after she messes upwards his bedroom. As he pulls her violently upwards the stairs, Merricat starts screaming "Begetter, stop! No! Father, cease!" And here we run into erupt, in an instant, the unmistakable aftereffects of a prior corruption.

Constance looks on in terror equally Charles attacks Merricat

Later in the film, the sisters' earlier abuse becomes even more visible when Constance says to Merricat, "He was wicked. He was a very wicked homo, our father. He was very wicked to me." She adds, "Yous saved me, my Merricat. . . . We'll never talk nigh it again." By contrast, Jackson never in one case attributes wickedness to John Blackwood; in fact, it is Merricat who is twice called wicked (34, 78).

Constance and Merricat hide in fright when Charles comes dorsum subsequently the fire

If the point was non made articulate by this point in the narrative, in a still more sensational difference from the novel, after the fire that amercement the Blackwood firm, Charles not only comes back (which he does in the novel), just bursts into the house and grabs at Constance, knocking her on the kitchen floor. Constance starts screaming "No," merely as Merricat had done earlier—both scenes that echo earlier abuse from their father's reign over them. Merricat "saves" Constance again when she smashes Charles on the head and kills him. The sisters bury him. Earlier, when Charles was exerting his influence over Constance, Merricat had said, "Some terrible force has brought everything I've always buried to the surface—similar the contrary of a spell."  When the sisters dig the hole for Charles, everything gets buried once more. The sisters lives get on. Equally Merricat says at the end, "Nosotros put things back where they belong."

Charles Attacks Constance, in one of the virtually significant differences from the novel

I must stress once more that Passon'due south We Have Always Lived in the Castle is extremely good. The performances by the 4 leads (especially Taissa Farmiga) are bang-up. And the writing is exceptional, making information technology difficult to tell which lines are Jackson'due south own and which are the creation of author Marking Kruger; they blend together seamlessly. The film is also visually beautiful. But the accented strangeness of Jackson'south novel, of Jackson's Merricat Blackwood, is rendered glaringly familiar. At the root of it all is an abusive father: Merricat killed the abuser and saved her sis and herself.

In a very intriguing choice, Passon begins the film with Merricat (who, in the novel, claims she likes only her sis, Richard Plantagenet, and deadly mushrooms) listening to a recording of Shakespeare's Rex Richard Iii (the notorious son of Richard Plantagenet). We hear the scheming protagonist proclaim those famous lines: "And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends stolen forth of Holy Writ / And seem a saint, when nigh I play the devil" (from Deed I, Scene iii).  As viewers, we wonder who volition be the motion-picture show'due south devil, clothed in sainthood. Perhaps information technology's Constance? Merricat herself? Certainly the novel leaves united states considering both of those options. But, in the pic, it's clear by the end that the devil is the patriarch. Everywhere the camera turns portraits and photographs prove John Blackwood and his forebears looking the very image of respectability. But his respectability serves only to cloak a devil.

Merricat (Taissa Farmiga) walks downwards the stairs by the very "respectable" portraits of Blackwood patriarchs

Y'all can stream We Have Always Lived in the Castle on Amazon:

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Source: http://www.horrorhomeroom.com/we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-novel-to-film/

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