Mary Katherine Blackwood

Last updated

Mary Katherine Blackwood
First appearanceWe Have Always Lived in the Castle
Created by Shirley Jackson
Portrayed by Heather Menzies
(1966 Broadway)
Alexandra Socha
(2010 Broadway)
Taissa Farmiga
(film)
In-universe information
NicknameMerricat
GenderFemale
FamilyJohn Blackwood (father; deceased)
Ellen Blackwood (mother; deceased)
Constance Blackwood (sister)
Thomas Blackwood (brother; deceased)
RelativesJulian Blackwood (uncle; deceased)
Dorothy Blackwood (aunt; deceased)
Arthur Blackwood (uncle; deceased)
Charles Blackwood (cousin)

Mary Katherine Blackwood is the main character in Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The eighteen-year-old "Merricat" lives with her remaining family members, Constance and Julian Blackwood, on an estate in Vermont. As a result of a tragedy six years prior the family remains isolated from the surrounding village. The Dictionary of Literary Characters designates a "definition" to Merricat as follows:

Contents

Reclusive, psychotic 18-year-old who lives in the family manse with her older sister, Constance Blackwood, and her uncle, Julian Blackwood, as a child, poisoned most of her family in Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. [1]

She practices sympathetic magic in order to keep her family out of harm's way. Extremely superstitious, she exudes mysterious behavior and further shows signs of psychopathy and obsessive–compulsive disorder as her role expands.[ citation needed ]

Concept and creation

In the years leading up to the publishing of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's health was on a steady decline. And in turn, her "protagonists grew increasingly disturbed until Jackson created Merricat Blackwood, a psychotic killer." [2]

Appearances

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Merricat makes her original appearance in Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Alongside her remaining family members she lives a secluded life, ostracized by the surrounding village.

Plays

A Broadway production of We Have Always Lived in the Castle opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on October 19, 1966, and closed on October 26, 1966, for a total of nine performances. [3] In the play, Merricat was portrayed by Heather Menzies. [4]

In 2010, Adam Bock and Todd Almond staged a musical adaptation of Jackson's novel at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, with Alexandra Socha in the role of Merricat. The musical ran from September 23 to October 9. [5] [6]

Film appearance

In August 2009, We Have Always Lived in the Castle was adapted for the screen by Further Films. [7] After several years of pre-production and casting, Taissa Farmiga was cast in the role of Merricat. [8]

Characterization

On the opening page of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Merricat describes herself as such:

My Name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom... Everyone else in my family is dead.

Marisa Silver sees Merricat's opening monologue as "brazen, creepy, obviously unreliable and utterly disarming." [9] Merricat describes herself as 18 during the events of the novel but her actions represent a child of much younger age, "smashing things when she's upset and getting lost in her reveries of living on the moon." [10] Silver continues to say that Merricat's opening words are reflective of the childlike way in which she acts and how she is treated by her surviving family members. [9] Readers can see early signs of Merricat's affinity for violence when she speaks of the villagers:

Without looking, I could see the grinning and the gesturing: I wished they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies.

This hatred for the villagers is apparent in Merricat's attitude throughout the novel, as the family's "ostracism by the community" has taken a toll on the Blackwood family. In order to deal with her exile, Merricat has a number of eccentricities, namely her obsessive behaviors. Merricat has strange habits of "burying coins, nailing books to trees, and even choosing specific magical words that she will not say." [9]

As a result of social rejection, Shirley Jackson writes that Merricat, along with her family, have become representative of Jackson's agoraphobia. Merricat's deranged and agoraphobic behaviors can be seen in her handling of Cousin Charles. Charles appearance brings out a longing for change in sister Constance but Merricat, so frightened by the "change and disorder" this would bring chooses to set the house on fire. Silver notes that rather than accept a new order in her (Merricat's) life, she, quite literally, chooses to let the world burn down around her. [9]

Merricat's questionable decision-making lends an argument for the unreliable narrator. Angela Slatter quotes the film The Usual Suspects to describe Merricat: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Merricat allures readers by making "us love this strange, broken girl" but, upon revealing her true nature with the climax of the novel, she "breaks our hearts". [11] She is in fact "jealous, dangerously so; when there seems the prospect of a kind of happiness... Merricat does her destructive best to derail it." [11]

Critical reception

Barbara Hodge Hall, of The Anniston Star, had this to say of Merricat upon We Have Always Lived in the Castle's initial release in 1962: "Merricat is 18, but a strange 18, still child-like in habits but a thousand years old in intuition." [12]

Lynette Carpenter, featured in the journal Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies , sees Merricat in a more feminist point of view. Carpenter's article, "The Establishment and Preservation of Female Power in Shirley Jackson's 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle,'" claims that Merricat has drawn a blow against "masculine authority" as power has shifted from "the Blackwood men to the Blackwood women." [13] Thus Merricat, displaying a "forceful establishment of power" over her own life, "threatens a society in which men hold primary power" and this display of power will "inevitably [lead] to confrontation." [13]

Judith Colombo of The Weekly Gleaner sees Merricat as "the perfect tragic hero." [14] Colombo sees her as desperate to care for her family, but when her polite and magical means fail her, she turns to more "desperate methods." [14]

Joyce Carol Oates, who has written of Merricat as a character on many occasions, [15] [16] has said "Of all the precocious children and adolescents of mid-twentieth-century American fiction—a dazzling lot that includes the tomboys Frankie of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding (1946) and Scout Finch of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), the murderous eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark of William March's The Bad Seed (1954), and the slightly older, disaffected Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and Esther Greenwood of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963)—none is more memorable than eighteen-year-old 'Merricat' of Shirley Jackson's masterpiece of Gothic suspense We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)... Merricat speaks with a seductive and disturbing authority, never drawn to justifying her actions but recounting them." [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constance (given name)</span> Constance is a name given to female meaning a loyal person

Constance is a primarily feminine given name in use since the Middle Ages that is derived either from Constantia, a Late Latin name, or from the term meaning steadfast. In medieval England, diminutives of the name included Cust or Cussot. Puritans used Con, Constant, and Constancy. Other variations of the name include Connie, Constancia, and Constanze.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Jackson</span> American novelist, short-story writer (1916–1965)

Shirley Hardie Jackson was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

<i>Them</i> (novel) 1969 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

Them is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the third in the Wonderland Quartet she inaugurated with A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967). It was published by Vanguard in 1969 and it won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1970.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch magazine. It was inspired by three Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine in an article written by Don Moser on March 4, 1966. Oates said that she dedicated the story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after listening to his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The story was originally named "Death and the Maiden".

"The Possibility of Evil" is a 1965 short story by Shirley Jackson. Published on December 18, 1965, in the Saturday Evening Post, a few months after her death, it won the 1966 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery short story. It has since been reprinted in the collections Just an Ordinary Day (1996) and Dark Tales (2016).

Raymond Joseph Smith was an American educator, author, and book editor. He was for more than 30 years the editor of Ontario Review, a literary magazine, and the Ontario Review Press, a literary book publisher. He was married to the American author Joyce Carol Oates.

<i>The Gravediggers Daughter</i> 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

The Gravedigger's Daughter is a 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 36th published novel. The novel was based on the life of Oates's grandmother, whose father, a gravedigger settled in rural America, injured his wife, threatened his daughter, and then committed suicide. Oates explained that she decided to write about her family only after her parents died, adding that her "family history was filled with pockets of silence. I had to do a lot of imagining."

"The Lovely House" is a gothic short story and weird tale by American writer Shirley Jackson, first published in 1950. The story features several overtly gothic elements, including a possibly haunted house, doubling, and the blurring of real and imaginary. It appeared under the title "A Visit" in New World Writing, No. 2, 1952.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandra Daddario</span> American actress (born 1986)

Alexandra Anna Daddario is an American actress. She had her breakthrough portraying Annabeth Chase in the Percy Jackson film series (2010–2013). She has since starred as Paige in Hall Pass (2011), Heather Miller in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), Blake Gaines in San Andreas (2015), Summer Quinn in Baywatch (2017), and Alexis Butler in We Summon the Darkness (2019). She has also guest starred in television series such as White Collar, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, True Detective, New Girl, Why Women Kill and American Horror Story: Hotel. In 2021, she starred in the first season of the HBO series The White Lotus, for which she received critical acclaim and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie in 2022. In 2023 she began playing the lead role of Dr. Rowan Fielding in the AMC series Mayfair Witches based on a series of novels written by author Anne Rice.

<i>After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away</i> 2006 young adult novel by Joyce Carol Oates

After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away is a young adult novel written by Joyce Carol Oates. First published in 2006, it is her fifth novel for teenagers.

American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.

<i>Freaky Green Eyes</i> Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

Freaky Green Eyes (2003) is the third young adult fiction novel written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story follows the life of 15-year-old Francesca "Franky" Pierson as she reflects on the events leading to her mother's mysterious disappearance. Through what she calls Freaky's thoughts, Franky accepts the truth about her mother's disappearance and her father's hand in it.

<i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i> 1962 novel by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was Jackson's final work, and was published with a dedication to Pascal Covici, the publisher, three years before the author's death in 1965. The novel is written in the voice of eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her agoraphobic sister and ailing uncle on an estate. Six years before the events of the novel, the Blackwood family experienced a tragedy that left the three survivors isolated from their small village.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taissa Farmiga</span> American actress (born 1994)

Taissa Farmiga is an American actress. Her numerous appearances in horror films have established her as a scream queen, alongside her older sister Vera Farmiga.

"Spooky Little Girl" is the ninth episode of the first season of the television series American Horror Story, which premiered on the network FX on November 30, 2011. The episode was written by Jennifer Salt and was directed by John Scott. This episode is rated TV-MA (LSV).

"Smoldering Children" is the tenth episode of the first season of the television series American Horror Story, which premiered on the network FX on December 7, 2011. The episode was written by James Wong and directed by Michael Lehmann. This episode is rated TV-MA (LV).

<i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i> (film) 2018 American film

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 2018 American mystery thriller film directed by Stacie Passon, written by Mark Kruger, and starring Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, Crispin Glover, and Sebastian Stan. It was based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson.

<i>The Sacrifice</i> (Oates novel) 2015 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in blighted urban New Jersey in the 1980s, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who is discovered in a degraded condition in an abandoned factory after going missing. When she alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother, despite evidence of deceit in her story. The events of the novel are based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, and takes place in a part of New Jersey still suffering from the aftermath of post-war deindustrialization and the 1967 Newark riots.

"Like Mother Used to Make" is a short story by Shirley Jackson. It was originally published in the 1949 short story collection The Lottery and Other Stories by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It contains the second appearance of James Harris, a recurring character in the collection.

References

  1. ↑ Sollars, Michael David (2011). Dictionary of Literary Characters. New York City: Facts On File. p. 190. ISBN   978-0-8160-7379-5. OCLC   690009727.
  2. ↑ Bender, Joyce Jackson (1994). Shirley Jackson's troubled women: Agoraphobia and the fiction of fear. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Oklahoma State University. OCLC   31189598.[ page needed ]
  3. ↑ "We Have Always Lived in the Castle Broadway @ Ethel Barrymore Theatre – Tickets and Discounts". Playbill . Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  4. ↑ "Heather Menzies". Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Todd Almond-Adam Bock Musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle Opens at Yale Rep Sept. 23". Playbill . Retrieved November 4, 2017.
  6. ↑ Isherwood, Charles (September 27, 2010). "American Gothic Tale With a Ray of Sunshine". The New York Times . Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  7. ↑ Parker, Cat (August 18, 2009). "Further Films Believes in We Have Always Lived in the Castle". MovieWeb . Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  8. ↑ Crucchiola, Jordan (August 10, 2016). "Alexandra Daddario and Taissa Farmiga Board Thriller We Have Always Lived in the Castle". Vulture . Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Silver, Marisa (2013). "Is It Real? On Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle". The Southern Review . Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. 49 (4): 665. EBSCOhost   91815480.
  10. ↑ "The character of Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle". LitCharts. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
  11. 1 2 Slatter, Angela (December 12, 2014). "On the Masterful Creepiness of Merricat: Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle". Tor.com . Retrieved October 31, 2017.
  12. ↑ "We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)". Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life. August 31, 2017. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
  13. 1 2 Carpenter, Lynette (January 1, 1984). "The Establishment and Preservation of Female Power in Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle"". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies . Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 8 (1): 32–38. doi:10.2307/3346088. JSTOR   3346088.
  14. 1 2 Colombo, Judith (2004). "We Have Always Lived in the Castle". The Jamaica Gleaner– via ProQuest.
  15. 1 2 Oates, Joyce Carol (October 8, 2009). "The Witchcraft of Shirley Jackson" . The New York Review of Books .
  16. ↑ Oates, Joyce Carol (May 14, 2010). "Editor Joyce Carol Oates on the enduring spell of Shirley Jackson". Library of America (Interview). Interviewed by Rich Kelley. Washington, D.C.: Literary Classics of the United States. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.