essay questions for we have always lived in the castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Table of contents, quote bank for whalitc, essay 1 : “family is the cause of all the problems in we have always lived in the castle.’ do you agree, essay 2 : merricat and constance find safety in their ruined house, but they sacrifice their freedom. discuss..

• Essay 3 : “In We Have Always lived in the castle the women are stronger than the men” discuss.
• Essay 4 : In We Have Always Lived in the Castle the villagers are motivated by fear more than anything else. Do you agree?
• Essay 5 : “The world is full of terrible people,” says Merricat. How accurate is Merricat’s assessment of the people around her?
• Essay 6 : IN WHALTIC, the Blackwoods see change as a threat. Do you agree?
• Essay 7 : Safety is ultimately restored for the Blackwood sisters, but at what cost? Discuss.
• Essay 8 : Merricat and Constance are both the heroes and the villains in WHALITC. Discuss.
• Essay 9 : The choices Merricat makes are always based on self-preservation. Do you agree?
• Essay 10 : How does Jackson create an atmosphere of menace in We Have Always Lived in the Castle?

Shirley Jackson’s gothic novel WHALITC, set in a conservative and claustrophobic village, denotes the severe ramifications that oppressive societal expectations and conformist attitudes can have on the members of a nuclear family. While the plot revolves around the members of the Blackwood family, the cause of all the problems that plague them arise from the intense pressures of patriarchal standards placed upon the Blackwood sisters, contributing to the death of their family and the destruction of their house. However, it is also important to note the compounding effects that isolation can have on the demeanour and mental state of the characters and its contribution to the disasters of the novel. Through an analysis of the consequences of overbearing patriarchal values, expressed through the death of the family and the destruction of the house, in addition to the effects of isolation from the village, one can understand Jackson’s fable as an investigation into the complex web of relationships in a family which are often fraught with conflicts.

The two incidents in the novel that form the basis of plot – the death of almost all of the Blackwood family, and the destruction of the Blackwood estate – arise from the overbearing patriarchal nature that govern the family members. Indeed, the framing of the novel through the first-person narration of Merricat in her leading role in these events demonstrates the rebellion against the patriarchal and patrilineal characteristics of the nuclear family in the 19th Century. Firstly, her role in the poisoning of the family is construed within the symbol of food – an inherently female-oriented aspect of life in which the Blackwood women are seen to preserve “deeply coloured rows of jellies and pickles and bottled vegetables and fruit.” Through the use of polysyndeton, in addition to colourful imagery – “maroon and amber and dark rich green” – Jackson bombards the reader with the massive extent to which the women of the Blackwood family centred on food. In tying the value of food with the role of women, Jackson expresses the fundamental restriction of the women of the Blackwood family’s power and value when the male characters in the novel impose on their restrictions. This is displayed when Merricat is described as “a great child of twelve, sent to bed without her supper.” In portraying the oppressive nature of the male characters, in ironically inhibiting their access to their own creations, Jackson illustrates how patriarchal society inhibits the well-functioning of the members of a nuclear family. Therefore, when Merricat poisons the family through their meal, food becomes a symbol of female power and of liberation from the oppression of the patriarchal power dynamics of families in the 19th Century. While through morally unsound methods, Merricat harnesses food as an instrument to champion her rights and win her autonomy within the remaining household. Thus, it is a result of patriarchal dominance in the family that is the cause of the first disaster in the novel.

The second disaster – the burning and looting of the Blackwood estate – serves as another symbolic act of rebellion against the patriarchal forces and societal pressures that confine and marginalise the Blackwood family. Pivotal to this is the character of Charles, who, as a cousin to Merricat, comes back as a “ghost” to ‘haunt’ her of the patriarchal and patrilineal nature of her previous family dynamic. He is seen to be a shadow of John Blackwood, who “used to record the names of people who owed him money.” As Charles seeking the family wealth and estate by marrying Constance, these two male characters are reflections of each other through the theme of greed. In bringing this family member, the equilibrium of Merricat, Constance and Uncle Julian is thrown into disarray, in which Jackson highlights the ramifications of the social expectation of wealth as a male prerogative. The fundamental concepts of the family unit such as marriage are called into question, as Charles’ attempt to lure Constance into a relationship signifies the abuse of the patrilineal and patriarchal nature of families in the pursuit of money. As a result, the burning of the Blackwood estate serves as a instrumental tragedy in which fire can be interpreted as a ‘cleansing’ element which destroys the impurities and injustices that plague the Merricat and the family. Similar to the death of her family, the destruction of the house signifies a rebellion against all the traditional roles and expectations imposed upon them by not only their family but from society, standing as a cathartic release from the burden of the past. The “six blue marbles” that Merricat had used to protect the house “had no connection with the house we lived now,” indicating the new life that the fire has afforded them. Therefore, Jackson expresses the fact that oppressive patriarchal figures within the extended family can result in – given enough pressure – disastrous acts of rebellion.

While the inhibiting influence of male figures in the Blackwood family contribute significantly to the disasters in the novel, the impact of the isolation of the family is crucial to not only the deterioration of Merricat’s mental state but of the village’s increasing tension and animosity. Jackson commences the novel by portraying the dire consequences of the death of her family, through the narration of Merricat who reflects casually that she “likes [her] sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and … Everyone else in [her] family is dead.” In opening with Merricat’s scattered thoughts in a journal-entry style, Jackson insinuates that the death of her parents are the cause for her eccentric mind, exacerbated by the pressures and tension from society. This stark antagonism is seen in Merricat’s fears of the villagers, who may “touch [her] and the mothers come at [her] like a flock of taloned hawks.” The ostracization of the family from the town results in the Blackwood family becoming a repository for the villager’s animosity and woes, exemplified through the menacing simile. Their position in the village becomes entrenched into one of antagonism as the murder of the family has no clear conclusion, leading to gossip and growing contentions. In expressing the oppression of societal conformity and of the deteriorating mental and physical state of the Blackwood sisters, Jackson highlights not only the gothic mood and themes of rebellion but the antagonism that arises from social segregation. Therefore, the woes of the novel lie not only within the Blackwood family’s gender power dynamic but in their social and physical isolation from society.

In conclusion, WHALITC examines the intricate web of family dynamics and the profound influence that it has on the lives of the Blackwood sisters. The novel presents the dire consequences of strained family relationships as a result of domineering male figures, exacerbated by their extensive isolation from society. Jackson therefore demonstrates the express need for family units to be resilient and respectful of all members’ voices and maintaining amicable relationships internally and externally.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle Topics for Discussion

How is Merricat Blackwood an unreliable narrator? How much of what she says is true?

Discuss the meaning of Constance's name in the story. Does she represent constancy? How so?

What are Charles's intentions when he comes to visit the Blackwoods. The author never tells us exactly, but what can you infer from his actions?

Compare and contrast Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Clarke. What are their motivations for visiting Constance? Who is a more honest character?

Do you think the villagers would behave differently toward the Blackwoods if they really knew them? Why or why not?

What do you think Mary Katherine was like before the murders? Why do you think she murdered her family?

Discuss Uncle Julian's relationship with Charles Blackwood. How does the relationship change over the course of the story?

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

51 pages • 1 hour read

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Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Womanhood and Domesticity

Merricat is 18 years old, and her sister 10 years older, yet they live in a liminal state of arrested childhood, reenacting rites of adulthood in different guises. Constance is locked in a state of eerie, sterile motherhood, constantly doting over her younger sister. Her domain is the kitchen and pantry, where she is constantly baking and cooking, serving tea, and preparing thrice-daily meals. She leaves the house only to garden, and when she’s not preparing food to be consumed immediately, she obsessively preserves it and keeps it in an unfinished basement cellar, joining rows and rows of generational preserves kept by her family in generations past. Constance is the only one who actually meets the material demands of the family. She attempts to create a state of normalcy for the family that rejects the reality that the family no longer has the social standing it once had before the murders.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle: A Prelude to a Myth

From Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties to Madeline Miller’s Circe , prominent women writers have recently been reworking problematic feminine archetypes from male-centric myths. But where most feminist retellings complicate familiar stories, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle takes an inverted approach: the novel starts with relatable (if spooky) characters, and then tracks their transformation into the “neighborhood witch” archetype.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows two sisters, Merricat and Constance Blackwood, who already have a somewhat “witchy” reputation at the beginning of the book: most of their entire family died of poisoning a year before, and the women spend most of their time locked in their house with their uncle, away from the villagers who ostracize and despise them. But the women do have tenuous ties to the community: Merricat regularly ventures into town to buy food and books (although she spends a considerable portion of that time wishing all the villagers dead), and visitors occasionally stop by the house.

In a more typical feminist retelling, the house would be akin to a prison, where the women are trapped in domesticity because they do not conform to societal expectations. By the end of the novel, the reader would expect to see the women “liberate” themselves from the house and join the world again. But instead, Jackson takes great pains to remind us that the house is the best place for the sisters. The villagers are cruel to Merricat when she comes into town, singing songs about Constance murdering the women’s parents. And Charles, a handsome cousin and potential suitor whom Constance sees as a potential avenue to a traditional lifestyle, makes it abundantly clear that he’s after the sisters’ money when he comes to visit.

Ultimately, Merricat sets her own house on fire to expel Charles from it. One would think this was a means to liberate the sisters from the house, thus following the trajectory of classic feminist retellings like Wide Sargasso Sea . But instead, Merricat sets the fire to reclaim ownership of the house and complete the sisters’ transformation into “neighborhood witches.” During the fire, Charles is more concerned with saving the sisters’ wealth than saving their lives, proving that the house is the only safe place for Constance and Merricat. And the house is not destroyed, as it would be if it were a symbol of oppression, but is instead transformed into a castle: after the fire, the house becomes “a castle, turreted and open to the sky.”

By the end, Jackson doubles down on all of the sisters’ “witchy” characteristics, rather than subverting them. Merricat admits to Constance that she did, in fact, poison their parents. The women’s remaining ties to the outside world are severed: their uncle dies in the fire, while Charles tries to return to Constance but she doesn’t let him in. The only people who visit are the villagers, but they don’t come in. Instead, they simply leave the sisters food and books so the sisters never have to come out. The sisters have completed their transformation into archetypes: mysterious local legends who stare out at the villagers from a burned-out house.

This subversion of the typical feminist retelling is embodied in the jam preserves in the women’s basement, which is left miraculously untouched by the house fire. The reader sees Constance making the jam throughout the novel, painstakingly adding to the reserves made over centuries by generations of Blackwood women. In another type of feminist novel, the jam would serve as a symbol of domestic oppression, but instead it serves as a way for the sisters to remain independent, even if the villagers stopped bringing food.

In this subverted fairy tale, the women’s “happy ending” is not liberating themselves from the home and joining society, but living independently outside of society. Unlike many other feminist tales, they don’t transform into human beings, they accept that they have always been “witches”: voluntary outcasts who come from a long line of powerful, ostracized women.

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Family in “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson Essay

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Introduction

Family theme, role of the ‘castle’, the uncanny story, works cited.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle , written by Shirley Jackson and published in 1961, was the final novel of the author, representing several characteristics of her personality. As mentioned by Bartnett for the Guardian, the female characters of the novel are “yin and yang of Shirley’s own inner self – one, an explorer, a challenger, the other a contented, domestic homebody.”

The novel tells the story of two sisters – Merricat Blackwood, who is characterized as headstrong and naïve, and her older sister Constance Blackwood, who avoids venturing any further than her garden. The main mystery behind the two sisters was that they were the remaining members of a large old family that died suddenly from poisoning. Thus, the topic of family is persistent throughout the novel, especially given the consequences that led to the death of almost all Blackwoods.

It is revealed that Merricat was the one to murdered her family, including parents, her aunt, and her brother, leaving only Constance and her uncle, who survived the poisoning of arsenic due to mere luck.

Constance was the only family member whom Merricat truly loved, and despite her sinister actions, the author gave explanations for it by pointing out the oppressive nature of family relationships with regard to women. To get a deeper understanding of why Merricat had a chaotic and illogical attitude toward family life, the history and structure of the family as an institution should be considered.

Social rules and gender roles that exist within the family context are predominantly male-centered, which means that the power is usually patrilineal. For instance, the family name is generally passed down from fathers to sons who also have traditionally inherited the majority of the property. Daughters, however, we’re expected to follow family rules until they get married, when they had to come under their husbands’ rule.

Therefore, there is a history of blatant oppression of females within the family context (Chae 262). Given the nature of family structure and power, it is not surprising that Merricat wanted to rid herself of the oppressive traditions that her family held.

The most negative aspects of masculinity in the novel are illustrated through the character of Charles Blackwood. He is obsessed with getting rich and thus tricks his cousins out of money under the disguise of pretending to help them. Charles even plans to make Constance his wife, which threatens the relationship between Merricat and her sister (Begonia).

The marriage between Constance and Charles can not only ruin the sisters’ relationship but also severely damage the female-oriented family that Merricat wanted to preserve. Therefore, the institution of family and marriage is depicted in the novel as something that keeps women away from helping each other and maintaining solidarity. To a large degree, Jackson intentionally portrays marriage as a treat to familial relationships rather than a vehicle for strengthening them.

Familial relationships depicted in We Have Always Lived in the Castle are complex. Charles is already Constance and Merricat’s relative, which gives him the right to entire their house regardless of any efforts of preventing him from doing so (Lape 153). Merricat is always aware of the boundaries she must set for protection; she checks the fence that surrounds her property every week, uses talismans to safeguard herself from danger, has “hiding places” for escaping abuse (Jackson 76).

Charles is very dismissive of her cousin’s practices and intends to take the power that she gained through murdering her oppressive family. He starts treating Merricat the same way in which her late family treated her in the past.

In contrast to Charles’ strive for money and power, Merricat is not interested in none of her financial inheritance. Rather, she places special importance on the cultural and historical value of the objects left behind by generations of Blackwood women who inhabited the castle.

Canned food and chinaware have a special place in Merricat’s heart because they represent the contributions of Blackwood wives and daughters who were continuously oppressed by their husbands, fathers, and brothers. These objects show that women have always followed the stereotype of fulfilling their role of cooks for their families. Food is also a tangible symbol of women being crucial contributors to family dynamics when Merricat murders her family, food changes from the oppressive instrument to the beacon of liberation.

As mentioned earlier, Blackwoods’ family residence has always been of great value for Merricat and her sister, not from a financial but from a historical perspective. To Merricat, the house represented the nature and essence of its female inhabitants: “as soon as a new Blackwood wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, as so our house was built up with layers of Blackwood property weighing in, and keeping it steady against the world” (Jackson 1).

The house was indeed a castle that protected Merricat from the outside world, and she cherished its history in the same way as she cherished her freedom and control over her life after murdering almost the entire family. Despite Merricat’s disdain with the traditional roles that women had to play in their houses, she still enjoyed neatening and cleaning it as an homage to the hard work that she previously had to do: “on Mondays, we neatened […] carefully setting the little things back after we had dusted, never altering the perfect line of our mother’s tortoise-shell comb” (Jackson 42).

As the novel climaxes with Blackwood’s estate getting caught on fire that destroyed most of the building, both Merricat and Constance are devastated from the destruction of the place that they held so dearly to their heart despite the oppression that experienced.

Seeing the treasured objects of Blackwood women’s history destroyed is a shock to the sisters because both of them valued the contributions of their ancestors. The author writes, “silverware that had been in the house for generations of Blackwood wives […] tablecloths and napkins hemmed by Blackwood women, and washed and ironed, again and again, mended and cherished” (Jackson 114). These lines illustrate the attachment sisters had to the house and the respect they had for it.

Overall, by the numerous ways in which Merricat tried to protect her house and maintain its history, it can be concluded that the ‘castle’ played a significant role in the main characters’ lives. Importantly, it reflected the long tradition of hard work that Blackwood women had to do to make the house feel like home. Unfortunately, no one except for Merricat and Constance understood the value of that work.

In Gothic literature, the uncanny mode is used for providing a look at the darkest sides of humanity. To a large extent, the uncanny brings out the internal conflict that a character may experience because of (the) underlying external conflict (Kristinsson). In We Have Always Lived in the Castle , the uncanny is manifested in Merricat’s struggle to get away from the oppressive nature of her family by making a decision to poison her relatives with arsenic. Again, the literary mode relates directly to the key theme of the novel – male-dominated family structures.

The atmosphere that persists in the entire novel can be characterized as uncanny because readers get to know that the protagonist murdered her family and still manage to sympathize with her. Also, the fact that Merricat’s sister also knows about the intentional killing does not seem too over-the-top for readers because they understand that the novel speaks about the most negative characteristics of people, which is inherent to Gothic literature. The uncanny qualities of the protagonist contribute to the overall eerie atmosphere of the novel because her actions are a secret to nobody.

To conclude, family relationships in We Have Always Lived in the Castle as extremely complex. For getting herself and Constance away from the oppressive family dynamics, Merricat makes a decision to murder her relatives. However, in the course of the novel, her family ‘haunts’ Merricat through the figure of Charles, who wants to take power over the Blackwood money and property, thus illustrating the most negative aspects of male-dominated families.

The ‘castle’ plays a unique role in the novel; it provides shelter and sanctuary for both sisters while still reminding them of the long history of women being oppressed in its walls. Jackson’s novel is uncanny in its attitude toward family life and the use of Gothic symbolism.

Bartnett, David. “ We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – A House of Ordinary Horror .” The Guardian . 2015. Web.

Begonja, Lucija. Female Characters and Setting in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Thesis, University of J.J. Strossmayer in Osijek, 2017.

Chae, Haesook. “Marx on the Family and Class Consciousness.” A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society , vol. 26, no. 2, 2014, pp. 262-277.

Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Penguin Modern Classics, 2009.

Kristinsson, Sebastian. “ The Split Psyche and the Uncanny in Scottish Literature .” Skemman , 2016. Web.

Lape, Sue Veregge. The Lottery’s Hostage: The Life and Feminist Fiction of Shirley Jackson. Dissertation, Ohio State University, 1992.

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IvyPanda. (2020, December 13). Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-in-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-shirley-jackson/

"Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson." IvyPanda , 13 Dec. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/family-in-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-shirley-jackson/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson'. 13 December.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson." December 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-in-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-shirley-jackson/.

1. IvyPanda . "Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson." December 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-in-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-shirley-jackson/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Family in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson." December 13, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-in-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-shirley-jackson/.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By shirley jackson, we have always lived in the castle themes.

Isolation is perhaps the most obvious theme of We Have Always Lived in the Castle . By the end of the novel, Merricat and Constance have successfully cut themselves off from the rest of the world, living in their “haunted” house. At the start of the novel, Constance fears the outside world and isolates herself, but as the narrative gets underway, she is starting to reconsider this lifestyle and is open to being persuaded to return to the world. One of the central questions of the novel is whether or not she will do so. Meanwhile, Merricat happily isolates herself from the other villagers, who she fears and hates in equal measure. Because Constance is more ambivalent about human nature, she isn’t convinced that the villagers are all bad, which scares Merricat. Merricat is thus determined to convince Constance to surrender to living in isolation with her. The conflict revolves around Charles, the sisters’ cousin, who intrudes on their life and encourages Constance to come back to the world. Charles also represents broader social norms of masculine authority and capitalism, which the sisters rebel against. Ultimately, by driving away Charles and the villagers, Merricat is victorious and happily lives in isolation with Constance.

Family is a particularly complex theme in the novel. Merricat loves her sister Constance deeply, so much that this love is one of the first things she mentions about herself in the novel’s opening paragraph. Yet Merricat also murdered the majority of her family, with Uncle Julian only surviving due to luck. Jackson portrays Merricat’s family as gendered according to American social traditions—her father’s safe hides the family’s money, which he presumably earned, while the basement full of preserves represents the endurance of the power of the Blackwood female line, which is often linked to food. (For example, Merricat killed her family by poisoning the sugar, while Constance’s role as the head of the household is often shown through her gardening and cooking.) Charles Blackwood represents the continuation of male authority in the Blackwood family, and his physical resemblance to the sisters’ father is often mentioned. He seeks the sisters’ money, which they care little about, and attempts to control Merricat’s magic, a form of feminine witchcraft. He also attempts to lure Constance away from Merricat and the female-centric world she has created in the Blackwood home. Family is thus closely linked to gender in the novel, and Merricat’s destruction of her nuclear family gives her the opportunity for female liberation.

Female power

Through the dynamics of the Blackwood family and the town as a whole, Merricat’s world is split starkly into male authority and female power. The magic that Merricat practices and believes in can be seen as a form of witchcraft, a strongly female-coded practice, and by the end of the novel, the Blackwood sisters are perceived as almost like witches by the villagers, who whisper that they eat children. Male authority, seen in the sisters’ father, John, and their cousin Charles, is strongly linked to money, which is embodied in the family safe that Charles tries to steal. This connection makes sense, given that men have traditionally been the breadwinners of American society while women have been relegated to the home. Yet it is in the home—and in food, another strongly feminine symbol—that the Blackwood sisters derive their power. By locking themselves in the home, Merricat and Constance free themselves from patriarchal male authority. Food is a locus of power for both sisters. The household revolves around the meals Constance prepares, drawing on the garden she tends and the preserves that generations of Blackwood women have created. Similarly, Merricat’s defining display of power—killing her family—occurs through her poisoning of the family’s sugar.

The level of guilt that Merricat feels regarding her murder of her family is consistently ambiguous. Outwardly, she displays no sense of responsibility, much less guilt, for the crime, unbothered by Uncle Julian’s constant retelling of the night of the murders. For most of the novel, she does not even acknowledge her role as the killer. Yet some small moments indicate that Merricat feels more guilt and remorse than she lets on. For example, she wakes up one morning briefly forgetting that her family has died, suggesting that the memory of them haunts her more than she acknowledges. Constance’s guilt in the murders is also ambiguous. Though she did not kill her family, she blames herself for their deaths (and, later, for the fire that destroys much of the Blackwood home, which is also most directly Merricat’s fault.) Constance did buy the arsenic initially, and she has kept her knowledge of the true killer hidden. Constance also resents the villagers for their behavior towards the Blackwoods far less than Merricat does for the bulk of the novel, perhaps feeling that she deserves their treatment.

Closely linked to the theme of guilt is that of punishment. The villagers feel that Constance, who they believe is guilty of the murders, was never adequately punished for them, since she was acquitted, and seem to take it upon themselves to deliver this punishment. (They also punish Merricat, despite not knowing that she is the true killer.) In this manner, Jackson illustrates the ways in which a lack of legal or official justice can lead to the chaos and cruelty of mob justice. Merricat also dwells on the punishment she was given on the night of the murders (being sent to bed without dinner), which is what drove her to kill her family in the first place. In one scene, for example, she fantasizes about her family telling her that she should always get what she wants and must never be punished—a vision of the apology she believes she deserves from them. (Merricat blaming her entire family for punishing her is another example of the messiness of extralegal justice and revenge, since it was presumably her parents that punished her and certainly not her little brother Thomas, who she also killed.)

The unknowability of truth

From the start of the novel, the events of the night six years ago that killed most of Merricat’s family are shrouded in mystery. The only two characters that know the true events, Merricat and Constance, seem uninterested in them, caring little that Merricat murdered her family and virtually never discussing this truth. Uncle Julian, in contrast, is obsessed with the events of the night, but he too avoids the truth in exchange for sensationalism—in one instance, he mentions outright lying about his wife’s beauty, while his memory problems often cause him to second-guess the events he writes about. He also believes Merricat is dead and unimportant to the night of the poisoning, even though he sees her every day. Merricat’s narration is also unreliable. Along with never outright mentioning her guilt in the poisonings in her narration, Merricat also glosses over setting the house on fire at the end of the novel, creating ambiguity over how intentional this action was. Meanwhile, the villagers refuse to believe the official version of the truth, which is that Constance is legally not guilty of the murders. Ironically, however, they punish the wrong person, since Constance truly did not kill her family. Ultimately, the lack of clarity over the night of the murders suggests that the actual truth isn’t as important as individual characters’ perception of it.

Human nature

Despite their closeness and shared delusions, Merricat and Constance differ significantly in their perception of human nature. Dark, unstable, and negative, Merricat has a pessimistic view of other people, believing that the villagers are fundamentally bad people and relishing in their mutual hatred of each other to some extent. She also seems to view her own family bleakly, defining them by what she sees as an unjust punishment (the reader can’t judge whether this perception is true or not, since Merricat never actually explains why she was punished) even though, at least according to Uncle Julian, her family was generally normal and probably showed her affection as well. Merricat views Constance as a near-saint in contrast to her general misanthropy, showing how black-and-white her worldview is. Constance, on the other hand, has an optimistic view of human nature and other people. Though the villagers torment her in particular and believe she killed her family, she considers returning to the world and questions whether people are really all bad. She welcomes Helen Clarke and, later, Charles into her home, despite the latter’s ulterior motives. Ultimately, however, Merricat converts Constance to her misanthropic views by the end of the novel, convincing her to remain in isolation in their home.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Where is the fire foreshadowed in the book?

In Chapter Six, Merricat goes to the summer house, somewhere she hasn't visited in six years. While there she explains that no one in her family liked the summerhouse, and her mother even asked to burn it down.... forshadowing a possible fire.

What is the dynamic between men and women through the symbol of nature?

I'm not sure about the nature part of your question. Through the dynamics of the Blackwood family and the town as a whole, Merricat’s world is split starkly into male authority and female power. The magic that Merricat practices and believes in...

I cant seem to find the page number for the quotes

I don't know what quotes you mean. Page numbers also differ from copy to copy.

Study Guide for We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle study guide contains a biography of Shirley Jackson, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle Summary
• Character List

Essays for We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

• Pearls in the Castle: Comparing Materialism and Gender in Fiction by Steinbeck and Jackson

Lesson Plan for We Have Always Lived in the Castle

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle Bibliography

How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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