Issue #15: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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Othering
Many of us read Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery” when we were in school, and I remember feeling both queasy at the brutality depicted by the story, and panicked at the thought of living in a society where the unthinkable had become ordinary.
That short story prefigured many of themes and images of Jackson’s later novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle—the stultifying effects of public opinion and what happens to those who don’t conform to it.
In a way, Jackson’s stories are all about herself—a woman who led an interesting life, referring to herself as “a practicing amateur witch,” who wrote humor as well as Gothic horror, a brilliant observer and writer consigned to a life as a housewife in thrall to an emotionally abusive man. Jackson’s mother Geraldine appears in her fiction in the form of townspeople who openly say vicious things about her protagonists’ looks, intelligence, and mode of living. The tension that marked Jackson’s entire life marked her fiction as well, and she portrayed her heroines being tortured and hounded right up until her own death at the age of 48.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle feels particularly relevant in our current political climate, where those with extremist, intolerant views have become emboldened to express those views in graphic, violent ways even as the internet has given those of us who feel as though we exist outside the societal norms a way to find and support each other. Many of us who read and loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle have identified with Merricat’s need to construct talismans and invent charms to keep evil forces away from her beloved home, or with Constance’s frantic, futile attempts to impose order over the entropy creeping into the house, or even Uncle Julian’s need to reinvent the past and make it real by writing it down. Even the Blackwoods’ maladaptive kookiness seems preferable to the mean-spirited, small-minded mob mentality of the townspeople.
Jackson’s work highlights the risks of being different. Intelligent, introverted, not neuro-typical, socially anxious women go through Jackson’s novels peering at the people around them, trying to figure out why life seems to run smoothly for everyone else, while they can’t seem to catch a break. Why everyone else, no matter how poor, malicious, or scheming can find a place in society when they themselves can’t seem to find a way in, despite wanting desperately to get along, or at least be left alone.
When I was younger, I spent a lot of my time feeling like everyone around me knew “the rules” in a way that I never did. I didn’t know the “in” jokes, didn’t understand the intricacies of negotiating social situations, couldn’t read the cues everyone else took for granted. It caused me so much anguish, making me think I was defective in some way. I spent all my time reading, trying to impress other people with the depth of my esoteric knowledge and wondering why people seemed not just unimpressed, but actively alienated.
It took me years to understand that the wall standing between me and everyone else was a lack of empathy. I had a hard time allowing myself to understand the point of view of people radically different than myself—to see how their experiences and background could lead them to have very different values and priorities than my own. Merricat Blackwood suffers the same inability to see the townspeople as people who might have suffered at the hands of the Blackwood family (it is hinted at when Merricat runs into a disgruntled man at the cafe), or who, lacking the resources the Blackwoods had once commanded, had very different ways of thinking and living.
We’re excited at the ways these authors and artists have inhabited the world of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, have dug under the characters’ skins, have delved into their psyches to see where they came from, what happened to get them there, and where they might go next. We hope you love it.
Lise Quintana
MANDEM
We Have Always (cover)
MANDEM is a media-fluid artist conglomerate. Their work on disability poetics, the visceral body, gender and childhood is in critical dialogue with art history, religious iconography/mythology, and various -punk aesthetics. MANDEM serves as art editor for The Deaf Poets Society journal. They have recently been artist-in-residence at Il Palmerino (Florence, Italy) and Negative Space Gallery (Cleveland, Ohio). MANDEM’s current painting series, Hypermobility, is documented online here.
AJ Bauers
Roll For the Moon
AJ is the creator behind This Is Why I Need Therapy, a weekly webcomic series. Her digital art has previously appeared in NonBinary Review’s Hans Christian Andersen issue.
Meghan Elaine Bell
Shelley’s Arm
Meghan is a northern California transplant and avid horror lover living in Portland, Oregon, with her girlfriend, Carly, and her cat, Midnight Monster. Her work can be found in the current issue of RFD Magazine.
Carina Bissett
The Sweet Sleep of Roses, or, After the Fall
Carina’s short fiction and poetry has been published in the Journal of Mythic Arts, Mythic Delirium, NonBinary Review, Timeless Tales, and The Horror ‘Zine. She was the recipient of the 2016 HWA Scholarship.
Michael Chin
Take Me Home
Michael’s hybrid chapbook, The Leo Burke Finish, is available from Gimmick Press. He has work published or forthcoming in The Normal School, Passages North, and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss.
Jan Chronister
Constance Blackwell
Jan lives and writes in the woods near Maple, Wisconsin. She wishes she had a garden close to her kitchen like Constance and neighbors who leave her eggs. She serves as president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
Lizz Donnelly
Discard
Lizz’s stories have appeared in Circuits and Slippers and Neologian: Kano: Mark II. She also runs an after school writing club for 6th graders and is perpetually revising an alternate history novel.
Rick Duffy
Good Bones
Rick was born in New Jersey and now lives in Colorado. His stories have appeared in the Providence Journal and the anthology Adventures in ZooKeeping. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association.
Fabiyas MV
Aachu’s Kaleidoscope
Fabiyas is the author of Kanoli Kaleidoscope, Eternal Fragments, and Moonlight And Solitude, and was published by Pear Tree Press, Zimbell House Publishing, Shooter, Nous, Structo, Encircle Publications, and Zoetic Press.
Jack Granath
Ghost in the Way
Jack is a librarian in Kansas.
Daniel Hales
How to Protect Your Home
Daniel’s hybrid book, Run Story, is forthcoming from Shape&Nature Press. He has three poetry chapbooks, most recently Shake My Ashes.
Deb Jannerson
sunset
Deb is the author of Rabbit Rabbit (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and the winner of the 2017 So to Speak Nonfiction Award. Her second book of poetry, Thanks for Nothing, is forthcoming in 2018. She lives in New Orleans with her wife.
Jessica Jernigan
The Ladies
Jessica is a writer and editor living and working in central Michigan. Her fiction has appeared in Rose Red Review and Conjunctions Online.
Judith Lloyd
There is a place out past the garden
Judith is a social construct. There’s a chance when you look at Judith Lloyd what you are actually seeing are elements of her external environment and your personal history manifesting a distinct entity which, in reality, has nothing to do with Judith Lloyd at all.
Jennie MacDonald
Patterned in Shadow
Jennie has published in a wide range of genres, including poetry, short stories, and articles concerning 18th and 19th century Gothic literature and theatre.
Tanis MacDonald
Page 143: Shirley
Tanis’ book of essays, Out of Line: Writing Outside of the Big City will appear from Wolsak and Wynn in Spring 2018. She is the co-editor of GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times.
Christine Makepeace
Melody Gloucester Pegasus Jonas
Christine currently lives in the Pacific Northwest where she watches movies and explores the outdoors. Links to her work, a short story collection and a Gothic horror novel are at christinemakepeace.com
Barbara Martin
Fool’s Journey
Barbara belongs to the Oregon Society of Artists and is a member of several galleries and artist groups in Oregon. Her work has been featured in galleries, shows and museums around the country, as well as in Norway.
Sarah Nichols
Merricat Heart
Sarah lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of four chapbooks, including Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming, 2018) and She May Be a Saint (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016).
David JS Pickering
Merricat in the Dining Room With a Sugar Bowl
David’s poetry has been published in the Raven Chronicles, Sunday Oregonian, Portland Review, Gertrude Journal, and in the anthology Salt: A Collection of Poetry on the Oregon Coast.
Richard Schiffman
Shroom Apocalypse
Richard’s latest book is What the Dust Doesn’t Know published by Salmon Poetry poems. He has work in the Southern Poetry Review, the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Elizabeth Twist
The Crowning
Elizabeth lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario. Her work has appeared in AE: a Canadian Science Fiction Review and Daily Science Fiction, among other venues.
Holly Lyn Walrath
We Have Always Lived
Holly’s poetry and fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, The Fem, Literary Orphans, and Liminality among others. She wrangles writers as a freelance editor and volunteers with Writespace.
Heather Whittington
Down in the Boneyard
Heather lives in Alaska. Her work has appeared in anthologies from Pill Hill Press, Breathless Press, SNM Horror Magazine, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and Wicked East Press.
Jane Yolen
Uncle Julian
Jane is the author of 366 books, including 9 books of adult poetry. NY Times bestselling children’s book author. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates for her body of work.