I deliberately slowly read the last episode of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in A Castle. After reading the beginning of the last chapter, I closed the book, poured myself some tea, and went out to the garden and never opened the book again that day.
The last chapter starts as follows:
Slowly the pattern of our days grew, and shaped itself into a happy life. In the mornings when I awakened I would go at once down the hall to make sure the front door was locked.
I think there were several reasons why I didn't want to finish the book right away. On the one hand, I was thinking that I wished I was just starting to read this book, rather than ending it. This is a book that draws the reader into its own narrative universe with a strange spell right from the very first chapter, even from the very first sentence. It's as if Merricat buries silver dollars somewhere in her garden to keep us in this narrative universe as a witness to everything that happens. But, I think what caused me to drop the book was especially the beginning of the final chapter I quote above.
It would be beneficial if we take some time to think about what kind of a house Merricat the narrator is referring to in that specific sentence. This is a ghost house whose roof was almost completely burnt down in a fire that broke out recently, weeds had started to climb around it, and its naive beauty was left to the horror of an abandoned appearance after the fire. Moreover, there is more terror than happiness in the history of the naive beauty of this house. This is a house where a whole family was murdered in its dining room, and we do not know for what reason. But this fact becomes so normal and unexceptional in the narrative universe of the book that the reader has to repeat it to herself several times, just as I have just done above. This is because the reality of Merricat the narrator, which shapes her perception of happiness, is in conflict with the reality of we ordinary readers. For example, in this narrative universe, radical evil takes place in an apathetic way. At the end of the book, the brief talk of Constance and Merricat about the massacre of their family, for example, takes place without any emotional pause, as if they were talking about an ordinary fact of everyday life. Even if the good-evil categories of this narrative universe absolutely do not match those of the average reader, we cannot avoid being drawn into this universe and favoring the world of Merricat, not the outside world. So when I read the beginning of chapter ten, I closed the book and thought: In this ghostly house where a terrible memory continues to live in the middle of it, how can I believe in Merricat and even justify her when she says she is very happy? Moreover, how is it possible that after Merricat is sure that the doors are locked, I feel relieved and be convinced of the "happiness" of this life?
The book’s narrative universe has a disturbing but irresistible magic. I think the most influential factor that creates this spell is that Merricat is the narrator. We look at the world through the eyes of a radically "evil" person. In this novel, the opportunity to speak is given to Merricat, not to anyone else. As soon as the novel begins, when Merricat walks into town to go grocery shopping, we immediately understand how the narrator differs from ordinary moral codes:
but I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there.
This is an extreme hatred. Moreover, it is not based on any concrete reason. Even if this is a reason for this hate, it is not a reason that the reader can understand and connect with. This hatred is probably the motivation for Merricat to poison and murder her entire family. Moreover, we do not read Merricat through someone else's eyes, from a perspective restricted by an ordinary perception of morality. We read Merricat from her own world, her point of view and her own reality. I think this is one of the most effective reasons why this narrative universe is so magical and attractive. Looking at what is happening in the novel through Merricat's eyes creates a bond with her, even if it does not make us understand the motivation of her actions. We understand and believe that she absolutely has a reason to hate and be afraid of the outside world although we don't know and will never know that reason. One of the factors that make us believe this is the depiction of the outside world. The outside world is full of people who live with a deep "resentment" triggered by inferiority complexes and jealousy, or people like Charles, whose desires and ambitions have surpassed his humanity. Charles is a representation of the outside world with all its rationality and logic. The two forms of mind meet at this point: Charles' mind and Merricat's mind. We can immediately understand the workings of Charles' mind and the motivation of his actions, because this is a mind we are very familiar with. However, we absolutely cannot understand the limitations, motivations and functioning of Merricat's mind. Still, as the reader, we are close to Merricat, not Charles. We do not favor the Charles, who we are familiar with and understand, but Merricat, who is the representation of radical evil. Although Merricat is someone who murdered her family, she wins in this match, because she narrates the story in this novel.
Merricat is able to win in this match not only at the narrative level but also at the feelings level of the reader, because we can see how powerful and deep her emotional world is. Moreover, Merricat achieves this victory when she has all the possible disadvantages of a novel character that we do not have any information about her background, her childhood, what kind of family she had and under what conditions she has grown up in. The only thing we know about her past is that she massacred her family at a dinner. It seems like every road in which we can empathize with her has been closed. But on the other hand, we see how profoundly she loves Constance. Her sincere devotion to Constance contrasts so much with the evil of the outside world that Merricat's love is almost surreal in such a world. In addition to her love for Constance, her relationship with Jonas the cat deepens Merricat's emotional world in the eyes of the reader. Merricat is a very deep character who tries to protect her sister from the ordinary evil of the outside world and spends hours chatting with her cat on the grass. Her world is surreal in the face of the lovelessness of the outside world; therefore, metaphysical methods that transcend the logic, rigidity, and wickedness of the physical world are necessary to preserve Merricat's narrow but very deep world. It can be said that Merricat looks at the world with a transcendent eye. It is a keen eye that sees what Constance cannot see and can read the outside world very well. She can only protect her own deep emotional world in face of the outside world in her own ways. What makes this narrative universe so magical is that we look at it through this transcendent eye of Merricat. Therefore, although we know nothing of her past, since we know her perception of the world, and her position in front of it, we take sides with Merricat in the face of the malice of the outside world. At this point, it will be useful to talk about what kind of outside world we are facing.
As Merricat the narrator points out, Charles and others in the outside world, feed on ugliness itself: “All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it.” Charles is actually the "healthy" one in this narrative universe, but still we have no reason to love him. Merricat is the "other", the "sick" one; but we cannot help but share in her terrifying triumph and spooky happiness at the end of the novel. Just as Georges Bataille discusses in his book, Literature and Evil, here radical evil establishes a high morality that disregards the morality of the "healthy" one. A difference is drawn between the evil of the outside world and the evil of Merricat. Being fully aware of the evil of the outside world, Merricat attains a morality that transcends the morality of the outside world with her own malice. Merricat's malice does not make her "immoral" in this narrative universe, but rather defends her from the world of those simple, vile motives and plans of others, and makes her belong to a supreme morality in another form. Eventually, at the end, Merricat is really on the moon as she has always wished. Now Mericat is like a heavenly spirit, where the townspeople have served her food. At the end of the book, she has reached the level of a god and therefore eternity. So here, eternity is in the realm of evil, not good, as is often assumed. Thus, at the end, radical evil declares its victory with a completely different reality of its own.
