Witches Have Always Lived in Patriarchy:
Shirley Jackson’s Castle of Female Empowerment

︎︎  Year: 2016

Expressions in Study: American Gothic Literature, Psychoanalysis, Feminism

The gothic mode exposes underlying fears and anxieties, revealing the return of “what is unsuccessfully repressed” (Savoy 4). The sense of the ordinary becomes a societal construction of what is deemed normalized and acceptable by society. In this sense, the gothic mode unmasks what society represses beneath the realm of the normal. Judith Butler describes gothic fiction as “compelling but unthematizable” (7), a mode dedicated to illuminate the inexplicable while still remaining entirely in an unexplainable space. In other words, that which is gothic “resists and compels symbolization” (Butler 70) and it is precisely in this inexplicability that unleashes a “pattern of anxiety of the Symbolic… [to show] the fragility of our usual systems of making sense of the world” (Williams 70). If the Lacanian Symbolic explains man’s formation of meaning, and introduces man into a societally sanctioned law system by providing man with the relevant arbitrary connections between signifiers and signifieds, then the gothic convention destabilizes the acceptance of these connections as it “impl[ies] disorder in the relations of signifiers and signifieds” (Williams 70). An American contemporary gothic revelation, Shirley Jackson’s 1962 masterpiece We Have Always Lived in the Castle valorizes the disorderliness from this destabilization in normalized patriarchal society.

Jackson utilizes the fear of the unknown and inexplicable, and exposes it as a societal anxiety, which culminates in the realm of the abject. Existing as neither subject nor object, the abject is that which is feared and thus repressed by societal order. Yet, even in its arena of “banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master” (Kristeva 2). To be in abjection is to straddle along the fragile boundaries between the Lacanian Real and Symbolic. To be the abject is to be prohibited from any entrance into the Symbolic Order. If the abject is that which is constantly repressed, then the gothic mode “enable[s] the narrativization of [the] irrepressible Otherness” (Savoy 5). To be abject is not merely to provide discomfort through the “slack boredom of repression” (Kristeva 2), but it is the simultaneous attraction and repulsion that one feels towards the abject that makes it so desirable yet threatening. When Mrs. Wright persists in her interrogation about the Blackwood mass murder, she fulfills her sheer desire of acquiring knowledge for her sole intent to gossip while remaining physically threatened by Constance Blackwood’s potentially murderous action of spiking her tea with poison. Jackson’s use of the gothic figure of the witch in Castle then becomes a response to a highly dominant patriarchal and conservative culture. The witch-figure embodies the unthematizable, a physical manifestation of the exclusion from the Symbolic Order. In other words, the witch-figure exists in the space of the abject. Seen as a “patriarchal perversion”, witchcraft is the woman’s ultimate “rebellion against suppression” (Heinemann 22). Hence, the witch-figure inhibits any form of meaning-making yet empowers itself by its sheer power of fear-instilling, thus any attempt to assimilate it back into conventional society backfires detrimentally.

If that which is taboo and repressed has a physical incarnation, it would take on the figure of the witch. The witch, in other words, emblematizes the unrepressed: that which is free to contravene the laws imposed by society. Merricat and Constance Blackwood are metaphorical witches insofar as they are not true practitioners of black sorcery nor satanic rituals. Evelyn Heinemann argues that the “image of the witch is an imago, an internal image, containing personal aggressions” (34), a perverse identification of the cohesive whole in the Lacanian mirror phase. In other words, patriarchal society identifies the abject witch-figure as the horrific Other due to its “projective identification… [of its] aggressions and feelings of persecution” (Heinemann 34) onto the Blackwood sisters. Hence, by assigning the Blackwood sisters these qualities of aggressions and repressed desires, patriarchy metaphorically defines them as witches. Therefore, the witch is “flatly driven” (Kristeva 2) away by the superego – patriarchal society – as an act of stabilizing the status quo. In order to maintain the balance between the law and the taboo, patriarchy has to either oppress the abject-as-witch or annihilate her.

The Blackwood sisters’ susceptibility to such a prejudiced projection stems from their complete departure from patriarchy. Being the “survivor of the most sensational poisoning case of the century” (32), Uncle Julian “personally prefer[s] to chance the arsenic” (36) as opposed to eating the deceased Mrs. Blackwood’s cooking which suggests that she was truly a terrible cook. Yet, tradition shows that all Blackwood women “had made food and had taken pride in… [their] cellar” (42), indicating that Mrs. Blackwood had failed to conform to this great expectation by virtue of not fulfilling the characteristic of being an able cook. The cellar is the amalgamation of rule-abiding orderliness and conformity to social conventions. Filled with jars of jam and preserves, the cellar symbolizes the domestic woman’s self-preservation of her identity amidst the gender coded space of the kitchen. Instead, Merricat states that her mother had a profound love for Dresden figurines. In other words, Mrs. Blackwood shares a strong appreciation for the ornate rather than satisfying the patriarchal dictation of “adding to the great supply of food” (42). In this sense, the female tradition in the Blackwood lineage seems to deviate from patriarchal orderliness the moment Mrs. Blackwood failed to perform her gender specified role.

Photography by Callie Gibson

The poisoning of the Blackwood family seems to be the icing on the cake when it comes to the decision to position the Blackwood sisters as the taboo witch-figures in society. When Merricat says that “the people of the village have always hated [them]” (4), it already suggests the society’s latent repulsion from the Blackwoods. Despite being acquitted of murder, the villagers still see Constance Blackwood as the murderer of her family. The fact that the female has the ability to commit murder immediately removes her from the safe haven of the domestic. Put differently, the female becomes a threat. Once, the villagers had no qualms taunting the Blackwoods at their doorstep as they “came to pound at the house”, demanding that they had the “right to see [Constance] … [because she had] killed all those people” (56). Society’s intrusion into the private space of the Blackwood mansion indicates their prejudice against the Blackwoods, and their surmounting fear of the Blackwood sisters. The remaining Blackwoods serve as living reminders of potential danger to the society precisely because the master-figure, Mr Blackwood, has been destroyed. Scratching beneath the surface, this fear points to the tension from the castration complex. If anything, the survival of Uncle Julian reminds the village not only of a failed patriarch, but also the dominance of female power in the Blackwood household. In other words, Uncle Julian lives in the abject space of the Blackwood house with the abject witch-figures, Merricat and Constance. Julian Blackwood lived off his brother, managed to survive the arsenic poisoning, but he is ultimately rendered physically and mentally invalid. Thus, if the Blackwood sisters possess tremendous power to overthrow male dominance in the house, then they embody the ultimate transgression from the “symbolic matrix” (Lacan 2) of law and order. 

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