“Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?” “Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.” “Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?” “Down in the boneyard ten feet deep.” What if this was a schoolyard rhyme you learned as a kid, whose origins lay in a mysterious house in your neighborhood where you’ve heard two strange sisters live, but who you’ve never seen? You’ve heard other things, too. That the sisters eat children, and if you think you’ve insulted them, […]
Silly Merricat.
Shirley Jackson’s last full length novel is a startling and unsettling peek behind the curtains of the house at the end of the street that is always dark. The one the neighbor children taunt each other to approach after sunset. It begins with the following: “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 […]
Women Can be Scary Part 2: Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was an American writer known for novels such as The Haunting of Hill House and short stories such “The Lottery,” which has horrified readers since 1948. To this day I am haunted by the short film version of “The Lottery” (with Ed Begley, Jr.!) which Sr. Mary Cabrini showed in my American Studies course in high school. The 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is not exactly scary like Jackson’s other works, but it is disturbing and feels like […]