Reinterpreting the House: Non-normative Objects and Meaning in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Abstract

This article analyzes the existing tension, in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, between a (hetero)normative understanding of the domestic space and an alternative non-productive and non-reproductive interpretation of the household. It will first go over Eugene Halton and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory regarding the symbolic significance of things to try to elucidate the complex process of meaning-giving that takes place when a subject and an object interact. It will then move on to the analysis of the relationship that the characters of We Have Always Lived in the Castle establish with their possessions, arguing that a subversion of the house is very subtly carried out by the Blackwood sisters—especially Merricat, the narrator of the novel—through the creation of new significations and uses for the objects that have been kept for generations in the building. Afterwards, a brief examination of the figure of Cousin Charles and his link to patriarchal meanings will take place, to then finish with a reflection on the possibility of maintaining both an anti-futurity and a queer productive relation with the material world.