Talk:We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Novels Mid‑importance

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Women writers Mid‑importance

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Spoiler

I don't think that the first paragraph of the plot summery should state that it is a flashback. Leave that until the end of the summary so if someone does miss it it isnt ruined for them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.112.20 (talk) 23:03, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"A careful reading"

Hi Cactus Wren. The words "A careful reading of the opening paragraphs..." are what I'm objecting to. Whose "careful reading" are we talking about? If the sentence is to be restored, it should have a citation naming this mysterious person doing the "careful reading." Those words certainly aren't "printed in the book." This book is, like most of literature, written in the past tense (it is a relatively new thing for fiction to be written in the present tense, and still rather unusual). That does not make the narrative a "flashback," which is a narrative device that interrupts the story to go back in time, in a book as in a film, e.g. to relate a memory relevant to the present moment in the narrative. This book is being narrated from some point in the future, as opposed to being narrated in the present time as the story unfolds, i.e. the past tense. If the usual past-tense style of this narrative is somehow exceptional, if indeed someone thinks or says it is, one should say why it is so exceptional as to be noteworthy. As far as I've always been able to tell, this book is written in the usual, commonplace past tense (and it certainly doesn't require a "careful reading" to arrive at that self-evident conclusion). The sentence is superfluous and a bit nonsensical, but if your point is that you want it to say it's written in the past tense, then just insert that fact into the opening sentence which could then read, "The novel, narrated in first person past tense by Mary Katherine ...". --TEHodson 09:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)--TEHodson 09:20, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really, this whole article could use some major help. The book is such a masterpiece, it would be good to make the article worthy of it. I'll think about how it can be improved. There was a lot of writing about the book at the time of its publication. I'll try to find some.--TEHodson 09:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Citation (8)

Citation 8 from the Guardian is used to verify the following: "Jackson freely admitted that the two young women in the story were liberally fictionalized versions of her own daughters, and Oppenheimer noted that Merricat and Constance were the "yin and yang of Shirley's own inner self"." However, when following the citation to the Guardian, the article is only relevant to the "yin and yang" comment. I feel this citation is confusing, and a second one referencing Oppenheimer's Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson in reference to her daughters to separate the two claims would make it more clear. 156.26.45.76 (talk) 19:57, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Spoiler

The characters section includes the whole storyline of the character. It just spoils the book while someone just wants to know what characters are there. 213.238.75.23 (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Abuse intrepretation

Several edits have inserted false material to support an abuse interpretation for Merricat's actions. Her confession makes no mention of this, and neither does Constance's admission. Alexalderman (talk) 14:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merricat dead all along?

At the end of the synopsis there was a passage that read:

"The final chapter reveals that Merricat has actually been the ghost of Constance's former self all along. Constance and Merricat spend the rest of their days together, with Constance both a captive and a lover to the ghost of her childhood trauma."

But as far as I can tell (not having read the text itself too recently), this is pure speculation, based off a dialogue line where Uncle Julian declares that Merricat is dead (though he is clearly not a reliable source of information). Looking online, it seems agreed upon that while an ...interesting theory, there are multiple reasons to believe that the townspeople have and continue to be aware of Merricat's existence (including her interactions with them at the beginning of the novel), which would contradict her having been dead all along.

I removed this passage because it does not appear factual and is a subjective interpretation of the book. Pvitamins (talk) 21:33, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]