His presence slowly destabilizes what remains of the family until disaster strikes once again. Constance is taken with Charles, but Merricat suspects him of sinister intent. That is, until a cousin, Charles, shows up and installs himself in the household. Constance was tried and acquitted for the murders, but the surviving Blackwoods are reviled by their neighbors and live in isolation. The three Blackwoods used to be seven, but tragedy befell the clan six years earlier, when the sisters’ parents, their younger brother, and an aunt died after someone slipped arsenic into the family’s sugar bowl. The story centers on Merricat and Constance Blackwood, two sisters who live with their ailing uncle on their family’s sprawling Vermont estate. Published three years after The Haunting of Hill House-and just three years before Jackson’s untimely death- We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an eerie, elegant masterpiece that forever cemented its author’s reputation as the grande dame of macabre fiction. Shirley Jackson is probably best remembered for “ The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, but her 1962 gothic mystery We Have Always Lived in the Castle is widely regarded as her greatest literary achievement.
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