Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion

Don't forget to use the spoiler tags!

This is another one that has had a film that I somehow never heard about....

Here's a review of the film:

https://filmschoolrejects.com/we-have...

and another one:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

The casting looks good in general. Crispin Glover is a very specific kind of face and demeanor. You wouldn't want to cast him as, say, Captain Kirk... but I can see him in a Shirley Jackson American gothic film adaptation.

So, I'm curious enough to watch it. Thoughts?

I'll take a look at that after finishing the book (I'm picky about seeing the characters in adaptations before I finish the book because it messes up the way I imagine the characters), but I didn't know there was a movie adaptation.

On a related topic, has anyone seen the trailer for the new Netflix "The Haunting of Hill House" series? It looks really cool but at least from the trailer, it seems like the title is the only thing in common with the novel 😃

Here's the trailer:
https://youtu.be/G9OzG53VwIk

I finished the book last night and really enjoyed it. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't as scary as Haunting of Hill House, or even scary at all, but I thought it was very interesting and can only imagine reader's reactions back when the novel was originally published.

I couldn't find a trailer for the movie, but found a scene on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTbZY...

It was nice to see that this scene is practically word for word the same thing that happened in the story, so it might be one of those rare occasions where the adaptation is as good as the original novel. I would definitely watch this movie!

I have more comments on the novel, but I will get my ideas together and write them later.

I just started. Had to finish other things.

Shirley Jackson is the queen of first lines and character introductions.

OK, I finished this up the other day. I suppose the first thing that struck me is that Jackson's use of language is so impressive. She really sucks you into that worldview with it such that it's hard not to get a sense of how very strange the lifestyle she's describing would be. In that sense it reminded me very much of the film, Grey Gardens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKLG...

Apparently, that's had some sort of remake/adaptation/reboot/dramatization with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrimore, which strikes me as very good casting in a weird, ominous sort of way. But the weirdness and mannerism of the characters in the book is always tinged with just a hint of momma/daughter Beale in Jackson's story. Not so much that you have outright "Jeebus...." moments like in that film, but often enough that the child-like, fantasies of Merricat and her shamanistic worldview often peaks through the cracks in the whimsy of her narrative and you see how nuckin' futs the situation is.

On that note, I was not personally at all surprised by the "big reveal" towards the end of the story when we find out that (view spoiler)[Merricat was the poisoner (hide spoiler)] all along. I don't think Jackson meant that to be a huge shocker. It's foreshadowed so thoroughly throughout her narration that it's practically like reading billboards on the highway. In fact, I thought it was projected so much that she was setting us all up for a plot twist that (view spoiler)[Constance really was guilty (hide spoiler)], and we'd have a whole villainous rant suddenly come out of her. But, nope. She didn't go that way, and if there's anything to criticize in this book it might be that not-shocker. Of course (view spoiler)[Merricat is the killer (hide spoiler)]. The reveal isn't so much a surprise as an admission of what we knew from the opening sentence. I'm not sure if that's even really a criticism since it appears to have been part of the point in Jackson's effort. She put us right in the character's head with the 1st person narrative, and didn't spare us the details of that character/narrator's mindset.

I haven't seen the film adaptation (apparently there was a stage adaptation too back in the day) but it's hard to see how the story could be conveyed fully without a lot of voice over work, which always makes me a little leery. Voice over can be done well, and it can be done very, very badly. And it's not really a coin toss, 50/50 proposition. It's more like a trying to make the point in craps. They might just go with the spoken dialogue, which does give us a lot of Merricat's magical thinking, but most of her darkness is in the narrative, and that's also where a lot of the foreshadowing comes from, so I'm curious as to how they handled it.

The other piece this book made me think of was the film Tideland, which I've been thinking about a lot recently for some reason. There's a similar "shut-in" or "shut-out... the world" vibe to the stories. (I suppose one can't have one without the other.) I need to watch that movie again soon.

If I do have a criticism that I think I can make with better support it might be that Jackson's villains tend to be a bit broad, and lack the subtlety of her other characters. Charles, for instance, shows up so suddenly that his over-bearing influence on Constance struck me as a bit awkward and unlikely. There is, apparently, a lot going on between those two characters that we don't see, but her accepting him into the house as quickly and readily as she did seemed to conflict with a lot of that character's development.

There are a lot of themes having to do with social alienation and mob mentality, which is something of a hallmark of Jackson's work. The townies in this story aren't just violent peasant-class ignoramuses, but "mean girls" from high school in the bodies of grown ups. Where that might go wrong in my mind is in their later (view spoiler)[ guilt and attempts to make amends with gifts (offerings?) of food. I think Jackson did that as much to explain how the characters might effectively NEVER leave their house after the fire (hide spoiler)] and I wonder if that shift doesn't detract from the alienation a bit. Rather than have the whole change (or enough of them that the sisters could survive on their gifts) there might have been just the doctor, for instance. I'm not quite sure what her goal was there with the transition as far as the symbolism goes since it seems to contrast with much of her other work. It's hard to see the characters in The Lottery, for example, going through a self-assessment and reforming their ways, and the villagers who live around Hill House seem only validated in their opinions by the end of that piece, even though Jackson portrays them as superstitious, nearly pagan peasants in much of that story.

Regarding Constance’s acceptance of Charles, I think it’s also a product of its time. The book was published in the early 1960s where a woman’s worth was basically tied to being with a man. I think maybe she saw in Charles an opportunity to eventually get herself a man. I don’t know, if around that time, a cousin would’ve been considered marriage material?

So, one question, both Constance and Merricat were crazy, right? Merricat said and did some weird stuff for a normal 18-year-old and Constance doesn’t seem too normal either.

After reading and watching some reviews online I read The Lottery because some reviewers made comparisons between the two. I found The Lottery to be creepier than We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It leaves you with that WTF feeling.

I’m not sure if the “big reveal” was a big reveal at all. I think that after all the books we have read (and all the movies we have watched) maybe it was a bit too obvious for us, but I wonder if that would be the case when the book was first published.

During the first third book I think, I noticed that Uncle Julian never interacted with Merricat, I thought that it would later be revealed that both Merricat and Constance were dead or maybe Uncle Julian was dead. I think I was making the book creepier than it was, haha.

I think Jackson was doing a whole "Stepford Wives" sort of thing with Constance. That is, she's a homemaker, caregiver, cook, maid, etc. Part of her accepting Charles fits with that subservience, but it also has something to do with the fact that she took the (view spoiler)[blame when Merricat poisoned the family (hide spoiler)]. "It's all my fault," she says repeatedly of the living situation once Charles shows up. That was almost certainly as presented to her by Charles "off camera" as it were, but she takes on responsibility as part of her character and, maybe, her own mental issues. That Charles quickly becomes "the man of the house" after a few days would jibe with that characterization, even if it did seem rather sudden to me when reading it.

I do think both the sisters are meant to be overtly, crazy. They aren't particularly raving lunatics like something out of an HP Lovecraft story, but they have issues that are more than something one might get over without some sort of outside help. Merricat is, of course, more clearly engaging in a lot of fantasy thinking and such. Though she might outwardly and in her dialogue seem more together than Merricat, Constance is a shut-in. We never quite get the genesis of that mindset. It follows that it might have been a result of the deaths in the family, the accusation and the following trial, but I can't help but wonder if it pre-dated that.... I didn't get a sense one way or the other, but Merricat's mental issues appear to have been extant before the beginning of the story.

I also wondered if Merricat weren't a ghost, or if she and Constance were one character suffering from a split personality disorder. I don't think that was what Jackson was trying to do, but I'm still not 100% sure the latter wasn't meant to be the case. There are weird indications. Uncle Julian says flat out that Merricat is dead (having died at an orphanage or in foster care, IIRC.) Of course, he's already been quite mentally damaged at that point, so we can't be sure if that's supposed to be quite legit. He does spend all his time documenting the "facts" of that situation, though.... However, Charles and other characters interact with Merricat, and they seem to interact with her as Merricat, and at other times people interact with Constance as Constance. Of course, we're getting all that from POV of Merricat, which means all that interaction is going through the filter of her mental issues. Merricat does engage in a whole fantasy sequence in which she imagines herself to be a sort of pet/paragon of the family.... I don't think, however, that all that quite adds up to Merricat and Constance being two personalities in a single body, though.

I read that Constance and Merricat are based in some way or another on Jackson's own daughters, so take that for what it's worth.

With that in mind, I think what Jackson might have been going for in her portrayal of those two characters is some sort of hyperbolic sense of sisterly love and devotion. A warped and hyper-enabling maybe version of a familial relationship that stunts them both. Toward the end of the story they have an almost child-like response to their living situation after the (view spoiler)[house mostly burns down (hide spoiler)]; they spy and hide away, sometimes giggling at the visitors like Charles, whose hamfisted manipulations then have no effect whatever on Constance.

Gary wrote: "I read that Constance and Merricat are based in some way or another on Jackson's own daughters, so take that for what it's worth."

That is very interesting.

I'm considering reading this book soon Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.