Female Power in We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The most central relationship in Shirley Jackson’s novel “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” is between the sisters Constance and Merricat Blackwood. In her article “The Establishment and Preservation of Female Power in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” Lynette Carpenter argues that the centralizing of this relationship works to defy patriarchal structures of power for both sisters.

Based on your analysis of the text, do you believe that Constance Blackwood’s character is ultimately freed of the expectations placed on a woman in the mid twentieth century?

Your paper should address the following questions: how is power distributed between the sisters? Does Constance have agency in how she lives? Is her position different in the end of the text than it would have been if she had married Charles Blackwood and rejoined the structures and strictures of organized society? If she is living in a way that you would argue does not fit traditional gender roles, why not? If you would argue that she is still performing the roles assigned to a woman under the patriarchal structures of mid-century society, how so?