WHALITC 1962 QOUTES

Mary Katherine….

Blackwood

I am ….

eighteen years old

born…

a werewolf

i like my….

sister constance

Everyone else in….

our family is dead

on the…

moon

put death in …

all their food and watch them die

Would you like a….

cup of tea? oh no said merricat you’ll poison me

I wonder if i could…

eat a child

I doubt i could…

ever cook one

Our land was enriched with ..

my treaurers buried in it

on the moon…

we have everything

oh constance…

we are so happy

i wished ….

they were all dead

i was never sorry…

when i had thoughts like this, i just wished they would come true

stepping…

over their bodies

never touched..

what belonged to others

constance said…

it would kill us

our house was…

a castle, open to the sky

i knew him at once,..

he looks like father

find something else …

to burry here and i wished it would be charles

Fridays and tuesdays….

were terrible days

i thought of them…

rotting away and curling in pain

their….

dirty little houses

warmest and..

sweet smelling

authorial choices - First person narration

• Jackson limits readers’ access to an objective account of events.

• This creates uncertainty about Merricat’s interpretation of reality and encourages the reader to question the reliability of her account.

authorial choices - Unreliable narration

• Readers must distinguish between Merricat’s version of events and the implications of the wider narrative.

• her perspective creates unease and complicates judgements about morality

• Jackson uses Merricats unreliable narration to destabilse the readers assumptions about morality

authorial choices - Gothic genre and isolation

• Literary tradition associated with fear, secrecy, psychological disturbances, isolation and an unsettling presence of the past

• Blackwood House, tragedy, Merricat rituals, villagers hostility

• Jackson uses gothic conventions to explore how fear can distrot perceptions if saftey and turn domestic spaces into psychological prisons

authorial choices - Motif

• recurring patterns that reinforce the text’s concerns

• Merricat’s rituals, food, division between Blackwoods and villagers = reinforce the sisters need for security

• 
  

• Repetition makes the characters desire for control apparent and also demonstrates how familiar routines can become a mechanism for resisting change

authorial choices - Symbolism

Presents a broader idea

• Blackwood house = protection, isolation history

• gate = boundary between them/society, isolation,division, voluntary/imposed

• Moon= fantasy, escape, psychological retreat, defence mechanism, child like, isolation

• Fathers belongings= patricrcal control, authority) pipe, watch, clothes, room

• Damaged house = Destruction of families e’s established order

• food/domestic routine = security, control, continuity, preservation of sister’s private world

authorial choices - SYMBOOL FOOODDD

• = love) consyances way or love/care, gives purpos/stability/aurthority] mcat= security/bond/comfort

• = weapon) tradition of sustaining life, transforms ordinary domestic objects into threat - domesticity/innocence??

• = distrust/exclusion) villlagers suspicious, hesiate to eat, sisters eat together shared understanding

• = sugar bowl) sweetness concealing danger, comfort, pleaure, contrast between apprence an dconcealed intentions