I just finished rereading Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I was looking for something witchy befitting October, something familiar as a break from my Nobel project reading. On this second reading the witchy mindset of the main chracter, Merricat, really stood out to me. I’ve always been interested in the occult but I don’t think I’d seriously studied any pagan practices the first time I read this book, and back then the warped family dynamics and stormy relationship between Merricat’s family and the surrounding town were what fascinated me. This time around, Merricat’s sympathetic magic and her magical worldview were what spoke to me. This story, among other things, is Merricat’s maturation as a witch.

Last year sometime I watched the movie adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and though it was beautiful, I didn’t connect with it the way I expected to, and witchcraft might actually be the missing piece. I think perhaps the film version of Merricat wasn’t enough of a witch.

When I finished I surfed the net for opinions and reviews, and found out Shirley Jackson was herself, if not a practicing witch, at least an avid researcher of occult and pagan history. I’ve read little bio pages and author descriptions of Jackson over the years and I don’t remember even one mentioning this fact. I suspect it’s because she’s considered a more literary writer now, a dignified titan of literature, and titans of literature don’t do anything so silly as dabble in witchcraft. I guess now that paganism isn’t quite so fringe, this aspect of Jackson’s life and writing is getting more attention. I’m glad, because it adds a new dimension to many of her characters. Merricat, for example, is unbalanced and dangerous for sure, but she’s also connecting to a different way of claiming power and a different worldview and is tragically misunderstood by almost everyone. She’s a mad woman, but maybe also a wise woman, the way witches often are and have been.

I also found out I’d missed a well-regarded biography of Jackson that came out just a few years ago. I’m now beginning Shirley Jackson: a Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. I also missed a recent movie inspired by Jackson’s life and writing. I watched Shirley on Hulu and quite liked it. It’s got a very DA vibe, set at Bennington college in the late 1940s or so, all about Jackson writing Hangsaman and moderately twisted and dramatic. It’s not in any way a biography of Jackson–instead it uses Jackson and her husband as characters in the kind of dark slightly horrific story Jackson herself would have written. A young couple moves in with Jackson and her husband Stanley. As Stanley shows the young professor-to-be the ways of Bennington (including all the young women eager to sleep with a popular teacher) the young wife becomes Shirley’s friend and muse as Shirley works on Hangsaman and researches the case of Paula Weldon, a girl who went missing in the area. The young wife breaks down and transforms thanks to Shirley and Stanley’s friendship and manipulation in the kind of off-kilter family drama Jackson wrote so well. It’s kind of billed as a horror movie but it’s not a horror movie. Dark Academia is actually a perfect descriptor, and Bennington is the same college Donna Tartt went to decades later.

It’s a clever idea and I enjoyed the movie. It was visually beautiful and a bit disturbing, and the acting drew me in. I especially liked the complicated love-hate relationship between Shirley and Stanley, one of the few aspects taken directly from Shirley’s life. If you’re looking for something artsy and dark this season you should try Shirley.

I’ll end this here, with my strongest recommendation of Jackson and her haunted novels. I’m sure I’ll be writing about her again when I finish the biography and I’m also planning to read The Sundial and The Bird’s Nest soon. It’s time I got to know Shirley Jackson better and I’m bringing you along for the ride.