(De)composing Gothicism: Disturbing the (eco-) Gothic in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle

hile Shirley Jackson's novels often use gothic elements (including omens, large and stately houses, a supernatural presence, and horror), We Have Always Lived in the Castle differs from other texts in Jackson's body of work: the last completed novel before her death in 1965, it is one of few works with a first-person protagonist, Merricat Blackwood, who subverts gothic tropes by being less victim than victimizer. 1 From Merricat's first appearance, we learn of her fondness for the death-cap mushroom, 2 a highly toxic fungus that is responsible for the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings each year: she explains, "My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.I am eighteen years old, . . .I like my sister Constance . . .and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom.Everyone else in my family is dead." 3 From the very beginning, Merricat embodies the intersections of gothic and natural imagination, equating her sinister love of poisonous mushrooms to the maintenance of her quiet, sheltered life with Constance.In Castle, the ecogothic arises through spectral environments, eco-sickness, vengeful natures (both human and more-than-human), and uncanny bodies and spaces.Using ecocritical theorists such as Helen Houser and Sarah Jaquette Ray alongside gothic criticism of Jackson, we seek to explore the interconnections and importance of the ecogothic in Castle, examining how eco-sickness narratives "carry us from the micro-scale of the individual to the macro-scale of institutions, nations, and the planet" and paying close attention to the use of fungus in the novel as a metaphor for-and simultaneous agent against-these places, structures, and bodies. 4While the role of the gothic in Jackson's work is frequently examined, it is Castle's grounding in the environmental as gothic that makes it a unique study in Jackson's oeuvre.Jackson's environmental influences allow