hi everyone and welcome to this video where I'm going to talk about some of the symbols in Shirley Jackson we've always lived in the castle now don't ask me why there aren't dot points next to each of these words I don't know why uh but nevertheless these are some of the symbols we're going to talk about today the Blackwood house the moon food the cracken the pavement the safe and I'm also going to mention a few other more minor symbols in the text so let's look firstly at the Blackwood house itself and some of the symbols within the house as well and what I've done here is I've divided these slides into before the fire and after the fire and you'll see that there's quite a bit of meaning we can draw out uh from these symbols both before and after so before the fire the Blackwood house is a symbol of power status and wealth for the Blackwood family we know that it is one of the finest if not the uh finest house in the village it has its own Road it had the first piano ever seen and it is very separate from the village there is a fence a forest a road and a locked gate Marat even goes as far as to say that it is almost as though it is from some Far lovely country where people lived with Grace um and this is really interesting to then contrast with the way that she describes the village this kind of snobbery we see from Marat is certainly echoed in her mother even though we never meet her we know that the first thing she did when she moved into the house was close off the path and the fence so that no one could use it as a shortcut to the highway she did not want people walking past her lovely home the house is also home to a staircase which is an important symbol here as well it is an object that is admired by others Helen Clark shows off the staircase when she visits with her friend um we know that it's you know carved with wood brought from Italy and it's one of the wonders of the county this is very much a symbol of again status and wealth but also more particularly John's masculine power and his status and wealth particularly we also have the drawing room and if the stairs are representative of the father in particular the drawing room is the mother's space it is beautiful it is described as being very uh lovely it's a room to be admired and the girls take great care in keeping it looking perfect I think it's really great to look at the passage describing the drawing room in Chapter 2 and particularly draw out some of the feminine elements that you you can see in there it's also home to a Dresden figure or several Dresden figures and if you don't know what they are I have included an image of one here this Cellar is another really important symbolic setting within the home it is filled with food that has been created or it's been made and preserved d by all of the Blackwood women going back several Generations they never touched what belonged to the others and constant even goes as far as to say that if they were to eat some of the food created by the others they would die and I think course hero puts it really well here where the jars have remained unscathed and are a model for how the past must be treated everything is in its po proper and perfect place right this warning that constant gives symbolizes the Paradox that however necessary it may be to guard the past it can also be really dangerous to both the body and the psyche to do so so really interesting observation here now let's look at the house after the fire this is where it is then referred to as a castle so if you are analyzing the the setting or the symbol of the house in your work make sure that you're really particular about when you're referring to it as a house or a cast Castle now it is in the title where it's mentioned the word Castle is only mentioned one more time in the text and it's when Marat is looking around her after the fire and she says a house was a castle turreted and open to the sky and here you can see I've tried to include turrets of a castle so that you can see what she might be meaning it's not literally a castle but because it's been destroyed it's open the roof has been destroyed it looks like a castle now this represents the destruction of patriarchy the fact that the house has been destroyed it's that that status and power and wealth particularly pertaining to the Blackwood men and it also this notion of it being a castle fits in with marat's kind of fanciful Fair tale Notions but it also is by its very design it's supposed to keep people out and it becomes a fortress for these women to stay in the staircase is also ruined uh are in the fire and maricat has quite a few sections of the text where she describes the staircase after the fire and makes it very clear that there's nothing left this also represents the destruction of the father and the patriarch of the family and all of the things that gave him status and Power in the community the mother's room is quite interesting in that it's not destroyed but it is ransacked by The Villages the sisters only visit it once after the fire they make a a point of going in that's described in a lot of detail and then they never go in again when they go in Marat sees the mother's portrait looking down on them graciously and constant places a dressed in figure that she found somehow untouched and kind of just laid gently in the grass it is not broken she places that on the mantle below the mother's portrait as a tribute and for one quick minute the great shadowy room came back together again as it should be and then fell apart forever and I think what this really represents is the mother's Legacy you know the girls it hasn't been destroyed but it will be safely left behind and that Dresden figure will exist as a tribute to the mother Lynch puts it really well here when she said if the father has been excoriated the mother is respectfully buried or perhaps intuned a symbolic representation of the old the social order that is being rejected or surpassed and in terms of the seller after the fire it is one of those settings in the house that remains untouched it serves as a bunker for the girls when the home is being ransacked and all the people are looking for them and it also provides them with food and it's really important here to note the significance of food and the value that had that has compared to the money that they actually don't touch um at the end of the the text this seller also represents the legacy of the Blackwood women in this new house again we talked about the house is representing this maternal space for the girls this is their new currency food that's how they're going to live Okay so we've done the house let's look now at the moon now the moon is made very clear in chapter one this is like a self soothing fantasy of Amat whenever she is um anxious about going into the village whenever someone treats her horribly she pretends that she's on the moon and she says everything safe on the moon and I actually had a look in chapter one The Moon is mentioned nine times in chapter 1 when she's going through the village which I think is really important in Western literature the moon can also be symbolic of everything maternal and again having that that lens on your thinking as you are analyzing this text as well well is very important and Lynch puts it well when she said the Moon is marat's dream of uninterrupted love between herself and constant and so when they get to the end of the text and they're living by themselves together they talk about it a lot as being like they're on the moon we finally reach the moon and I told you you would like it on the moon just the two of us together food is also really important in this text there are some fascinating um analyses of this online that you can find um and particularly Lynch claims that it becomes the alternative economy which is quite interesting so food in the text is a symbol of love and nurturing it's also a symbol of power this was how Marat killed her family and Lyn says that after the murders food rather than money becomes the economy of house the making providing anticipation and ingesting of food preoccupies all three and again like I said before the safe after the fire remains untouched the girls never open it um they never even mention it again after the fire and yet food is something that they do talk about the food from the cellar and The Villages is valued and that exchange of food throughout the text is often representative of relationships between characters as well the crack in the sidewalk is a really random symbol I know it seems really strange to talk about but I wanted to actually include the passage where it's mentioned so that you can see how much detail uh Jackson affords it and you can see I've highlighted all the sections here that highlight how many times it is mentioned and I think what the crack really me uh represents here is that there's something deeply flawed in the village there's something not right about it and that has always been the case and if you are analyzing the imagery of the village and then contrasting that with the imagery of the house I think that's a really interesting space for analysis as well now the safe we've already mentioned a couple of times but the safe and its contents represent um the the Blackwood lineage of wealth and social status because it contains the entire Blackwood Fortune it is initially controlled by John we know that he he doled out keys to certain members of the family and it is desired by Charles so very much valued by the men in the text the sisters disregard its value in fact after the fire they make a joke that you know it's funny that it's been left behind they couldn't carry it she touched it with her toe and then the sisters never mention the safe again right and a really interesting point by lit charts that it doesn't just represent the status but also the broader capitalist patriarchy um of their world now some other symbols in in the text John's watch represents power and I think it's interesting if you have a look through uh for the watch it moves between the men and Marat so back and forth as you have this struggle for power and it is eventually like all the other uh things that belong to John burned away and destroyed in the fire now John's notebook it represents John's power and wealth it contains all of the debts that he has um or that all of the villages have sorry so he controls uh the money that is also destroyed by the end as well which is interesting and there's a really interesting analysis online I'll put it in a show notes as well that talks about Windows symbolizing judgment both um from The Villages and of the Village um and vice versa for the sisters so hopefully this has been helpful just some some really interesting ways of looking at the text I also recommend that even though you should always read a book as a hard copy I recommend that when you are preparing for an exam or a sack that you download a digital copy so that you can actually you know contrl F command F you can type in the symbols and see all of the times where they appear throughout a text this is one that is for free available for free on uh Apple Books and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere as well but highly recommend that you do have a look at a digital version thanks so much see you later