Male Authority In We Have Always Lived In The Castle

This essay discusses the different ways in which Merricat and Constance challenge male authority in the novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Both women maintain their independence in a society where women had a low status at the time, choosing to take control of their lives rather than through men, with Constance demonstrating her power primarily through her control over her family. In this way she feels a sense of control and refuses to conform to traditional female power in the home, while Merricat asserts her power through her imagination and creativity, using her creativity to escape some reality and then also using her imagination to create rituals and spells to protect themselves. They rejected the social expectations of women and

The novel writes that “She folded the grocery bag and put it with the others in the drawer, and set the library books on the shelf where they were going to stay forever” and “Constance worked in the kitchen, and it was a joy to watch her, moving beautifully in the sunlight, touching foods so softly” (Jackson, 2010, p. 21), Constance, as the primary caregiver for her sister and Uncle Julian, is usually responsible for cooking, cleaning, and other things in life. Instead of accepting the obligation to care for them as those traditional women are forced to do, she takes the initiative to take care of them, which challenges the traditional gender roles, which gives them independence as women in that society. The character of Constance shows the refusal of others to interfere with her arrangement of some things in the family, which challenges the traditional idea that women need male care. As the story develops in the novel, Constance does not seem to be as weak and passive as seen earlier, she is actually a completely different person who goes out of her way to do everything she can to protect her sister. Constance does a lot for Merricat, as the novel mentioned that "‘Here is treasure for you to bury,’ Constance used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright

Constance's role as the master of the house establishes her control over the family and rejects society's expectations of women, while Merricat uses her imagination and creativity to demonstrate her power, which she uses in an unrecognized way. They show that women can use their own kinds of power to challenge traditional gender roles and authority, demonstrating the power of resistance. Again, it shows that in the society of the time, the issue of power distribution was something that people should consider, and male authority always dominated, while women always appeared in a lower status in life, which is one of the reasons why Constance and Merricat went to challenge male