What is the name of the protagonist in Shirley Jackson's 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'?

The protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” is Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood.

Merricat is an eighteen-year-old girl who narrates the 1962 psychological horror novel. She lives on the isolated Blackwood estate with her older sister, Constance, and their ailing Uncle Julian. Her strange beliefs, protective rituals, and intense attachment to Constance shape the novel’s unsettling atmosphere.

Merricat is also an unreliable narrator. Six years before the story begins, several members of the Blackwood family died from arsenic poisoning. Constance was tried and acquitted, but the nearby villagers continue to treat the surviving family as outcasts. The truth about Merricat’s role emerges gradually and is central to the book’s suspense.

Readers sometimes choose Constance because she is the family’s domestic center, or Jonas because the cat is closely associated with Merricat. However, the novel is written in Merricat’s voice, making her both its narrator and principal character. Jackson’s final novel was published in 1962 and later adapted into a 2018 film.