The Feral Women of Orphan Black on Netflix and Shirley Jackson's We've Always Lived in the Castle
- Brandi Bradley
- Oct 2
- 6 min read
Much to my delight, Netflix has made Orphan Black available for rewatch!
Orphan Black currently on Netflix is a series about a group of young women who are on the search to understand their origins, uncovering mystery after mystery, and one nefarious group after another. And that’s all I will say in the way of spoilers because it is a show that is best entered blind. It’s a mystery, it’s a noir, and it has some outstanding performances.
Years ago I took my obsession with the show and wrote several pieces on it, which allowed me to look closer at the show, but also watch my favorite show over and over again to prove all my points.
Now rewatching it has been like revisiting an old friend. I’m watching scenes and remembering sitting in a study corral in the library taking notes on what I was watching. The theme song is soothing and I even went back and put some of the ambient tones used as background in the show on my Spotify playlist.
Whenever someone reengages with an old favorite show or book, they look at it with somewhat fresh eyes. People will notice how when they return to an old favorite, it will open new insight into the story or the characters. Each rewatch allowed her to see it from a different vantage point. I’ve been peeking in on the Orphan Black forum on Reddit and see other people in the midst of their rewatch and developing a new appreciation for a different character. Some are focusing on Cosima, or Alison. Some are pushing back against Sarah’s choices.
For me, then and now, all I care about is Helena.
For those who have seen the show, Helena was positioned as an antagonist at the beginning only to have allegiances change. She’s an active chaos monster, who brings violence with her, even in her softer moments. Recounting her childhood trauma where once she had been locked in a dark room as punishment, she tells someone, “She gave me darkness, and in turn, I gave her the darkness {mimes popping out someone’s eyes}.” From every moment on the screen, the message is you do not f*%k with Helena.
And I’ve never loved anyone more. She’s a monster and I have no intention to change her or to try to pin her down. Like a person walking through the woods and coming upon a bear, I don’t want to engage, I only want to stand witness to her wildness.
Feral women– and make no mistake, Helena is a feral woman – are often women who make up their own rules. They have their own sense of justice. And the unhinged behavior, the absolute certainty that they are right in their actions, and their willingness to fight for their survival at all cost makes them dangerous beings of wonder.
Helena eats with both hands like a child. She rips the heads off dolls to make her own artwork. She scrawls on the walls. She will burn down your house if she is displeased. But she also fights for her people, does the dirty work that others cannot abide, and is a relentless defender of children who are to her the most innocent and vulnerable.
The benefit of having a “feral” character is they can act like the clean up squad. They will make the choices that other characters cannot because of social codes, morals, or ethics. Feral characters live solely for themselves and who they have chosen to be their favorites. They are unpredictable, which allows for surprises for the reader/viewer. The feral characters in film and literature appear in many forms for many purposes. Pilate in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon offers refuge. Mouse in Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress offers moral ambiguity. Legs in Joyce Carol Oates' Foxfire offers a dismantling of a patriarchal structure through informed chaos – while Maddie gave structure to Leg's chaotic mind.
However, I think Shirley Jackson works with this idea of the feral woman in many of her works: The Bird’s Nest, Hangsaman, and, of course, We’ve Always Lived in the Castle.
Merricat in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle truly believes she is full of magic, but it’s a magic of her own making. She applies meaning to ordinary objects and buries them around the house to protect her and her sister from danger. Merricat also eats with both hands, scours the wilderness like a cat patrolling the property, and rids herself of anyone who displeases her. She will burn down her own house just to spite you.
What’s interesting about Merricat is the family’s position in their town’s societal structure. Jackson loved to write commentary on small town life. The family in the novel was once a known and prestigious one. They own this incredible property which used to have cut throughs to the woods around it and the townspeople were allowed to use it for hunting and traveling purposes, until the lady of the house closed it off. An undiagnosed anxiety issue plagued her which made her paranoid and concerned that people outside the house could see in, could watch her. And in response, the townspeople angered over this change, started to resent the family.
So when almost all of them ended up poisoned one night – leaving only Merricat, Constance, and Uncle Julian as survivors – the town was already poised to abandon them and turn them into mythology.
In a scene where Merricat goes to town to gather supplies, the townspeople are passive-aggressively speaking around her at the diner. In vague but pointed tones, they are talking about her around her instead of to her face. Her own delusions are developing it into an us vs them mentality and a paranoia that the town is plotting against them.
And she does not care. She makes it clear that she’d rather be rid of all of them, and that only person in the world that matters to her is her sister Constance. All of her protection spells and incantations are designed to protect her and Constance.
Where Helena is a chaos monster, Merricat is a conniver. Helena is impulsive; Merricat plots. Helena believes in miracles; Merricat conjures her own magic.
Both are determined to “protect” their sisters.
If sisterhood is the connection – the female ability to team up in order to protect themselves – then Merricat struggles with her own narcissism which blinds her to the fact that Constance misses having an outside community. With the swift and sudden poisoning of her family members, Constance has been sentenced to a life of caring for others. She is in a lot of ways a prisoner to Merricat’s whims. Constance cannot marry and create her own family. She cannot have friends outside of Merricat.
I have always wondered whether Constance was happy with Merricat or if she was merely surviving a bad situation. At one point Constance tells Merricat she’s so happy, but is it the happiness of someone freed of the burdens of a community that has rejected them or is it a lie to appease her jailer? A friend of mine was the first to point that out to me, that her proclamation of happiness could have been a fawn response. When trapped with a dangerous creature, sometimes going along with what the creature wants in order to survive. I think the moment is open to interpretation, but every time I reread the story, as much as I adore Merricat, I feel more and more sympathy for Constance.
In Orphan Black, sisterhood wins the second the women recognize that they will disagree, fight, and keep secrets from each other, but no matter what, they are aligned to protect each other. They might have to swallow their pride from time to time, but they don’t have to appease each other to win.
If you have a theory, feel free to comment below, or look for me on Instagram at thebrandibradley.
And if you are building that fall TBR list, make sure you check out the brandibradley.com shop and get your copy of Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder.
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