We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Merricat decides that Thursday is the day to get rid of Charles. Constance makes spice cookies, which is a shame because they’ll go to waste since it’s the last day of their former life. Merricat watches Charles trying clumsily to fix the back step. She creeps upstairs, finds her father’s watch on his dresser, and twists the winding knob backwards until the watch breaks. She feels like she has finally attacked Charles effectively. She knows she can’t get rid of his mark everywhere, but she hopes that if she changes the house enough, he’ll become lost and leave.

The night before, Merricat brought baskets of wood and leaves in from outside. Now she takes her father’s things from his room and replaces them with these scraps. She pours water on the bed and tears down the curtains so Charles will have to see the road leading away. In this room, he won’t know who or where he is.

Merricat is lying in her room when she hears Charles shouting angrily to Constance outside. He hasn’t managed to mend the step. He’s carrying the silver dollars that Merricat buried, and is enraged that so much money would be buried. Constance tells him that Merricat did it, and is entirely unconcerned. Merricat thinks that perhaps Charles finds money no matter where it is, or else he’s methodically digging up all of the land.

Constance goes inside to answer Uncle Julian’s call, and Charles follows. When Charles goes to put the silver dollars in the safe, Merricat runs outside. She considers turning Charles into a fly in a spider web or trapping him inside a tree or burying him. She finds the hole where the money was and imagines him digging it up. She scratches a face on a stone and buries it in the hole, imagining that it’s Charles’s head.

Merricat cleans out her shelter because Charles was so close to it. She returns home when she gets hungry, and Charles is shouting in the kitchen. Merricat wonders whether he’ll start squeaking if he shouts long enough, and whether Constance would laugh if he did. He stops shouting when he sees Merricat and says that whatever punishment he comes up with, she’ll remember. Constance says that it’s all her fault. Merricat begins listing poisonous plants and their properties, but when she says she came home for lunch, Constance tells her she has to explain herself to Charles.

Charles has brought a handful of sticks and dirt from his room and placed it on the kitchen table. He tells Merricat to listen, and Uncle Julian asks Constance to tell Charles to be quiet, which makes Charles say he’s fed up with Uncle Julian because Uncle Julian can’t remember Charles’s name. Merricat thinks she must be kinder to Uncle Julian. Charles tells her to explain why she dirtied his room, but she ignores him. Uncle Julian thinks that Charles is the sisters’ father, John, and advises him not to get involved in their wives’ arguments. Charles says Constance must get out of this environment, and Uncle Julian says that he and his wife will leave if John insists.

Constance looks like she’s going to cry, and Merricat calls Charles evil. He says the house is crazy, and Constance tries to pacify him by saying she’ll clean his room. Charles goes to Uncle Julian, and Julian tells Charles to stay away from his papers and calls him a bastard. Charles wants to convince him that he’s not John Blackwood, but Julian suddenly seems to know exactly who he is and wants him to tell his father that Julian said Charles was a bastard.

Uncle Julian tells Charles to be quiet, and Charles says he has to deal with Merricat first. Julian, however, says that Merricat died in the orphanage during Constance’s trial, and she hardly matters to his book. Charles is outraged and points out that Merricat is right in front of him. Julian just tells him to be quiet. Merricat laughs. Julian asks Constance why his papers are in a box and when Charles is going to leave. Charles says he’s staying.

Constance cleans the dirt off the table while Charles looks baffled, and Merricat thinks Charles is becoming trapped. Constance tells him to go rest, but he says Merricat needs to be punished. Merricat asks whether he’s going to send her to bed without her dinner. She runs out to the field and sits in the middle with Jonas, where the high grass hides them.

A while later, Merricat goes to the summerhouse her father had built, which she hasn’t visited for six years. Her family never liked the summerhouse because something bad had gotten into it when it was built. Merricat never buried anything around it. The trees grow close to it and the flowers around it have died. It’s so ugly that her mother wanted to burn it down. Merricat sits on the floor and imagines her dead family as they would sit around the dining room table.

Merricat imagines her family’s conversation. They say she should have anything she wants. They all love her, and she should never be punished because she never does anything wrong. Most of all, she must never be sent to bed without her dinner. They pass her more food, rise when she rises, and bow their heads to her.