We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Merricat can’t let the family eat dinner without her. When she returns, she and Jonas stand looking at the house with love. Merricat thinks it is almost clean of Charles’s influence. He’s still angry at her when she goes in, and Merricat can tell that Constance is tired of his anger. Uncle Julian is mashing his food up and eating with a napkin under his chin. Constance tells Merricat to tidy herself before she comes to dinner, and Charles says that they’re thinking of a good punishment for her.

Merricat goes upstairs and creeps into Charles’s room. Constance has cleaned the dirt out and now it looks very empty, because Merricat moved everything else to the attic. She can tell that Charles has been lying on the bed, and she imagines him trying to find something familiar in the room. He’s left his pipe smoldering in an old saucer on the side table. Constance brought these saucers out specially for him and said that they must have come from some great-grandmother’s dowry. Merricat felt that they belonged in their place in the pantry.

Merricat brushes the pipe and the saucer into the wastebasket, and they fall onto newspaper. One of her eyes is seeing shades of orange and the other is seeing shades of blue and green, and she wonders about this. She almost forgets to tidy herself before she returns to the dinner table. She requests that Constance make her a cake. When Charles threatens her with the prospect of a long talk, Merricat says the Latin name for deadly nightshade. Uncle Julian is eating more than usual and feeling much better, partly because he’s been so impolite to Charles.

Suddenly Charles smells smoke. Constance checks the kitchen and Charles the hall. He suspects that Merricat is somehow the cause of the smoke, but then Constance reminds him of his pipe, and he runs upstairs. Merricat asks whether it would start a fire. Charles screams from upstairs and tells them all to run because the house is on fire. Uncle Julian remains calm and goes to retrieve his papers. Charles flees to get help, telling Constance to put the money from the safe in a bag.

Constance helps Uncle Julian to his room while Merricat looks upstairs. She can see the fire in her father’s room. The fire doesn’t seem in a hurry, so she doesn’t hurry either. She wants to shut the door to her father’s room to keep the fire confined to Charles’s things, but it’s already coming outside the room. Everything belonging to Charles must be burnt by now. Constance returns, saying that Uncle Julian is getting his papers. Merricat suggests they shelter on the porch. Constance seems angry with the house for burning.

Merricat guides Constance onto the porch just as fire engines roar into the driveway. Constance covers her face. Jim Donell runs into the house first, and the sisters hide behind vines growing on the porch as the rest of the firefighters drag hoses in and light up the front of the house. Charles is yelling for the men to get the safe. Constance is worried that people might be able to see her. Merricat looks out to find that the entire village is watching.

Someone asks where the sisters and Uncle Julian are, but Charles says they’re fine. Merricat thinks Uncle Julian must have gotten out the back door, but in any case the fire seems confined to the bedrooms upstairs. Constance says that Uncle Julian was more annoyed than frightened, as was Jonas, who went out the back door. She remarks how much scrubbing she’ll have to do to get the hall clean. Merricat thinks everything is all right, and once the fire is out, they’ll go inside and clean.

Merricat can’t distinguish any faces in the crowd in the yard. She thinks of the fire as belonging to Charles and marvels at the firemen’s ability to destroy it. She can hear the fire and the voices of the firemen and the crowd. One woman suggests that they let the house burn, and Charles is still saying to get the safe out. The firemen insist that they have to put the fire out. The smoke obscures the faces of the villagers.

Merricat is tired and hungry and wonders how long the firemen will make the fire last, because she wants dinner. Soon the light begins to dim and the voices inside sound more satisfied. Those outside sound disappointed. The villagers wish the house had burned down with the Blackwoods inside. When Jim Donell emerges, someone asks him why he couldn’t let it burn. He puts his hat that says “chief” in the fire engine. Then he picks up a rock and throws it through the drawing room window.

The villagers laugh and begin to storm the house. They shatter the windows and break the Dresden figurines and the harp, laughing all the while. Charles tries to get someone to help him with the safe. The villagers begin to chant the rhyme about Constance poisoning Merricat. As they approach the sisters’ hiding place, Merricat tells Constance they need to run, but Constance is afraid. The window behind them is smashed. Merricat pulls Constance to the porch steps. A little girl runs out the front door and her mother stops her from eating a handful of Constance’s spice cookies.

Merricat and Constance have to run through the headlights of the cars to get to the woods. While they hesitate, two more cars arrive, and Jim Clarke and Helen Clarke get out of one. Jim Clarke goes inside, enraged at what’s happening, but his words have no effect on the villagers inside. Dr. Levy gets out of the other car and follows him in, asking where Uncle Julian is. No one sees the sisters.

Merricat helps Constance down the steps. Someone sees them and shouts, and then the villagers surround them, pushing to see them better and taunting them. Helen Clarke is crying against her car. The villagers don’t want to touch the sisters, and so Merricat and Constance run towards the woods. People keep blocking their path no matter where they turn, chanting the rhyme and laughing. Merricat worries that Constance might fall, so she stands still.

From the porch, Jim Clarke announces that the fun is over, because Uncle Julian is dead. The villagers fall silent. Charles asks whether Constance killed him, and the crowd moves away from the sisters. Dr. Levy says that Uncle Julian’s heart failed. Jim Clarke pushes the villagers towards their cars, and they go. Merricat pulls Constance into the trees. No one sees them. When they reach the path Merricat hugs and soothes Constance.

As Merricat leads Constance to her shelter by the stream, she thinks how glad she is that she can keep Constance safe. She’ll tell her stories and bring her berries. She brings Constance to a pile of leaves and a blanket in the corner. Jonas is already there. Merricat covers the entrance with branches and looks up at the stars peering through. Thinking of their mother’s broken Dresden figurine, she tells Constance that she’s going to poison everyone. For the first time since it happened, Constance acknowledges that she knows Merricat poisoned their family, and Merricat admits that she did.