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Magic

Merricat makes offerings to support her desire for isolation and control, burying money in the yard and nailing books to trees in an attempt to yield the outcomes she wants. These manifestations border on a sort of witchcraft, and it’s a way of life by which she assumes others operate, too—she wonders, for instance, if the Harlers leave junk in their yard to ward off demons the same way she hopes her three magic words will ward off any coming change.

Rules

Merricat has a set of rules she must abide by. For instance, she can’t help prepare food or gather mushrooms, or handle knives. She can pass sandwiches to their guests, but she can’t pour tea. It might be assumed early on that these rules were set by Constance to keep Merricat out of trouble, but it is revealed at the end that Merricat herself set these rules, suggesting perhaps she feels some amount of regret for poisoning her family and wishes not to hurt anyone else. If nothing else, Merricat’s strict rules for herself are indicative of the control she seeks in her life.

Threes

The number three surfaces often in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, often as a result of Merricat’s preoccupation with magic. She chooses three “powerful” words in an attempt to keep Charles at bay (though she doesn’t know yet he is the change that is coming), and tells herself if he is not gone in three days, she will break the mirror. She considers the number three to be a particularly powerful number: she notices Constance look to the driveway three times ahead of Charles’s arrival, and realizes they had spoken of her leaving the property three times in one day, to her immense disquiet: “I realized now that this was the third time in one day that the subject had been touched, and three times makes it real.”

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