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Summary: Chapter 3

Merricat, who has noticed Constance looking off toward the gate more than usual, believes a change is coming. Uncle Julian, overwhelmed by the visit from Helen Clarke and Mrs. Wright, has been unwell, necessitating Constance’s attention. When Merricat wakes on Saturday morning, she thinks she hears her dead family calling to her.  

She describes her weekly routine. On Sundays she checks her “safeguards,” or objects she buries to guarantee protection for her and Constance. On Mondays she and Constance neaten the house. On Tuesdays and Fridays, she goes into the village. On Wednesdays, she checks the fence surrounding their house for weak points. On Thursdays, she goes into the attic and dresses in her family’s old clothes. On Saturdays, like today, she helps Constance in the garden as she maintains the flowers and picks food to preserve in the cellar.

Merricat decides to come up with three words for protection. If no one speaks the words, nothing will change. She settles on melody, Gloucester, and Pegasus. A doctor called Dr. Levy arrives to check on Uncle Julian, as he does once per week.  

Once he is feeling better, Uncle Julian is brought outside, where he reminisces about the day of the poisoning, focusing on minor details such as who went downstairs first that morning and the tune his brother was whistling. He remembers they had an excellent breakfast, though he encouraged his wife not to eat too much of it. His brother John left to see a man about building a grape arbor while Julian, Dorothy, and Merricat and Constance’s mother sat in the garden. Thomas was nearby climbing a tree. Julian wonders why the killer didn’t poison their lunch rather than their dinner. He becomes cold, and Constance brings him inside. Merricat asks Constance if she will take care of her when she’s old like Julian, and Constance says she will if she’s still around.

Analysis: Chapter 3

Chapter 3 offers the reader a chance to experience Merricat and Constance’s regular routine before introducing the change that Merricat so fears. Their week follows a fixed schedule that Merricat finds familiar and comforting, and days pass without variation or surprises.

Merricat uses a form of protective magic to ward off change, burying objects or nailing them to trees as safeguards and coming up with words no one can say. She infuses meaning into the number three, coming up with three words no one must say lest they invoke the change, and noticing that Constance looks to the driveway three times.

Chapter 3 introduces the Blackwood parents, and particularly the girls’ father, John, more fully. He comes across as a domineering presence in the home by Uncle Julian’s description, whistling loudly in the morning without caring about waking others and dictating how much others can eat. Uncle Julian also expresses a certain amount of this paternalistic behavior; he explains that he and his brother’s wives always did what they were told back then. Though they were both guests in the home and he was always anxious to appear grateful to John for hosting them, Uncle Julian’s method of showing gratefulness was to insist his wife help out with the chores.

The idea of male dominance contrasts with the primarily female makeup of the home today. Constance is now in charge, and Uncle Julian must depend on her for everything. Neither she nor Merricat answer to anyone, a subversion of the cultural norms of the time. Merricat wanders around the woods as she pleases while Constance works in her garden and in the kitchen, making meals not because she must but because she clearly enjoys it. Food for her is a source of joy and nourishment; she, like her female ancestors, harvests what grows in the earth, preserving it in jars in the cellar. This marks women, as symbolized by the food they were traditionally responsible for, as the drivers and preservers of the Blackwood line. The fact that the rest of the Blackwood family was poisoned grants food not only the power of life, but death.

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