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Summary: Chapter 9

Merricat hears an ambulance take Uncle Julian away in the night. People call out to her, but she ignores them. When Constance awakens, Merricat notes that she did not have dinner the night before and Constance agrees to return to the house. There, they see that the top of the home is gone entirely. Inside, they observe that the interior has been completely ransacked; in the kitchen, dishes have been shattered, the table overturned, the chairs smashed.

Merricat asks what will happen to Uncle Julian. Constance says there will be a funeral and he will be buried with the rest of their family. Merricat notes today is Helen Clarke’s day to come for tea, and Constance insists no one will ever be invited in again.

The drawing room, too, is destroyed. They find the safe unopened nearby; clearly, someone tried to carry it away and failed. They close the drawing room forever, along with the dining room. Helen Clarke arrives with her husband and tries to get the sisters to come live with them, banging on locked doors and desperately calling out Constance’s name. She insists what happened the previously night was a misunderstanding, but when Constance and Merricat don’t answer her, Jim Clarke tells his wife they should leave them alone. When the couple departs, Constance begins to panic, wondering how she and Merricat will live, what they’ll eat when their preserves run out, and where they’ll sleep. Merricat suggests they sleep on a mattress that she spotted on the staircase.

Later, Jim Clarke returns to try and convince Merricat and Constance to come home with him on his wife’s instructions. He is accompanied by Dr. Levy, who wants to know if the women are injured. After a while of knocking with no answer, both men become impatient; Jim Clarke says the funeral is the next day and they would think differently of all their old friends if they could see the many flowers purchased for him, and Dr. Levy implies they’ll regret their isolation one day when they’re hurt or sick and do need help.

After the men finally leave, Constance apologizes for mentioning the night before that Merricat killed their family. She’s known this ever since the day it happened, but never said a word. Merricat says she put the poison in the sugar specifically because she knew Constance didn’t take sugar. They agree never to speak of it again.

Analysis: Chapter 9

The knowledge that Constance has known who was responsible for their family’s deaths since the moment it happened forces the reader to recontextualize what we know of the sisters’ relationship. It’s clear that Constance hid the evidence, enduring the scrutiny of a trial and the destruction of her reputation, not to save herself but to save Merricat. In turn, Merricat’s plot to poison the family was premeditated and meticulous; what the reader may have suspected but now knows for certain is that Constance didn’t merely survive by happenstance, the way Uncle Julian did. Merricat chose to poison the sugar specifically because she knew Constance did not take sugar. She wanted everyone dead except for Constance, including their younger brother and their aunt and uncle.

Whether this is indeed because she was sent to bed without supper or because she merely wanted Constance all to herself (or whether it is a combination of the two) remains unclear. Constance’s view of Merricat is also a mystery. She told Uncle Julian in Chapter 2 that she would give anything to have the family back again, but appears to hold no ill will toward Merricat for killing them. Is she a hostage, terrified of the outside world and therefore trapped at home with the sister who murdered their family? Constance certainly indulges Merricat, but there’s little indication she fears her. In the end, the reader is forced to accept that solving the mystery of the who poisoned the Blackwoods raises more questions than it answers.

Whatever the case, Merricat and Constance now truly have only each other. Constance states firmly that no one will ever visit again, and neither sister accepts help from Jim Clarke or Dr. Levy despite their initial attempts to prove they’ve come with the best of intentions. As their patience wears thin, however, both men reveal a degree of impatience, defensiveness, and hostility toward the girls, ironically reinforcing the necessity of the girls’ isolation with thinly veiled threats about the importance of community.

The drawing room and dining room both serve as symbols of the sisters’ past, and closing them forever fulfills the same purpose as their agreement never to speak again of the poisoning—that is, they are putting the past behind them and forging a new path forward. 

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