Class Tensions in We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Class Tensions in We Have Always Lived in the Castle

This article relates to We Have Always Lived in the Castle

In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the wealthy Blackwood family lives in a sort of tension with their working-class neighbors. Things reach a boiling point when daughter Constance Blackwood is accused of murdering several of her family members, with the neighbors feeling free to openly mock the now-orphaned Blackwood girls. But as the narrator Merricat Blackwood recounts: "The people of the village have always hated us."

We learn that the other rich families in the area are not pariahs, and are in fact respected. Families like the Clarkes and Carringtons live in "new lovely homes" just outside the village and don't interact frequently with its residents. They send their children to private schools, run most of their errands in larger towns, and get their hair cut in the city.

Merricat says: "I was always puzzled that the people of the village, living in their dirty little houses on the main highway or out on Creek Road, smiled and nodded and waved when the Clarkes and the Carringtons drove by; if Helen Clarke came to Elbert's Grocery to pick up a can of tomato sauce or a pound of coffee her cook had forgotten everyone told her 'Good morning' and said the weather was better today."

She doesn't understand why they are treated so differently, thinking, "The Clarkes' house is newer but no finer than the Blackwood house." This reveals that she fails to grasp the real difference between the Clarkes and Blackwoods. While the Clarkes live in the same geographical area as the villagers, but otherwise keep to themselves and their peers, we get the sense that the Blackwoods have a history of being more involved in the town and open in their disdain for their neighbors. When there was talk years ago among locals of tearing down some decrepit shacks and building up the town, "no one ever lifted a finger; maybe they thought the Blackwoods might take to attending town hall meetings if they did."

The Blackwood home is also right in the town, closer to the heart of things than those of the other wealthy families. "Past the town hall, bearing to the left, is Blackwood Road," which encircles the family's land. "Along every inch" of the road is a wire fence built by the Blackwood patriarch—not exactly a welcoming scene for neighbors.

Merricat's mother comes from another old family in town, the Rochesters, and Merricat mentions that their historic home, "the loveliest in town," should "by rights" belong to Constance, but is instead home to a family that hoards old mattresses and plumbing fixtures on their lawn. One gets the sense there is a long history behind this dispute.

Often Merricat's narration includes details that seem to repeat what older relatives have told her, grudges passed down onto her generation. She certainly shares her family's snobbery, musing that "the houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant, and the Rochester house and the Blackwood house and even the town hall had been brought here accidentally from some far lovely country where people lived with grace. Perhaps the fine houses had been captured—perhaps as punishment for the Rochesters and the Blackwoods and their secret bad hearts?—and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers." Merricat views poverty as an aesthetic failing. She does not stop to consider how hard it would be to live without riches; rather, she is the one imprisoned for having to live among the rural poor. It is worth noting, however, that this narration comes after the town has openly turned on her and her sister. Her conviction about the "ugliness of the villagers" is no doubt fueled by their treatment of her.

With the parents dead and a young woman heading the household, the villagers are downright vicious. They no longer need to hide their contempt for the Blackwoods; they display it openly. Their children have a playground chant openly mocking the fatal poisoning of several members of the family, while adults pick on Merricat when she runs her errands in town.

One villager bitterly muses how the Blackwoods never asked him to dinner and then adds: "You think I wanted to be asked to dinner? You think I'm crazy?" The poisoning incident confirms for the villagers what they have always wanted to believe, that the rich people who lived alongside them and looked down their noses at them for so long weren't merely snobs—they were fundamentally evil.

The push-pull of this dynamic, where each of the parties views themselves as superior while resenting that the other doesn't share their view, makes We Have Always Lived in the Castle a stronger and richer text. Constance and Merricat are neither innocent victims of ostracism nor evil snobs who got what they deserve. They are, instead, complex characters caught in a web of tension that precedes their generation.

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This article relates to We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It first ran in the November 5, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.