We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Food takes on a central significance in Jackson’s story. For Uncle Julian, his inability to feed himself becomes a critical signal that he requires assistance. Meanwhile, Charles happily consumes everything Constance serves him, demanding more and more meals to be served up at his command, which represents the sustenance he is seeking from the fortune Constance and Merricat have. We discover that Merricat reaches her breaking point at the threat that she should be sent to bed without supper. Relatedly, it is an important fact that her method of murder had to do with poisoning food in such a way as to take everyone’s preference for food into account; she understood, for instance, that Constance didn’t take sugar, so Constance was not in danger of being poisoned by the dessert berries. Such intimacy denotes both her sensitivity and her savagery. Finally, there is Constance, who lives in a world of food. It is as if, having survived Merricat’s fatal table setting, she has become tangled in a web of food, obsessively preserving food and placing it next to her dead relatives’ jars in the basement, and always meeting every demand to cook a meal or place a setting for a new guest. Through creating meals and maintaining food stores, she is directly contributing to both the family’s continued existence and the traditions that have contributed to the tragic, disconnected world they currently live in.