Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood
The protagonist, whose perspective the novel is told from, Merricat's description of herself as an ordinary young girl who loves her sister above all else serves as the story's introduction. Most of her family is dead, as noted in the first paragraph's final sentence, and the story concerns her attempts to keep its last two members aside from herself safe.
- Ambiguously Evil: Whether Merricat is mentally ill to the point where she doesn't understand what is wrong behind her actions, or if she is fully aware of how awful a person she is but simply doesn't care, is a major question her character invites, and one ultimately left up to reader interpretation.
- Anti-Hero: Zigzags between this and Anti-Villain. She murdered her family, but it's implied that she genuinely believes she had a good reason, and, at the very least, she's mentally disturbed and to some extent can't be blamed for her actions. Plus, she clearly cares about Constance and Jonas the cat
- The Atoner: Downplayed. She often reminds herself to be kinder to her Uncle Julian, but isn't particularly dismayed when he dies, nor does she pay any of her successful victims any thought.
- The Bad Guy Wins: If viewed as the villain. The book ends with her finally getting to live "on the moon" alone with her sister, actually the fire charred remains of the Blackwood home, though at the cost of Uncle Julian's life.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Appears to genuinely want to do the right thing, but she's insane and has a very distorted view of right and wrong, which often overlaps to her what's best for her and only her. Still, there are a couple people she really cares about and she does believe herself to be doing what's right.
- Bookworm: She's shown to read a lot about fairy tales and history.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Merricat's grasp on reality is tenuous at best. This is best shown with the "magic" she practices, where she performs rituals like burying coins and nailing books to trees and seems to genuinely believe that this will protect her family.
- Deadpan Snarker: She responds to Cousin Charles's threats with a mixture of quips, silence, and lectures on deadly nightshade.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The reason she poisoned her family was because they kept sending her to bed without supper for misbehaving.
- The Dog Bites Back: She murdered her parents for being sent to bed without dinner, something that happened often.
- Averted with the townspeople who bully her, who for all her talk about wanting to see them dead, Merricat seems quite meek about standing up to.
- Freudian Excuse: The Blackwood family is established early on as a quarrelsome and tense one, likely inspiring its youngest daughter's equally violent disposition.
- Hates Baths: She admits upfront that she dislikes washing herself.
- In-Series Nickname: Her real name is Mary Katherine, though she's nicknamed "Merricat" as a portmanteau of both of those names.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Played straight and eventually inverted. She's done some terrible things, but is at first juxtaposed against Charles as at least having Constance's best interests at heart. This is turned on its head when it is revealed that she was responsible for the Blackwood tragedy, something probably obvious to any sharp reader.
- Loners Are Freaks: In a contrast to her sister, she's as introverted as she is cruel and volatile.
- Psychopathic Manchild: She introduces herself as 18 years old in the book's first paragraph, but her narration and dialogue make her sound younger than that and she's eventually revealed to be very unstable. She hates washing herself, spends all her time in the woods, is extremely immature, is fixated on poisonous mushrooms and other plants, and is superstitious to the point where she nails books to trees in a desperate bid to keep her sister safe from outside corruption.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: She's the red oni to Constance's blue oni, being less mature and much more volatile due to her unstable personality.
- Sadist: Unabashedly. Her unreliable narration is often hijacked by her graphic thoughts of the villagers in various states of suffering, injury or death, which she delights in. It's somewhat justified, considering the village's similarly uninhibited hatred towards the Blackwoods.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: In contrast to Constance, Merricat is highly immature, has violent tendencies, harbors a deep hatred for the villagers, and is much more willing to go outside (either to the village or to the woods to practice her "magic").
- The Stoic: Merricat is quiet and introspective compared to most of the other characters, though as the novel goes on she becomes less and less stable, ultimately culminating in breaking mirrors, attempting to banish Charles from the home via magic, and finally setting the house on fire.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Merricat loves exploring the woods, hates baths, provides for the family (in the form of going out for supplies) and is aggressive and demanding, while Constance is coded extremely feminine: cooking, cleaning, canning, gardening, wearing pink, and in general being gentle and nurturing.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The only thing keeping her from doing something very, very drastic to the villagers that ostracize them is the fact that her sister Constance would disapprove. And at the young age of 12, she's killed her family.
- Unreliable Narrator: Played with. While she is not deliberately deceitful, she nonetheless withholds very important information from the reader, including the rather crucial detail that her entire family is dead, as she reveals in the first paragraph of the book, because she poisoned them 6 years prior.
- Would Hurt a Child: She hates the children of the village as much as she hates their parents, and poisoned her younger brother with arsenic.
- Villain Protagonist: Or at least Anti-Villain. She despises the villagers, kills snakes just because she dislikes them, and is the true culprit behind her entire family's murder, as well as the fire that ultimately leads to Julian's death.
Constance Blackwood
The
Deuteragonist of the novel, Constance is Merricat's kind 28 year old sister, who 6 years prior to the narrative was acquitted for the murder of her family. She and Merricat have an incredibly close relationship, though knows more than she lets on.
- Byronic Hero: While arguably the best person in the entire novel, she still has her own troubles and frequently blames herself for allowing Merricat and Julian's conditions to deteriorate to the point they have.
- Corrupt the Cutie: By the end of the novel, she's become jaded enough to indulge Merricat on her jokes about butchering and eating the village children, and has clearly come to resent them as well.
- The Hermit: Constance lives in isolation away from the village, with only the remnants of her family to keep her company.
- The Ingenue: A constant source of kindness throughout the novel.
- Morality Chain: Merricat, who is otherwise wild and short tempered but obeys her to a fault. It's revealed that Merricat specifically put arsenic in the sugar bowl because she knew Constance didn't take sugar, thus sparing her from being fatally poisoned along with the rest of their family.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue oni to Merricat's red, being calmer and more mature.
- Proper Lady: Constance is in every way the early-1960s ideal for a young lady: she's quiet, sweet, excels in the feminine-coded arts, and at worst, gently scolds Merricat for her mischevous ways.
- Secret-Keeper: She figured out that Merricat had poisoned the family the night they had died, and cleaned the sugar bowl and refused to implicate her sister as the true culprit in order to protect her.
- Shrinking Violet: To an extent. She's a lot more sociable and extroverted than Merricat, though her severe agoraphobia and the mistrust the villagers regard her with keep her social circle limited to her family and Mrs. Clarke.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: In contrast to Merricat, Constance is mature and responsible in looking after the house and her remaining family, is more mentally stable, quietly endures the village's distrust of her, and is agoraphobic to the point that she hasn't left the Blackwood property since the family died.
Julian Blackwood
"Uncle" Julian is, aside from Constance, Merricat's only surviving relative - an old wheelchair bound man with brain damage and an unspecified terminal illness, he often mistakes the two sisters for other, long dead relatives, and
believes that Merricat had died in an orphanage 6 years ago while Constance's trial was pending.
Cousin Charles
Merrikat and Constance's cousin. His father was long since estranged from Julian and the girls' father. Merrikat had never even met him before.
- Adaptational Villainy: He was a greedy asshole in the book, but in the movie he straight-up physically attacks Merricat because she won't stop talking about poison.
- Bathing Beauty: Seen taking a bath in the movie for no particular reason other than to show Sebastian Stan naked.
- Child Hater: Played with. Merricat's narration is childlike, but she's old enough to have boyfriends and go to the grocery store by herself. Even before Merrikat starts trying to get him to go away, he makes it clear he doesn't like her and muses that soon she'll be made to leave and he'll be the one staying.
- Death by Adaptation: Merricat kills him in the movie.
- Kissing Cousins: It's implied that he wants to get together with Constance. Merricat notes that he starts acting and dressing like their father, and wonders if he'll start telling Contance to dress like their mother.
- Gold Digger: He's obsessed with the family's money and appraises almost everything he sees. When there's a fire in the house all he can talk about is getting the family safe out of the house. It's heavily implied that the reason he's being so friendly to Constance is because he wants the Blackwood inheritance.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: He's right that Merricat's behavior isn't healthy or acceptable and that Constance shouldn't wait on her family hand and foot, but it's always framed around his obsession with the Blackwood money.
The Blackwood Family
The rest of the sisters' relatives who have died before the book begins, made up of their father John, mother Lucy, aunt Dorothy (Julian's wife), and younger brother Thomas.
- Abusive Parents: The movie all but says this outright, while there are only hints in the novel.
- In the movie, John Blackwood was a Control Freak towards Constance, even getting a man fired for daring to ask her out. He seemed to physically abuse Merricat as well- when Charles loses his temper at her poison talk, he grabs her roughly and drags her upstairs to do heaven knows what to punish her while Constance follows them in tears but appears too terror-stricken to step in.
- In the book, Constance is forced to do all the cooking, cleaning, and gardening for the family. While she does seem to genuinely enjoy these things, she was not given a choice int he matter while her family was alive like Cinderella. There is even one mention where she was franctically thinking of something to make for lunch real quick, as if the responsibility was hers alone, and another where she's hard at work in the garden while Julian entertains the other women.
- In book and movie, Merricat is triggered by the mere word "punish" and runs away, and was regularly denied supper when she displeased her father. And if Merricat's fantasy can tell us anything, it's that she harbors a lot of anger about however her parents and brother treated her, and we might infer that she was not treated as well as Thomas (since she imagines him being forced to give up some of his supper for her).
- Control Freak: Both Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood act like this- towards their daughters, or helping others out financially, or how much they're willing to share of their land with the villagers (which is to say, very little).
- Generation Xerox:
- Thomas Blackwood was said to have his father's more "forceful" personality traits, even as a ten-year-old.
- Constance is implied to be a lot like her mother, but a better person. Like Lucy, she's a Proper Lady, as tidy as can be, a flawless host when she has people over for tea, and even Merricat wonders if Charles will make Constance dress like her when he begins dressing like their father, who he already behaves like.
- Neat Freak: Lucy Blackwood so loved her beautiful tea room to be flawlessly clean that the girls were not allowed in it, and even when she dies, Constance and Merricat clean it every week.
- Rich Bitch: John and Lucy were incredibly snobbish and downright classist to the rest of the village, outright calling them "trash". When Mrs. Blackwood first moved to the house, she even asked her husband to close the path in front of their mansion that gave walkers a shortcut into down rather than having to walk along the highway, because it disturbed her so much to see the villagers close to their home. They seem to see themselves as better than the entire town, so much that even Merricat, who murdered them has ingrained their arrogant attitude towards it.
- Spoiled Brat: If Merricat's and Julian's hints are anything to go by, ten-year-old Thomas was turning into a jerk like his father, and was doted on by their parents.
- Token Good Teammate: One could say this of Julian's wife Dorothy, who at worst got into arguments with her husband. There is zero indication she was as awful as her in-laws, and made sure she "earned" her keep by helping Constance with the chores.
