The Witch of Blackbird Pond: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The “half fear and half hunger in [Rachel’s] eyes” suggest that Rachel misses the joyous playfulness of dressing up, yet she’s also afraid of what will happen if she indulges in the fun. What she fears becomes clear when Matthew enters the room: her reaction implies that Matthew does not allow Rachel to indulge in frivolous yet harmless activities like dressing up.

Matthew’s fury suggests that “vanity” is considered sinful in the Puritan community, and that he considers Kit is sinful for having so many fancy dresses. Although Kit isn’t Puritan herself, Matthew judges her based on their cultural codes.

Matthew is unrelenting in his demands and inflexible in his beliefs; he does not accommodate difference in his household. Rachel, on the other hand, is more sympathetic, again showing how dissimilar she and Matthew are. But Kit does discover that he has a weakness—Mercy—which suggests that he isn’t entirely unfeeling.

Kit’s surprise at hearing that the Woods don’t have servants hints that her social circle in Barbados likely only included people wealthy enough to hire servants or buy enslaved people to do their work. Again, the book depicts Kit as a sheltered young woman who has only known a luxurious way of life. Nonetheless, she asks to work as well, probably to show the Woods that she’s willing to earn her place in their home. Judith is sharp with Kit, and her focus on Kit’s dress suggests that Judith is still jealous of Kit’s elegant dresses.

Notably, Kit doesn’t spare a thought for how privileged she has been to have never had to work before, nor does she think of the people whom her grandfather enslaved to labor for him. Instead, Kit only expresses self-centered frustration at having to work now. But, as Kit tells Mercy, Kit needs to stay with the Wood family—she fears that she will have to marry an old man if she returns to Barbados. This old man tried to take advantage of Kit’s financial insecurity to pressure her into marriage, knowing that as a young woman, Kit doesn’t have the option of working to support herself. Because she doesn’t have economic freedom, she has very little control over the direction she wants her life to take; living with the Woods is seemingly her only option aside from marrying a man she finds repulsive. According to Mercy, helping the family is how Kit will eventually belong with the family, which suggests that mutual support is important in developing relationships. 

Because Kit has never had to work before, she doesn’t have any practical skills, which means that she isn’t useful to the Wood family. Additionally, the book has indicated that she’s prejudiced against people who labor and thinks she is too important to work, so people like the Woods have far more skills to offer than she does. In fact, Kit only makes things worse: she ruins the only food they have for dinner by letting her impatience get the best of her. This fiasco shows that Kit has a lot of learning and growing to do before she will belong with the Woods, all of whom do their part in helping the family sustain itself.

Judith isn’t happy that Kit is staying with them, specifically because Kit is useless at chores and isn’t helping the family thrive. Because the Woods must rely on one another to survive, Kit is more of a burden than anything else—she’s another mouth to feed, but she doesn’t bring any value to the family without doing her part in sharing the family labor. In fact, both Judith and Rachel wish that Kit were a boy. At this time, boys were often considered more useful than girls. This is because boys could help their fathers with agricultural work and other forms of labor, whereas society expected women to do domestic chores. Kit is unable to even do the latter, so her presence isn’t helpful to the Woods.