“We are going to be very happy”

“We are going to be very happy” is a recurring expression of Mary Katherine Blackwood’s confidence in a future shared with Constance Blackwood. First voiced as an inward conviction while the sisters begin putting their damaged home back in order, it returns as an emphatic reassurance between them and culminates in a closing declaration of happiness. Its repetition makes hope sound less like a settled fact than a promise the sisters renew together.

From Private Thought to Shared Promise

The expression first appears as Mary Katherine Blackwood’s thought about what lies ahead. There is work to do and “a whole new pattern of days to arrange,” but she believes the sisters will be happy. The future is imagined not as a return to what was lost, but as a new routine they will shape for themselves.

That expectation takes on the force of spoken reassurance when Mary Katherine Blackwood tells Constance Blackwood, “We are going to be very happy, Constance.” She repeats the promise—“Listen to me, Constance. We are going to be very happy”—making the words an appeal as well as a prediction. The recurrence ties Mary Katherine Blackwood’s confidence to Constance Blackwood’s response and turns the sentence into a shared assertion.

Happiness Made Through Domestic Work

The promise is set against the material damage to the kitchen. Constance Blackwood remains pale and saddened by what has been done there, but she scrubs the shelves, table, windows, and floor. The sisters restore their dishes to the shelf and arrange the rescued cans and unbroken food boxes in the pantry. Their hoped-for happiness is thus placed alongside specific acts of cleaning, salvaging, and reordering.

Mary Katherine Blackwood imagines extending that domestic future to Jonas, proposing that he could be trained to bring back rabbits for stew. Constance Blackwood doubts the pampered cat could catch even a grasshopper, and Jonas looks back at her blandly. The light exchange gives their prospective routine a modest, comic detail: the promise of happiness accommodates both imagined plans and the familiar limits of the household.

The Closing Refrain

Near the end, Mary Katherine Blackwood again assures Constance Blackwood, “We are going to be very happy.” Constance Blackwood holds her and answers, “Oh, Merricat,” while Mary Katherine Blackwood dresses in a robe made from a red-and-white check tablecloth, belted with a gold cord and tassel cut from the drawing-room drapes. Constance Blackwood is sad at first, then smiles and laughs at her. The promise is embedded in an exchange of affection and a moment of play amid the household’s altered circumstances.

The closing words broaden the refrain: Mary Katherine Blackwood says, “Jonas and I will see to it that no spider ever comes near you,” then tells Constance Blackwood, “we are so happy.” The shift from the future tense of the repeated promise to the present-tense declaration gives the expression its final turn. Happiness remains bound to the sisters’ secluded life and their care for one another, but by the close it is not only anticipated; Mary Katherine Blackwood names it as something they already share.