I have questions (more than one) actually. But they all lead to one main question: how did the other wives die? I’ve read the novelization and I have the art book. But I feel like we just kind of assume they are all poisoned from what the recording tells Edith. But the ghosts themselves tell a different story. One with the front of her skull bashed in, one with a rope around her neck. Were these just design choices or do you think Lucille murdered each woman differently? (sorry this is long)

crimsonpeaksecrets:

Hi! No you’re right, they were all killed in different manners. In the art of darkness under the brides ghost design it says that they were all killed as they are seen. So the ghost with her face missing had her head smashed, the bride with rope was strangled and it was Enola who was poisoned but then there’s also a guess that she was killed by Lucille in some other method after the baby. Edith would have of course been finished by the poison and maybe some other way if she hadn’t figured things out 🙂 good question its an interesting topic to talk about 🙂

This question opens up my feelings on the scene with Thomas measuring out the poisoned tea leaves. If Lucille had wanted to, they would have simply killed the wives outright with a full dose; Instead, she uses the tea as a means of weakening the wives, to make them dependent on her and her brother. It looked less suspicious [Remember, their father died after an ‘unspecified illness’, Lucille’s first adventure into her choice of weapons.] Thomas took over this little task when it came time for Edith as an extra precaution, since he was trying to avoid inflicting too much damage. Remember his despair when Lucille mentions she had also poisoned the porridge, something that leads to his outburst of protest of going through with actually killing Edith. 

Lucille kills each of the brides differently, but each time Thomas isn’t present for the actual murder. Pamela, who was confined to a wheelchair and likely blind, was strangled–you can see the rope around her ghost’s neck when she crawled through the hall. Margaret, the one we see in the bath, had the front of her head bashed in [rather like Carter Cushing did, although far more extreme.]; we know she was dumped in the clay pits beneath the house when we see her floating up from the muck. It’s not as clear how Enola died, although she was probably smothered or drugged. [All of the wives had their ring fingers severed and a lock of their hair clipped.] It also looked like Lucille was quite content to push Edith to her death from the banister. 

Lucille comments that they were mercy killings, in a way, but I suspect she was worried that Thomas would actually develop some affection for them, or not be able to resist the temptation of consummating his marriages, and acted out of jealousy. Thomas sounds very uncomfortable on the recordings when Pamela insists he say he loves her, and we see how much regret he harbors when Edith mentions Milan, where he met Enola. As for Margaret, she may have caught on to what her husband was doing up in the attic at night and shown her outrage to Lucille [just my theory; Margaret is the wife we seem to know the least about.]–Lucille doesn’t like being confronted or condescended to, and reacts quite violently when someone insults her brother.