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Title: The Witch Haven by Sasha Peyton Smith
Details: Copyright 2021, Simon & Schuster Inc.
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "WELL-BEHAVED WITCHES SELDOM MAKE HISTORY....
In 1911 New York City, seventeen-year-old Frances Hallowell spends her days as a seamstress, mourning the mysterious death of her brother months prior. Everything changes when she’s attacked and a man ends up dead at her feet— her scissors in his neck, and she can’t explain how they got there.
Before she can be condemned as a murderess, two cape-wearing nurses arrive to inform her she is deathly ill and ordered to report to Haxahaven Sanitarium. But Frances finds Haxahaven isn’t a sanitarium at all: it’s a school for witches. Within Haxahaven’s glittering walls, Frances finds the sisterhood she craves, but the headmistress warns Frances that magic is dangerous. Frances has no interest in the small, safe magic of her school, and is instead enchanted by Finn, a boy with magic himself who appears in her dreams and tells her he can teach her all she’s been craving to learn, lessons that may bring her closer to discovering what truly happened to her brother.
Frances’s newfound power attracts the attention of the leader of an ancient order who yearns for magical control of Manhattan. And who will stop at nothing to have Frances by his side. Frances must ultimately choose what matters more, justice for her murdered brother and her growing feelings for Finn, or the safety of her city and fellow witches. What price would she pay for power, and what if the truth is more terrible than she ever imagined?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: Last year was a big year for Witch books, and this year is no different.
How I Liked It: Sometimes it can be nice to live in the 21st century. No, wait, hear me out!
Because social media can have a way of making things more concise.
No, I don't mean about discovering which of your family members or co-workers would've probably helped the Nazis, I'm talking about taking what once had to be explained by walls of scholarly jargon in order to communicate a simple truth.
The author of this blog has deactivated their account as far as I could tell, so out of their privacy, I won't list their URL, only their one viral and excellent post:
"Is it actually feminist or does it just have a woman in it?"
And this is great because it condenses what could literally be essays about the commodification and commercialization of feminism and slapping a feminist label just about anything without checking to see if its actually worth the name, and this is a single sentence.
So what does this mean for this particular book? We'll get there!
But first! Meet seventeen-year-old Frances Hallowell, for whom life has never been easy, and just seems to keep getting worse. Abandoned by their father, she and her brother William are close, looking after their mentally ill mother, until her brother William is murdered and his killer unknown. Florence fills her days with her work as a seamstress with other women and girls in a factory setting, living above her work with the other women, overseen by the kindly Mrs Carrey and the awful boss, Mr. Hues.
One night while staying late finishing up her work, Frances accidentally witnesses Hues stealing money. To her horror, he sees her see him, and he attacks her, nearly killing her before somehow, from across the room, her sewing scissors winding up in his neck.
The police come around the next day and narrowing down whose sewing scissors are whose, Frances is questioned by police, but before they can get very far, she's stolen off by two nurses claiming that Frances has tuberculosis and must be whisked to a ward out of the city. Better a TB ward than prison, Frances goes with them, only to her shock to discover an imposing institution called Haxahaven Sanitarium that is somewhat worse for wear on the outside but absolutely beautiful inside ("My heart stutters a beat; it's the only sensation that keeps me from believing that I am dead and in heaven, which is apparently in Queens." pg 41).
From there, Frances learns that this is actually a school for witches (!). She surprisingly makes two friends, Maxine, a "finder" of new witches with her own room (and some suggested female romantic dalliances, more on that later), and Lena, a Native young woman and seer who loves and fears for her family and people. Along the way, we get flashbacks to Frances's life with her brother (his dear friend and hers, the wealthy Oliver, who awkwardly runs into Frances in the present, and the one time her brother came home drunk and was helped by a mysterious Irish friend, Finn).
Meanwhile, as Frances is adjusting to her new life, she keeps finding handwritten notes on her bed, notes that know about her brother's murder and promise they (Frances and the note-writer) are allies in finding his murderer. Frances is horrified and tries to find which if any of the girls at the school (if any?) is the note-writer. When the note-writer urges her into a meeting, she goes but instead finds Maxine and Lena (Lena was looking for Frances, Maxine felt the surge of magic and followed it) who find a magical book full of more exciting spells and rituals than the perfunctory little parlor tricks the school seems to only offer them.
Eventually, Frances finds the note-writer. It was her brother's Irish friend, and he wants to help. He belongs to another magical organization, a male-centered one, the Sons of Saint Druon, that frequently spars with Haxahaven. He has some magical skills of his own and promises to teach and help Frances, especially as she and her friends explore the book which promises a ritual to help someone talk to the dead (just the thing to find her brother's murderer!).
Along the way, Frances sees some cracks in the way the school is run besides the fact the magic the students are taught isn't terribly exciting. This is enough of a frisson for her to consider the shocking offer to join the same organization that employs her Irish friend.
Blood is spilled and chaos ensues, and with the help of her new Irish friend, Frances is able to speak to her brother, however briefly. But sadly, he doesn't know who killed him, and he urges her to live her life.
Frances thinks she's discovered his murderer, only to be horribly wrong, and discover the murderer was someone horribly close all along. She's been betrayed in many ways, as she's been tricked into giving up her powers to be able to perform an important ritual.
But Frances is resilient and keeps in mind who her real friends are and with their help, Frances regains her powers and they take Haxahaven and resolve to make it the place it should've been all along. Frances looks forward mostly happily, but the book plants the suggestion that her primary antagonist is not as vanquished as she'd thought.
Got all that?
Any time I read a book about witches, I wonder if they are going to be Witches (capital W, referring to the real life practice that is often spiritual/religious and/or a spirituality/religion for people, like me) or witches (fantasy version, think of The Wizard of Oz).
So which witches are the witches of Haxahaven? Fantasy, although the fantasy magic has at least a bit in common with the real thing.
Few people are gifted with the ability to perform what is commonly called magic. This ability is typically awoken by a traumatic event. You can think of your ability as your very soul being expanded. The explanation as to why is between you and your god." (pg 59)
Okay, so the "few people" doesn't check out, as Witches tend to feel magic is available to anyone. But there is a school of thought that traumatic events can trigger a deeper understanding of some things. No, if you weren't left with a deeper understanding of magic due to your traumatic event, or have a deeper understanding of magic without a traumatic event, there isn't anything wrong with you, the school of thought says can. And certainly growing your abilities can feel like your very soul being expanded.
"Magic is typically awoken by an event in someone's life. For most of us, that event occurs in adolescence, but we don't find some witches until adulthood. Other girls are just children. Everyone stays for different lengths of time, depending on ability. That's why the sanitarium guise works so well. It takes different people different amounts of time to gain enough control to be ready to reenter society." (pg 77)
See above.
"And what do we do when we feel bad, Sara?"
"We take deep breaths," Sara says. "We center ourselves. We remember we are in control of our bodies and ourselves."
"Yes, very good," Mrs. Li replies. "Magic is, above all, mastery over yourself." (pg 84)
There is a technique that's usually one of the first things Witches learn, centering and grounding. Realizing we have the power we do (whatever it might be) is another step, and while I wouldn't exactly call it mastery over ourselves, we do seek to sharpen and refine our skills with activities like meditation and visualization.
And [he] might not understand why William's death didn't awaken my magic, but I do. Magic is the expansion of one's soul, and mine died the night [my brother was killed]. For four months I stumbled through a fog, going through the motions of my life. Killing Mr. Hues demanded I be present for the first time since my brother's death. There is no beauty in trauma, but there is urgency in it. (pg 417)
Another interesting passage in theme of both soul expansion and trauma playing a role in awakening certain senses.
If magic has taught me one thing, it's that words are powerful, so I make one change. I no longer use the words "yours" and "you" but "ours" and "us."(pg 422)
This also speaks to a collective awareness and responsibility for which Witches and all who perform magic should strive or at least be aware. There are power in numbers and we are all interconnected.
But he has forgotten the first magic lesson he ever gave me: in my dreams I am the creator and destroyer of worlds. (pg 427)
Dreams and visualization are a way we create and are tools of real life magic.
So while the Haxahaven witches are fantasy, they have a strain of real life magic running through them.
I've said before that in most witch fiction like this (fantasy), witches and witchcraft are generally standing in for something else. Certainly, the figure of the witch is ripe for feminist and misogynist interpretations. And women, girls, and femmes seizing what power they could at a time and place where they were essentially powerless, is definitely a theme of the book.
When sussing out her surroundings and what Haxahaven actually is, Frances (and we the reader) get a reminder about the time and place.
"You said this was an academy?" I look at her for confirmation and she nods once, obviously annoyed that I've been so slow on the uptake. "Aren't you a nurse? Where are the patients? Where do we convalesce?"
She shrugs. "We lied."
"You lied?" The room tilts a little; my knees are weak.
"Because no one lets us take girls away for something as inconsequential as an education." (pgs 43 and 44)
Witches and women are sometimes interchangeable:
"Our job is to keep you safe. If thousands of years of history have taught us one thing, it is that the world is not kind to women who possess power. I will give you exactly one warning, Frances-- you will do what we say, and we will keep you safe. You do not want to be a witch in the world alone, nor do you want your power to eat you up from the inside out. Do you understand?"(pg 60)
"The school used to be disguised as a convent-- if there was one group of women the world left alone, it was nuns. But then the local churches began asking questions, so it was converted to a school back in the 1850s. It wasn't long before the locals came knocking. I'm not sure why when women say 'students', men hear 'potential wives.' Can girls not be scholars in peace? Anyway, the sanitarium guise started about thirty years ago. The neighbors leave us be." (pg 72)
Frances gets bored in class, but I have to say I love the idea of a feminist education at a time when such a thing didn't exist:
I've been sitting for forty-five minutes listening to the significance of witchcraft to women's economic development in pre-industrial America[.] (pg 87)
(More on historical accuracy later.)
She pops up from my bed and walks over to her own. "One last tip," she offers. "Don't let them catch you practicing. They don't mind you using the magic, but they don't like it when you get good at it."
"Why train us at all, then?"
"Women are supposed to be competent at everything, but experts at nothing. Haven't you heard?" Her voice is thick with sarcasm, but the tiniest smile breaks through the gloom. (pg 127)
And we get a reminder that even witches are still subject to the same social laws as women.
I'm not yet sure who I am. But I could be this. Powerful. Reckless. It's intoxicating.
No one says it, but by the looks on their faces, I can see they understand. The magic we've been taught at school is small. It is magic that allows us to manipulate existing objects in small ways. To above all things be good girls, good wives and daughters. Some girls, like Lena and Maxine, are connected to the magic in a way that gives them the ability to see and feel things other can't. But this spell book, for the first time, has given us all the ability to create.
I don't want to be good. I want to create something, be something.(pg 137)
I really enjoy the choice by the author to have even a magical school be constrained by the gender roles and limitations at the time. Even women with special power are still allowed less than men.
I am overcome with sadness, not only for Maxine, trapped by her powers, but for all of us. Similarly trapped by our circumstances and our magic and the terrible misfortune that befell us when we had the bad sense to be born female. (pg 141)
Incidentally, if you raise an eyebrow about "born female", I assure you it's trans inclusive. You'll see in a bit.
"What can it be bought with?" I ask. There's nothing I wouldn't give.
"From the three of you? Nothing. It's for your own good."
"That seems to be an excuse only ever given to women," Maxine sneers. (pgs 279 and 280)
"Every witch who ever burned was once a girl just like you, one who thought she could change the world." (pg 304)
I chafe at witch burning comments as it promotes a false view of history (people tried and executed as witches were never burned in England nor in the colonies; absolutely no "witches" at Salem were burned: they were hanged and one was crushed to death), but I get the concept the book is putting across. There are limits on how far women are allowed to go.
To be a witch is to have power in a world where women have none. (pg 433 and 435)
A quick but important note here! Lest you get confuse this magical school for one created by a troublesome children's author turned violent bigot who has funneled millions of her billions of dollars into various anti-LGBTQ causes, particularly anti-trans causes in several countries, the witches and the genuine feminism of Haxahaven have a key distinction:
"Haxahaven is rather good at finding every magical girl in the area. Rich, poor, any race, from any neighborhood, girls whose parents thought they were boys upon birth, girls who are only sometimes girls, girls who are still deciding, people who are neither boys nor girls. We train them all. The men are left to their own devices. They do what men do." (pgs 74 and 75)
That's a great way to keep language both trans-inclusive (NOTE! Nonbinary people fall under the trans umbrella) and in a way that would've been accurate to the times. And a delight, incidentally.
But lest you start to whinge that it's not historically accurate, progressive attitudes towards trans people (and about gender in general) did not spring up overnight within the past decade, for one, and for two, you're literally reading a book about fantasy witches so calm it right down.
Inclusion-wise, there's also at least one Jewish witch at the school:
"Where's Rebecca?" I whisper to no one in particular.
"It's after sundown on Friday. She doesn't practice magic on the Sabbath," Cora whispers back. (pg 288)
But what about historical accuracy? This is a named time period, after all, albeit with a fantasy setting. So how accurate is it?
Well, real life events intertwine with the events of the book:
Two hollow-eyed girls on the other side of the circle detail their experiences in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that happened a few months ago in midtown. It was all over the papers. One hundred forty-six people died. Sara and Cora should have been among them, but the horror of the accident awoke the magic in them, and they used their abilities to open a locked steel door and flee to safety.
Sara and Cora take turns telling parts of the story of that awful day. I get the impression they've told it many times in this room. They seem well practiced in noting the details; Cora describes the smell of burning flesh, while Sara explains the screams. Mrs. Li tells them that they must learn to control the power that resides within them.
It strikes me as odd that no one in the room acknowledges that it was that power that saved their lives. (pg 85)
"Helen said a group of girls hadn't given her this much trouble since Alice Roosevelt and her friends set a US senator on fire. What did you do?" (pg 245)
A seer also foretells World War I.
If I wanted to be a stickler about this book, I could argue that Frances (and others) swear in a way that's pretty unlikely in 1911, and the concept of chaperones (and the inappropriateness of an unmarried young lady and young man being alone together, that a young woman's "virtue", meaning her sexual inexperience and reputation, is her most important and valued quality in society) isn't really addressed, as well as the fact seventeen years of age in 1911 is not the same as seventeen years of age in 2021 (a broad generalization, but in 1911, you're not getting any younger for the marriage market, ma'am, whereas in 2021 you're a kid headlining a YA novel).
But here's the thing. I know (and if you're a frequent reader here, you know) that I'm a stickler for historical accuracy in most cases. However, there are places where I'm willing to let it slide and embrace the fantasy. And I'm willing to do that here.
Because this novel isn't so much about the period so much as it's about the constraints. In the book, Frances sacrifices her power to be paired with a man, who robs her of it. Powerless, it's through the combined efforts of female friends that she gains power back. This is a pretty clear metaphor both for the times and for how that dynamic (ultimate sacrifice for a man, particularly a romantic partner) persists today (how many articles do you still see about female public figures "having it all" meaning a career and family, suggesting that they must sacrifice one or the other? Do you ever see that with male public figures?).
So The Witch Haven isn't just a novel starring a female character with a mostly female cast. It's a feminist one, and on top of that, as you've already seen, it keeps its feminism intersectional.
The character of Lena, a Native young woman, comes up against the very people supposedly fighting for women's rights at the time, the troublesome strand of the women's suffrage movement:
She turns to Helen, and they continue chatting about the state of marches and strikes. Beside me, Lena shifts uncomfortably.
"What's the matter?" I whisper to her.
She shrugs her shoulders in response, and I jab her in the side with my elbow and give her a look. "Lena?"
"Look around," she whispers. "None of these women are looking at me."
I hadn't noticed. "I don't understand," I reply.
"These women don't care about me. They're fighting so that girls like you can vote alongside your rich, white husbands. Not girls like me." Any sadness in her eyes is quickly replaced by fury.
My face burns with shame, because she's right. I didn't notice, nor would I have had she not pointed it out. The world is broken in so many ways. What good is it having magic if we can fix none of them? What good am I if I'm so self-absorbed I don't even notice?
But guilt without action doesn't do Lena any good.
"You want to know the stupidest thing?" she continues. "The Founding Fathers stole the model of democracy from the Iroquois Confederacy, bastardized it, and everyone called them geniuses. These women are doing more of the same. Only certain types of people get to be equal."
I reach down and take her hand in mine. "You deserve a better world than this one."
Her steely eyes set on mine. "So do we fight, or do we search for safety?" she asks.
"I think I want to fight," I say.
Lena casts an eye at the women around us. "Then we can't lose." (pgs 205 206)
When the three girls visit a magical marketplace, one seller asks for their stories. Frances confesses to (however accidentally) killing her boss in self-defense, but Lena's story is the one that grips the seller:
"I suppose there's no point in keeping it a secret." Lena's eyes shift quickly to mine and Maxine's before meeting the witch's across from us. "I was once a student at a place called the Thomas School. We were beaten and screamed at. We were stripped of our names and our clothing. We weren't allowed to write our parents. In the winters, when students would die, but the ground was too frozen to dig graves, they'd stack the bodies in the attic. I had to share a cot with another girl, and at night she would cry so violently, she'd be sick. I was fifteen when they locked me in a shed for mouthing off to a teacher." Lena's voice hitches, but only slightly. "The nuns said to pray the devil out of me. But I didn't see the devil. I saw myself at Haxahaven. Maxine and Helen arrived three days later to test every pupil of the Thomas Indian School for tuberculosis. They only took me. Now" -- she lifts her chin up toward Therese-- "are you quite satisfied?"
Maxine's eyes are big and teary. She reaches out and grabs Lena's hand. They're sharing a memory I'll never understand.
A question escapes my lips: "Why? Why would they put you in a place like that?"
She shakes her head sadly. "How do you kill an entire people? You take away their children; you take away their language and their stories and their culture. But I am Onondaga. That's something they couldn't kill."
I take her other hand in mine. I thought coming here would help Maxine out of her rut, but instead I've made Lena dig up painful things for my own purposes. She's reluctant to let us in emotionally, and now I understand why. (pgs 282 and 283)
When the girls are punished for sneaking out and practicing magic, the school's policy of sending wages home to the student's family is suspended as punishment. This particularly harms Lena as well as one Puerto-Rican student, Maria. Maxine, coming from a wealthy family, gives Lena expensive jewellery to send home so her family will have something, an action she doesn't realize is short-sighted:
She reaches into the pocket of her uniform pinafore and pulls out two diamond-stud earrings. "Maxine gave me these to send to my parents now that the stipend from the school is cut off."
"That was kind of her." I wish I had something, anything, to offer Lena. But as usual, I come up empty.
Lena frowns. "I suppose. but I'm terrified to send them. I'm afraid if my family tries to sell them, they'll be accused of theft."
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."
"Maxine didn't either. It's something the two of you will never understand. You can traipse around New York, you can break school rules, sneak out, lie, and steal. But the stakes are different for me. The consequences are bigger." (pgs 305, 306)
But Lena is a multi-faceted character. She doesn't just exist to remind Frances (and other white characters) of their privilege. She's one of the first real friends Frances makes and she's a main character of the book, with her future changed considerably by the end of it.
Somewhat more quietly, as I mentioned before, Maxine is subtly revealed to be romantically interested in girls (and several girls are romantically interested in Maxine) and it's treated as a matter of fact.
The name "feminist", now more than ever, is a term that must be protected to keep it quality. People with their eyes on oppression have always appropriated feminist, but they seem to do it with even more comfort and frequency now, and it's all the more important that we hold off on calling something feminist unless it actually is worthy of the name. What a relief and delight to find a book worthy of the title of "feminist".
Notable:
She's wearing a long black dress. Her dark hair is pinned back in a bun serious enough to match the look in her eyes. She's middle-aged, perhaps midforties. (pg 276)
Our current definition of "middle-aged" is roughly midforties to midsixties, when the life expectancy (thus, the "middle of your life") is considerably different now than it was in 1911. Just another reason the term "middle-aged" should probably be let go.
_______________________________________________________________________________
We're less than two miles away from the apartment I spent nearly all my life in, but I've never recognized New York less. (pg 312)
Just worth nothing that this is a nice example of contextuality and the horrifying similarity of class disparity of both 1911 and 2021.
Final Grade: A
I loved that review! You did a great job of pointing out the inclusivity while making it sound fun and engaging at the same time.
ReplyDeleteBtw: "I've been sitting for forty-five minutes listening to the significance of witchcraft to women's economic development in pre-industrial America." WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU FRANCES THAT CLASS SOUNDS AMAZING
Thank you so much!!! ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
DeleteI was delighted with the trans-inclusive line, ngl. INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM NOW AND FOREVER.
AND I KNOW RIGHT. I would sign up for that class right away! But I guess if you can make objects move with your mind, everything else is going to be kinda dull?
(Thank you again.♡♡♡♡)