Cackle

The many spiders that surround Annie and Sophie are a motif, highlighting Small-Town Conformity and the Policing of “Difficult” Women. Spiders are helpful creatures, eating insects that can do a great deal of damage, among other things. However, spiders are nonetheless maligned, treated as though they are scary and gross. In the novel, spiders are helpful, friendly, and caring. When Annie first meets Ralph, his cheerful smile immediately makes her feel better. One day, when she leaves her home, she says goodbye to another spider, and it waves back. While Sophie cooks in Annie’s kitchen, “A spider gathers up the rogue scraps of blemished potato skin and onion, slowly rolling them toward the trash” (139). Similarly, Sophie’s influence in Rowan has helped to make it a place where everyone wants to live. Rose and Deirdre credit her for everything from the good harvests to the weather. Despite Sophie’s helpfulness and generosity, she is misjudged simply because she is a witch; this is similar to the way spiders are seen as frightening simply because they are spiders.

It is therefore significant that Sophie is associated with spiders and that Annie, even before she meets Sophie, has an atypically gentle response to them. Sophie doesn’t conform to social etiquette: She won’t smile if she doesn’t feel like smiling, and she isn’t kind to people who are rude to her. In short, she won’t change herself to make them more comfortable. Neither can spiders do this; they are what they are, and they cannot change. Sophie and Annie’s affectionate dynamics with spiders thus reflects how they, too, are social outcasts who are not always understood.

Annie’s new, short haircut symbolizes The Fear of Being Alone and the Freedom of Autonomy. When Sophie completes the haircut, Annie is amazed by how much lighter she feels. She says, “I never realized how much bullshit is bound to the bottom of your hair. How it carries with it the years and experiences, all it has witnessed, has endured. The reason you can’t let go of your past is that it’s still attached” (217). Sophie empowers Annie by giving her the fresh new cut, an act that distances Annie from her former life with Sam and gets her to see herself in a new way.

Further, Annie feels freer as a result of the cut. She says, “That weight on your shoulders, the strain on your back and neck. It’s your dead ends” (217). Annie’s old life was a dead end too, something she soon realizes: With Sam, she was simply “enduring” her life. Without Sam, and without the ways in which their relationship circumscribed her life and choices, Annie gains a better understanding of the autonomy her single status gives her.