The Bewitching

Alba is one of the novel’s protagonists who appears in two of the novel’s timelines—her own and Minerva’s (as Minerva’s great-grandmother, Nana Alba). Initially, Alba is not as practical as her mother and brother, Tadeo. Although she values folk traditions and her identity as a rural girl, she prefers Greek myths to chores and is interested in life beyond the boundaries of her farm. She struggles with tasks like killing chickens that require violence because she has a different view of animals than that of a farmer: She “loves birds” and keeps “canaries and doves,” and frustrates her mother, who sees animals as “stock” (12).

Although her mother characterizes her as dreamy and indolent, Moreno-Garcia presents Alba as strong-willed and resourceful. She learns about witchcraft from her father, her friend Valentín, and the women at Los Pinos. She ultimately vanquishes Arturo almost entirely on her own. Using the spell Jovinta teaches her, she not only kills Arturo, but also lives to raise a child and pass her knowledge on to future generations, highlighting the novel’s thematic exploration of Women’s Legacy of Empowerment and Agency. In this way, Alba becomes a figure not only of female empowerment, but of intergenerational female power and of the importance of cultural transmission. She represents the way that women, disempowered within patriarchal societies, still manage to shape the courses of their own lives and ensure successive generations of their families will have the benefit of their knowledge.

Tremblay is a classmate of Carolyn Yates and Virginia “Ginny” Somerset. She is the author at the center of Minerva’s research for her thesis. Like Minerva and Alba, Tremblay is working-class and has a work-study job on campus as a language tutor. Moreno-Garcia roots Tremblay’s agency in her refusal to believe the rumors about Ginny’s disappearance and her use of storytelling to preserve the facts of Ginny’s case. It is in large part because of Tremblay’s papers that Minerva unravels the secrets of Ginny’s disappearance, better understands her own history, and finally vanquishes Carolyn.

Tremblay, although present only during the novel’s flashback chapters, is a complex, round character. She is accepted by the upper-class girls at Stoneridge, but like Ginny, she doesn’t fit the prescribed definition for a proper young lady of her era. Tremblay, although not yet out as a queer woman in college, acknowledges in her work: “I loved Ginny” (71) and notes that if she imagined a life with anyone, it was with Ginny. She never marries and eventually openly dates women. She also maintains a close, lifelong relationship with Benjamin: None of her relationships is as normative as those of the other women in her social group, positioning her as a person determined to live life on her own terms. Tremblay’s interest in the supernatural and her belief in the paranormal, catalyzed by Ginny’s disappearance and death, shape her creative and professional interests for the rest of her life.

Ginny Somerset is a student at Stoneridge and a part of Carolyn and Tremblay’s circle of friends. Her disappearance is of interest to Minerva as the subject of Tremblay’s work—an author Minerva admires—and Ginny’s story becomes increasingly important as the book progresses. Tremblay’s account presents Ginny as a lively, vivacious girl who is unafraid to assert her individuality and is not bound by traditional social norms or expectations for young women, which sets her apart from the other girls in her class and makes her an easy target for Carolyn’s bullying and gossip. Within the rigid world of upper-class, New England society, Ginny’s family history renders her inferior to families like Carolyn who have been in the United States for centuries. Her relationship with the son of a wealthy and influential family makes her the target of Carolyn’s envy and scorn. Carolyn criticizes Ginny’s “new money” family, her dark hair, her childhood in California, and her foreign mother (69)—all of which Carolyn views as markers of social inferiority.

Ginny’s arc is defined by her belief in and experience of the supernatural. She asserts that spirits guide her art and writing, positioning them as positive forces in her life rather than malevolent or fearful. Ginny becomes convinced that she has been bewitched—an event that mirrors both Alba and Minerva’s experiences in the past and future timelines, creating a thematic link between the three generations. Ginny is one of several key figures interested in the occult, and in each case, that interest becomes a source of power. Although Ginny does fall prey to Carolyn, she manages to protect herself for a time and installs the witch marks in her walls that ultimately protect Minerva decades later.

Carolyn is one of the novel’s two primary antagonists and provides a contemporary parallel to Arturo in Alba’s timeline. As a young student, she is snobbish and judgmental. She disapproves of (and gossips about) anyone whom she deems her social inferior, and distrusts people who are (or look) foreign. She is, as Benjamin notes, “a user of people” (272). She treats Ginny especially poorly until a mysterious change of heart that, in the present-day timeline, Moreno-Garcia suggests is related to realizing that Ginny had genuine supernatural powers, making her blood more appealing to Carolyn and her warlock father.

Carolyn is single-mindedly focused on her own welfare, as evidenced by her pursuit of Edgar after Ginny disappears. As she admits to Minerva, “I’m afraid I believe in myself and myself alone” (60). She wants to marry Edgar because of his family’s wealth and social standing, and it does not trouble her that their marriage turns out to be unhappy. She rules her family with an iron fist to reify her family’s power and prestige through witchcraft. She ruthlessly murders Noah’s parents and grooms him for marriage in hopes of producing a more powerful heir.

She pursues witchcraft with zeal in secret while deriding it in public, preying upon victims whose “lesser” social standing will render them less interesting to any investigating officers tasked with looking into their disappearance. This is true of Santiago, Thomas, and Minerva. Carolyn’s character is one of the novel’s key points of engagement with classism, and through her, the novel indicts the snobbery that often goes hand-in-hand with wealth.

Alba’s uncle, Arturo, is a powerful warlock and one of the novel’s main antagonists. He’s introduced through Alba’s perspective as traveled and worldly with an “easy, relaxed air” (23). He speaks several languages, writes poetry, gambles, and lives the life of an upper-class gentleman—the polar opposite of Valentín and Tadeo, and their life of farming. The prejudice Arturo voices against folk magic and rural communities speaks to the novel’s engagement with the politics of class, epitomizing The Tension Between Folk Wisdom and Modern Beliefs. Arturo feels himself superior to those without access to his money and educational resources, and claims to look down upon the folk traditions and superstitions of the rural people of Hidalgo.

Publicly, he links witchcraft to working-class ignorance and urges Alba to espouse a more modern worldview. And yet, privately, Arturo co-opts the rituals and practices of witchcraft to reify his own power through oppression, exploitation, coercion, and control of the marginalized. Arturo is cold-hearted and manipulative and will stop at nothing to reach his goals, yet he’s brought down by his desire to possess Alba, underestimating the power she herself wields.