The Bewitching

Throughout The Bewitching, classism and sexism underscore the tension between folk wisdom and modern beliefs. The author explores the way that axes of class and gender shape various characters’ worldviews through her layered depictions of Alba’s life and experiences, Ginny and Tremblay’s timeline, and Minerva’s final reckoning with Carolyn. Moreno-Garcia is known for novels that pay homage to Mexico’s history and culture. In crafting a novel that validates the importance of Indigenous, Mexican folk beliefs, she crafts a broader argument that the histories, rituals, and practices of working-class communities merit respect and that the criticism of those whose own power is reified by undermining folk wisdom should be interrogated.

Alba’s timeline illustrates a distinct dichotomy between folk and modern beliefs in Mexico at the turn of the century. Characters like Alba, Valentín, Alba’s father, and even the servants on Alba’s family farm represent rural, folk traditions. They turn to the use of herbal remedies over modern doctors, whose practices are imbued with institutional prejudice based on gender and class. They believe in the supernatural and engage in spellcraft to attempt to reshape their destinies. Alba’s mother and Arturo, who are more modern in their worldview and identify more as urbanites than rural dwellers (despite Luisa’s many years in the country, she never quite adjusts to rural life, and Alba often wonders why she chose to marry a country boy), put little stock in country beliefs and do not respect folk magic. Arturo is later revealed as a warlock himself, but he does not openly embrace witchcraft. This is only in part to hide his use of the supernatural, but also because he has shaped his identity around the rejection of folk beliefs.

In the novel’s opening chapters, Alba’s “portents” (an innate awareness of the presence of evil) immediately establishes the novel’s lens as aligned with the practitioners of folk magic. Morena-Garcia’s first introduction of Alba highlights her use of a spell to summon her uncle to the farm. Arturo’s arrival shortly after she performs the spell provides an implicit validation of folk beliefs and practices within the world of the story. Later, in Minerva’s timeline, when she herself senses the presence of evil, she notes, “Nana Alba used to call these feelings portents and said they should be heeded” (35), further reinforcing this narrative lens.

Similarly, the witches at Los Pinos are stigmatized by many for their use of witchcraft, and yet they are widely consulted for their knowledge. Even people who openly deride the witches visit them in secret. Moreno-Garcia depicts these witches as women of little means who eke out a living selling handicrafts, talismans, and spells. It is their knowledge that allows Alba to vanquish Arturo and, generations later, helps Alba’s great-granddaughter, Minerva, to kill her own witch, reinforcing the novel’s argument for the value of folk wisdom, which calls into question the supremacy of the Western enlightenment values espoused by characters with social, economic, and political privilege.

The prejudice of society’s privileged class against folk wisdom continues into the novel’s more modern timelines, repeating the patterns established in Alba’s story. Ginny is stigmatized by her classmates—particularly the socially elite Carolyn—for her interest in the occult. Even Tremblay initially doubts Ginny when she claims she has been bewitched. Carolyn is the character in Minerva's context who dismisses the paranormal as fantasy, even though she’s ultimately revealed as a witch. Like Arturo, she espouses the virtues of modernity, science, and technology, but derives all of her power from the supernatural, a belief system which she openly mocks Ginny for embracing.

In all three timelines, even well-meaning characters dismiss Alba, Ginny, and Minerva’s experiences with the supernatural as hysteria, stress, and anxiety, invoking the long history of writing off women’s concerns as an implicit weakness of their gender. Minera’s close friend, Hideo assumes that Minerva’s difficulties stem from stress and anxiety and that even the eeriest of her experiences has a logical explanation. He urges her to seek professional psychiatric help and to try to worry less about her thesis. Ginny’s fiancé, Edgar, enlists Tremblay’s help to convince Ginny to be admitted to an asylum under the care of a psychiatrist. When Alba tries to warn her mother about the teyolloquani, her mother blames Alba’s indolence and overactive imagination. Despite this implicit sexism, all three women hold fast to what they know to be true: what is happening to them is supernatural.

Ultimately, the cumulative nature of their knowledge allows them to defeat evil. Alba channels centuries of folk magic into her potion that kills Arturno. Ginny and Tremblay leave a legacy of support for Minerva to find. By integrating the work of generations of women, Minerva finds justice for herself and for Ginny, vanquishing Carolyn.