49 pages • 1-hour read
The Once and Future Witches
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Symbols & Motifs
Alternative Fairy Tales
The fairy tales mentioned in The Once and Future Witches are a distinct departure from the versions that most children have learned. These alternative stories are a recurring motif that serves to emphasize the theme of secret communication required to further women’s resistance to male authority. Conventional fairy tales in real Western culture often reinforce patriarchal values and social structures: All witches are evil, and mothers die conveniently in childbirth before the story begins. All stepmothers are malicious and usually pose a threat to the hero. All princesses are beautiful and passive, waiting to be awakened with a kiss or rescued from some dire plight. Although many traditional fairy tales were recorded or sanitized by men like Charles Perrault, Harrow returns fairy tales to the domestic sphere from which they arose: tales told among villagers or mothers and their children. Harrow gives authorship of fairy tales to the Sisters Grimm rather than the Brothers Grimm. The witches in her version of the stories are ambiguous characters and frequently assist a heroine who hasn’t been deprived of her own agency to resolve the story. These harmless mythical tales contain the coded information needed to resurrect magic in the world.
Aside from performing this function, the tales also serve to mirror the mental state of the novel’s protagonists. The Tale of the Sleeping Maiden warns of the presumption of a witch who seeks to subvert male rule. The Tale of the Witch Who Spun Straw to Gold echoes Juniper’s sense of abandonment when the Crone and Mother are never seen again. The most subversive tale is Gideon Hill’s version of Hansel and Gretel, in which a kindly witch burns at the stake after teaching him magic. The patriarchal version of these tales would be well known to any reader of the novel, bringing the feminist tales in The Once and Future Witches into starker contrast.
The Many Methods of Magic
The characters use a variety of resourceful means to work their spells. Frequently, their charms depend upon common objects: a needle and thread, a smooth stone, a bird’s feather. Such objects symbolize the variety of magical traditions used by the women in the novel. Witchcraft is not limited to New Salem. It is a common occurrence in all cultures of the world at all times in history. The diversity of the objects used as well as the distinctions among magical practitioners reinforces the theme of the unity of everyone who practices witchcraft. Magic is a universal phenomenon and the various factions in the novel come to recognize their common origins by the end of the story. Bella and Quinn make it their life’s work to scour the globe for magical lore to preserve it for posterity in the tower library.
At the same time that magical methods underscore the unity of magical practice, they also demonstrate the resourcefulness of women deprived of most means to work the craft. They slip spells to one another on scraps of paper when no one is looking. They meet in secret locations to trade more knowledge. They use whatever objects are available in a kitchen spice rack that might cast a spell.
Even though Juniper initially believes that witchcraft must depend on a special magical pedigree, her sisters and the Last Three emphasize the fact that anyone can work magic. This echoes Mama Mags’s advice to Juniper: “She said proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world” (2). The fact that anyone can tap into this power is the greatest reason for authorities who horde power to fear and try to destroy it.
Factual Historical Context
Although real historical events in America during the 1890s are rarely explicitly mentioned in the novel, veiled references to them are a continuous motif that speaks to the theme of male abuses of power. The final decades of the 19th century are often called The Gilded Age, as this period represented the apex of laissez-faire capitalism in American history. Business tycoons were free to exploit the lower classes in their factories and mills for the sake of lining their own pockets. The labor movement and unionization began to gain momentum as “robber barons”—capitalists wielding enormous economic and political power—oppressed working-class men, women, and children with no government regulation to curb their abuses.
The real names of events and places have only been thinly disguised so that any student of history would know the historical basis for the fictional item. The factory fire that so enrages Juniper is based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York when dozens of female sweatshop workers burned to death. The Centennial Fairgrounds and its Ferris wheel are an allusion to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America. The Street of Cairo exhibit at the fair’s Midway, which was looked down upon for its racial admixture, is evoked in New Cairo—the name of the Black neighborhood in New Salem.
Lee’s union agitating in Chicago refers to Eugene Debs’ very real attempt to organize railroad workers that resulted in a national railroad strike and brought the National Guard to the city. While nobody tried a rust spell during the strike, miles of railroad tracks were ripped up by angry mobs during the infamous Pullman Strike of 1894. Passing references are also made to other contemporary mining strikes, echoing the Ludlow Massacre of 1913.
The racial dividing line between the Daughters of Tituba and the Sisters of Avalon is paralleled in the real battle among suffragettes when some didn’t want to admit Black women into their organization. This was to become a point of contention right before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. In choosing Gilded Age America as the historical backdrop for The Once and Future Witches, the author recognizes this era as a perfect illustration of abusive male power and wealth that goes unchecked.
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