Weyward
Weyward
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summaries & Analyses
Author Insights
Quizzes
NEWReading Tools
Emilia Hart on Weyward
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
Rage, lockdown, and a nearby trial from 1612Hart was living in Cumbria in early 2020, working remotely, when a friend mentioned that the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials had taken place in nearby Lancaster. At exactly the same moment, news reports were tracking a sharp rise in domestic violence calls as victims were locked inside with their abusers. The collision of those two facts was what made the novel feel necessary.
I began writing Weyward during the early days of the pandemic, fuelled by anger about the increase of domestic violence during lockdown. At the same time, I was also reading about the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials. The two seemed horribly linked. I wondered: how far have we really come in the fight against misogyny? How can we keep going? For me, the answer is by connecting with the women around us, and those who came before us. And story is connection.
Anger alone did not produce a novel. Writing in a guest essay for Barnes and Noble, Hart described the turn that moved her from fury toward fiction: a question about whether female resilience, without any supernatural aid, might be its own form of defiance.
I felt angry and powerless. If only, I thought to myself, women really could call on the supernatural to break free from the bonds of patriarchy. If only we really were witches. But then I thought about how feminism – and female community – has withstood so much. Women continue to call for change, their voices louder now than ever. Isn’t female resilience its own kind of power? A power as defiant and irrepressible as that of the natural world?
How she wrote it
A third woman, a sequenced draft, and a word from ShakespeareThe novel’s three-timeline architecture was a structural problem Hart solved mid-draft, not a design she began with. Her original conception held only two women. It was the gap between them that forced her hand.
Originally, there were only going to be two generations of women: Altha in 1619 and Kate in 2019! But I realised that the characters were so far apart in time that it would be difficult to connect them: I needed a third character to link the two, which is how Violet was born. Intertwining the lives of three women also allowed me to explore the ways in which the female experience has changed – and remained the same – over the centuries.
Once she had all three timelines, Hart faced a second decision: whether to draft them in parallel or one after another. She chose sequence, and that choice shaped every recurring image in the book. Writing Altha’s story to completion before beginning Violet’s meant she could plant details that would resurface across four centuries of the same lineage.
I wrote the stories in chronological order. So, first I wrote Altha’s story in its entirety, then Violet’s, then Kate’s, braiding them together. This enabled me to create subtle echoes in their narratives – whether experiences of the female body or encounters with male characters. The shared setting of the cottage, and the characters’ connection with the natural world, really helped with this. I was able to weave common imagery – such as crows, bees, insects and flowers – through all three stories to amplify the sense that these women were all part of the same powerful lineage.
Research for Altha’s 1619 trial scenes turned up a detail that unsettled Hart’s assumptions about victimhood. She had expected the accused women of the Pendle trials to be straightforwardly powerless. The historical record complicated that.
I was surprised to learn that some of the women accused of witchcraft may have actually believed in their own powers. This was particularly the case with the Pendle witch trials, which inspired Weyward: most of the women accused came from two families headed by matriarchs, who saw themselves in competition with each other in providing healing services to the locals. By no means does that justify what happened to them, but I think it shows how differently people thought about the world back then.
The title required its own search. Hart wanted a single word that could function as a place name, a family name, and a description of women who broke the mold. She found it in an unexpected corner of Shakespeare: the First Folio text of Macbeth, where the three witches appear not as the “weird sisters” but under an older spelling, one that carried exactly the weight she needed.
She explained that the title came from Shakespeare’s First Folio, where the three witches in Macbeth are called the Weyward sisters — an older English spelling for “weird” or “uncanny, otherworldly” — and described it as “really perfect for women who are like breaking the mold in some way.” [paraphrased from audio]
That single word ended up doing the work of a thesis: the Weyward women are not cursed or evil but fated, ungovernable, aligned with something older than the laws used against them.
What she wants us to sit with
Foremothers, connection, and a manuscript passed forwardThe novel’s architecture makes its argument before any character speaks: a manuscript written by Altha in 1619 survives to be found by Violet in 1942, then by Kate in 2019. Hart described this chain to booksellers as the book’s central claim about what reading does.
At the heart of the novel is a manuscript written by Altha Weyward, on trial for witchcraft in 1619. Her descendants, Violet in 1942 and Kate in 2019, both find and read Altha’s story. For Violet and Kate, the act of reading – of connecting with a woman who lived centuries before – is life changing.
For all its dark material, Hart was deliberate about the emotional register she wanted readers to leave with. She has returned to this point in nearly every interview, and her answer consistently pairs the political with the personal.
I’d love for readers, and female readers in particular, to come away feeling empowered and inspired to seek out the stories of their foremothers. I think learning from our female ancestors can give us so much – it reminds us of how far we have come in the struggle for gender equality, and also inspires us to keep going. Above all, though, I think writing and reading novels is fundamentally about two things: human connection, and entertainment! So if someone recognises their own experience reflected on the page, or just enjoys reading late into the night, then I’m happy.
For readers approaching the book warily because of its subject matter, Hart offered a direct reassurance in the LoveReading conversation, knowing that witch trials and domestic violence can make a novel sound like an endurance test.
it does sound a bit dark, but I think I’d like people to know that it is ultimately hopeful. [paraphrased from audio]