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Witch Week
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"He was fairly sure it made you wicked too, to be kissed by a witch."
The horrors of the British boarding school, the things you learn about yourself in the men's locker room, and what the Chrestomanci series is really about (it's Chrestomanci.)
Transcript available here, and we'll be back in two weeks with Archer's Goon!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Eight Days of Diana Wynne-Jones'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Eight Days of Diana Wynne-Jones. I'm Emily Tesh. And I'm Rebecca Framow.
00:00:21
Speaker
eight days of diana winnejones i'm emily tesh and i'm rebecca fraau And this week we are going to be talking about Diana Wynne-Jones, 1983, 82, 83?
00:00:33
Speaker
82, I think. She crammed a bunch of books into the early 80s. She was just knocking them off. devin In five years. It's insane. Also,
Exploring the Emotional Weight of Witch Week
00:00:41
Speaker
they're all really good. Anyway, 1982 novel, which week? which week ah This is the book where when we were rereading it for this one, I kept saying, Becca, I don't want to read this one because it makes me really sad.
00:00:56
Speaker
um it's like I find Witch Week so hard to read. It's so stressful, especially in, I think it's notable how much more of a lift the early chapters are. And then you sort of hit the middle and it gets easier and easier and easier. I think things get funnier and funnier and funnier.
00:01:13
Speaker
But the first couple of chapters are just brutal. Maybe some of the most brutal writing that she ever did. Right. So Witch Week is the story of some children.
00:01:26
Speaker
And it's a kind of, this is a collective protagonist, I think, in a way we haven't really had since, probably since Wilkins Tooth. ah She's done sort of variations on this occasionally, but this kind of whole class of children.
00:01:41
Speaker
in a school are the protagonists all together with a few who are the focus. Yeah. And the school is a traditional English boarding school somewhere in Hertfordshire. ah This part of why Witch Week gets to me is it's my life.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. really don't like it. Yeah. I have a lot of damage about old fashioned schools ah in the south of England. Did I mention to you that November 5th is my birthday?
00:02:07
Speaker
So this one, it was It's a little extra hard. Right. ah So the one of the um so there's a couple of stories Diana Wynne-Jones is riffing on here. Every book, there's a story she riffs on.
00:02:21
Speaker
ah There are two ah strands in this one.
Guy Fawkes Day in Witch Week
00:02:25
Speaker
There's Guy Fawkes Day. Oh, Guy Fawkes Night, rather, which ah for the unenlightened in our audience, I understand your edition actually has a cultural note on this.
00:02:34
Speaker
It does. ah Centuries later, English people still set off fireworks, light bonfires and burn guys in effigy to celebrate November 5th as Guy Fawkes Day, says the cultural note at the beginning of my American edition.
00:02:47
Speaker
We actually don't do the effigy thing so much anymore. It's been a long time since I've seen that. I guess because nobody feels quite as virulently anti-Catholic as they used So Guy Fawkes Day is a cultural festival of England celebrating the time the Catholics tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and failed.
00:03:04
Speaker
and then we And to celebrate this, we set things on fire. yeah it's Honestly, it it's a ah great festival for its cold, its bloody November, and there's nothing to do.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, I've always meant to go to England someday on Guy Fawkes Day just to see the fireworks, you know, and be like, I have my birthday fireworks. Right. ah But Guy Fawkes Day is also a week after Halloween.
00:03:28
Speaker
And actually, maybe one of the reasons it's celebrated less in England than it used to be is that we celebrate Halloween more than we used to, because you're kind of doing them back to back is a bit much.
Witch Week within the School Story Genre
00:03:36
Speaker
ah But it is um exactly one week later, and Diana Wynne-Jones calls this week between...
00:03:44
Speaker
All Hallows Eve and Guy Fawkes Night, The Witch Week. So that's one of the stories. A week of magic culminating in Guy Fawkes Night when someone gets burned alive. The other story she's riffing on is one that I've actually been thinking about a lot lately because I just wrote a book about it myself.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, this is the English school story. Uh-huh. And there are so many variants of the English school story, and she's playing on them all. that So the school in this book is called Larwood House, which I had pointed out to me in a couple of different essays and notes, is actually riffing on Lowwood House, which is the horrible school in Jane Eyre. Yes!
00:04:24
Speaker
Which sets up, I think, a number of different themes in this book that we're going to be talking about, including the queer reading. oh naha a But also that's in, you know, in some ways, the foundation, one of the most foundational sort of misery of the English boarding school experience narratives that's going to be layered over over the next like 150 years with a lot of jollier and more inspiring school stories.
00:04:48
Speaker
I think it's really telling that she's going back to this one in a really visible way. Right, but she's also deeply aware of the 150-year tradition of school stories. And this isn't only the only book where it shows up, but it's one of the ones where it's most deeply embedded and there's even direct parody.
Influences on British Children's Literature
00:05:05
Speaker
So I would say that the the um the ancestor of the jolly boarding school story is a book called Tom Brown's School Days, published 1854, not read very much anymore. fifty four fifty seven 54, 57, one of those.
00:05:18
Speaker
Not read very much anymore, but astonishingly influential in its time. ah It's a semi-autobiographical account of a young man's adventures at rugby school.
00:05:30
Speaker
Rugby school, ah the originator of the modern sport of rugby, a lot of things. It's a place. Rugby school where he has, how do I put this? He has suitable it ah activities and behaviours and adventures and discoveries and growth patterns for a young man of the British Empire.
00:05:50
Speaker
And it's all about loyalty, honour and duty in a same-sex peer group. Yep. And I cannot overstate how influential this shit is on all of British children's literature thereafter.
00:06:04
Speaker
If you think about stuff like Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton, the Chalet School books, these are old, right? Like Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers books are 1930s, 1940s, but they're already a century into that tradition of jolly boarding school stories about same-sex peer groups learning about loyalty.
00:06:25
Speaker
yeah um And in fact, when Blyton's doing it in the nineteen thirty s she is doing a feminist subversion because it's a girls school. Yeah. Which is crazy to think about. And then this crossbreeds very naturally with the other tradition of British children's literature, which is the fairy story, the fantasy story.
00:06:45
Speaker
ah In 1974, you have published by the just 16 year old Jill Murphy, ah the first book of the astonishingly influential series, The Worst Witch. which I recommend if you haven't come across it. It's a really, really fun magic school book and it had enormous knock-on effects.
00:07:02
Speaker
Wildly popular, wildly successful. Eight book series about the worst witch and her friends at boarding school. It's been filmed, I think, two times, three times. Good books. Anyway, that is the tradition Jones is sitting in.
00:07:16
Speaker
The school story, the gothic story from jane that from Jane Eyre onwards, but also the jolly school story as an example of what Jones in her own essays calls the goddy book.
00:07:28
Speaker
Which yeah hundred percent the improving book that adults force on children and children go, Yeah. Yeah. And I think that so this book, this kind of book comes up a bunch in I think I was actually thinking about it. It only comes up really in the Crestomancy books.
00:07:46
Speaker
Tanino reads this sort of book. It's this sort of book that leads him as we you talked about a bit in Magicians of Caprona. This kind of jolly adventure story without magic that he finds so fun that ends up luring him away to get captured by the White Witch.
00:08:02
Speaker
White Witch, that's not right. That's Narnia, but you know what I mean. The White Devil. but We're not allowed to look forward, but we will see this again in later Crestomancy books. And both those cases, there's sort of like a a charm to it, right? The kids like these books. They have fun with them. They're theyre a fun, non-magical change from their magical lives.
Plot Overview: Witchcraft and Fear
00:08:23
Speaker
This kind of book also shows up in Witch Week, and it is emphatically derogatory. Yeah. There's a ah book that ah one of one of the protagonists of this book, Charles, is is sentenced for his crimes to write 500 lines every night out of a book called The Pluckiest Boy in School that starts, What ripping fun, exclaimed Watts Minor. I'm down for scrum half this afternoon, which is such a Tom Brown school days. Like, it's mildew. It's horrible. Precisely.
00:08:53
Speaker
I mean, it's probably meant to be more or less Tom Brown's school days. Yeah. it's One of its 19th century imitators. And we will come back to that book and the moments around it.
00:09:05
Speaker
But shall we do the sort of brief overview that we usually do? Absolutely. So Witch Week, the plot of Witch Week is that all of these kids are... At this school ah in modern Britain, it's essentially modern Britain with one major difference, which is there are witches.
00:09:21
Speaker
ah Witchcraft is illegal and witches are burned at the stake. At this school, a number of the children are witch orphans, which means that in some way they've lost parents to witchcraft, to the witchcraft laws.
00:09:34
Speaker
um The plot kicks off with a note that reads someone in this class is a witch. And I actually, so the opening sentence, I think, makes it really clear that this is a collective book and also some of the big themes in the book.
00:09:48
Speaker
The note said someone in this class is a witch. It was written in capital letters in ordinary blue ballpoint and it had appeared between two of the geography books that Mr. Crossley was marking. Anyone could have written it.
00:09:59
Speaker
So that sort of starts out right away. This is a collective book. This is a book about how everyone in the class has the power to change things to set off a dramatic change. Because as soon as this note appears, everyone starts thinking about witchcraft.
00:10:12
Speaker
The teachers start watching the class like a hawk to try and figure out who could have written this note and if it's possibly true. And various of the kids start realizing that their latent magical abilities are starting to awaken from from being indignant. that there's mostly We're mostly focusing on the the sort of outcasts of the class, the kids that nobody likes.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so they're the kids that are first sort of pointed at as being potentially witches. And then they start to realize that, in fact, they might be witches. And then they start to realize that they are witches. And then they start doing magic.
00:10:49
Speaker
And then they start getting caught.
Dystopian Setting and Emotional Landscape
00:10:50
Speaker
And then everything goes to hell. Is that a reasonable summary? That's a reasonable summary. I would say as well, though, ah this book is a really horrendous dystopia.
00:11:01
Speaker
It's so nasty in those opening chapters. One of our main characters, probably the protagonist insofar as there is a single protagonist, is a boy called Charles Morgan, who everyone hates and he hates everyone. Very, very unhappy kid.
00:11:16
Speaker
And we're given a glimpse into his memories of watching a witch be burned alive on a bonfire. And Jones uses the old fashioned bone fire rather than bonfire, which is the modern spelling ah to make it clear that this is a form of execution.
00:11:31
Speaker
ah yeah That's where bonfire comes from. It is a bonfire. I actually didn't know that history. I love words. So first we see Charles's memory of a witch being burned alive. And it's clear at first that this is like soaked very deep into him. But his memory is from where he's still sitting in a pushchair watching this.
00:11:49
Speaker
So from very early as childhood. And then we see his memory of trying to help a witch who is being chased by unclear forces escape through his back garden when he's a child.
00:12:02
Speaker
And from this, we discover that Charles is not actually a witch orphan. His family just doesn't want him. And he has never explicitly stated what's wrong with Charles or what his parents think is wrong with him.
00:12:18
Speaker
Have you ever considered that maybe the child just has bad vibes? Right. And to be fair, Charles very clearly does have bad vibes. But if I was him, I would, too. That poor kid.
00:12:30
Speaker
um So Charles has been sent away from home to this school, where which he hates, where he's deeply unhappy. And he dwells all the time on his two brief encounters with witches, both of which are memories of horror and fear.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yes. But also, the second encounter with the witch is really significant for him. It's not actually... So the first encounter with the witch, always absolutely a memory of horror and fear.
00:12:58
Speaker
The second encounter with the witch is actually something that he liked. um So we know, we get all this, the kids are forced to write in their journals for half an hour every day about their secret thoughts.
00:13:11
Speaker
Which is a particular kind of torture because they all know that their teachers are going to read the journals and look at their secret thoughts. So they have to write something that could plausibly be a secret thought that doesn't actually reveal anything about themselves.
00:13:22
Speaker
Right. So this is what I mean about the book feels dystopian, like not only in like the large scale society, which is like broad strokes. This is a really horrible world. But also like the emotional experience of being these kids is they are constantly being monitored.
00:13:36
Speaker
They have to hide their inner selves and come up with a ah new, better inner self that the adults will approve of, or at least that won't give them away. And every single one of them is doing it. And all of them are having a terrible time. Right.
00:13:49
Speaker
And the which idea of the condescending ah adult who's doing it for your own good, using your secret thoughts, policing the person you are inside, is part of what's like, it's 1984 stuff.
00:14:00
Speaker
nineteen eighty four stuff It's, ah Yeah, yeah, it's bad. And the way that Charles has figured out to cope with this is he writes in code. um Every day he writes, I got up, which means I hate this school.
00:14:14
Speaker
When he uses the code, I felt hot. It means that he's thinking about the first witch who was burned at the stake. When he uses woodwork, it means that he's thinking about the second witch. And woodwork is anything Charles liked.
00:14:25
Speaker
ah He uses that code because they only have woodwork once a week, and Charles has chosen that for his code on the very reasonable grounds that he's not likely to enjoy anything at Larboard House any oftener than once a week. So he liked the second witch.
00:14:37
Speaker
Thinking about the second witch who he helped escape through the back garden, you you know, this, this, he looked at this witch and this witch, it felt like this witch understood him. The, the witch sort of, you know, he, he has this sort of resting, I guess you would call Tarles' face kind of a resting bitch face.
00:14:52
Speaker
um This blank double barreled glare that he utilizes at all times. And that has sort of increasingly calcified into a glare. But in childhood, it seems pretty clear that was just his face. you know He meant he was thinking through some things. And the witch understood this.
00:15:05
Speaker
And they felt a connection. It says, i think the quote is about his parents. um is you know i He helps his witch escape. Then every time he hears about witch being burned on the radio, he starts to worry that it's his witch.
00:15:21
Speaker
he likes thinking about the witch because this connection.
00:15:27
Speaker
he just gave them his steady stare instead and each time he stared he knew they thought he was being nasty they did not understand it the way the witch did and since graham imitated everything jam his younger brother imitated everything charles did charles's parents very soon decided charles was a problem child and leading grandmma drag so he likes thinking about the witch because of this connection But then once he starts thinking about the witch, then eventually he goes on to think about the eventual fate of the witch.
00:15:55
Speaker
And that makes him miserable again, even though this is in some ways a happy memory for him. Right. In some ways, it's his only happy memory. It seems to be the only time in his life he's felt understood and felt connected. And he remembers very clearly that the witch sort of as a a thank you, kissed him goodbye.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yes. um And the memory of being kissed by a witch. really sticks with Charles. Yes. Charles mostly seems to get through school by isolating himself from everything and everyone in this sort of protective coating of hate. He uses this double-barreled glare of his as a weapon to keep people away.
00:16:31
Speaker
And it works for the most part. Unlike some of the other kids, Charles doesn't get actively bullied until the events of this book start. You know, even during the course of this book, Charles doesn't come in for very much active bullying from the other children because he's so nasty that they all just kind of keep away from him.
00:16:47
Speaker
Right. And besides, his classmates have other children to pick on, which brings us to our other main protagonist, who is Nan. Yes.
00:16:57
Speaker
So if Charles is the bottom of the pecking order among the boys of the class, Nan is his equivalent among the girls. And this very gendered division of the experience of school ah is absolutely key to how this book works. Nan and Charles are each other's sort of equivalent, the I'm you and you're me of this book, but they never have that moment of connection that you so often see in in a Jonesian sort of ah parallel.
00:17:26
Speaker
They don't like each other either. No, they're not in the way where a lot of times, you know, you'll have the kids who don't like each other and then they're forced to work together and then they come to like each other and realize their similarities.
00:17:38
Speaker
Nan and Charles realize their similarities immediately. similarities immediately And that is part of the reason that they don't like each other, because these are all kids who hate themselves. And so all of these kids, you know, for the first ah solid half of the book, every moment of connection is followed by an equally strong moment of rejection.
00:17:57
Speaker
I don't want to be like you. And I know that I am. Right. It's a book of enormous cruelty of children being cruel to each other constantly right through the first half. Like when we first properly meet Nan ah in chapter two, it's a PE lesson.
00:18:12
Speaker
And literally I had to put the book down and go walk around a bit before I could read this scene because it gets to me so badly. ah is... Such an exquisite description of humiliation. Nan is hanging back, trying to keep out of the sight of the teacher, this well-intentioned teacher, because the PE lesson that the girls are having ah is to climb ropes and Nan knows she can't climb a rope.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yes. Somehow she just doesn't have the muscles that let you do that. Nan is, i think, our first POV Diana Wynne Jones fat girl. We've seen Diana Wynne Jones fat girls before.
00:18:51
Speaker
We've seen them in various levels of sympathy from straight up cruel ridicule to, ah you know, kind of the the horror of being trapped inside with Cart in Time of the Ghost. But this is our first time actually being inside the head of what it's like to be A kid who simply can't do the things that the other kids can do because her body won't let
Character Analyses: Nan's Arc
00:19:12
Speaker
her.
00:19:12
Speaker
Because it's the wrong shape to do things like climb a rope. Right. And Nan is eventually forced to try to climb this rope in front of the whole class of girls who already bully her and treat her badly.
00:19:27
Speaker
And she tries to do it and she closes her eyes and tries to climb. And she can't do it but she thinks she is doing it. And it is agonizing yeah and then she opens her eyes and they're all laughing at her this is really really upsetting in some ways this more upsetting than the horror of say a homeward bounders where jamie is infinitely homeless and infinitely lost because at least that doesn't feel as real yes uh whereas kids do get bullied like this every day every single day
00:20:02
Speaker
But Nan does have one great power. And this, I think, you know, we've again, Nan is an archetype that we have seen before. She is the little girl who is a writer. um She has the power of words.
00:20:14
Speaker
And this starts to sort of manifest strongly after the the witch chaos begins. ah The first time we see her do it is this extremely funny sequence where she and Charles and Nirupam have been, who is ah but other another kid that we'll talk about in a bit, I think, um have all been summoned to have dinner at the high table with the teachers, which is, of course, a torture and an ordeal.
00:20:37
Speaker
And the food is gross, and they all know it's gross. And Nan is seized with the irresistible urge to describe the food. It's like being possessed. She can't stop herself doing it.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's horrendous. Everyone is trapped listening her to describing the food in the most creative, ingenious, horrific manner possible. um You know, I've just been for fun, for bonus, ah reading some of Jones's books for younger readers, which are obviously much shorter.
00:21:07
Speaker
And one of them is Chairperson and in which there is a sequence of someone covering spaghetti with pepper. more and more and more and more and more pepper until the entire plate of spaghetti is gray and i read this and i thought god you love to describe horrible food don't you really did and it's extremely funny uh but yeah nan does this awful description and she describes it as being possessed yeah she can't help herself she can't stop herself everyone around her is staring at her and uh
00:21:41
Speaker
wincing and and mentally screaming at her to stop and Nan is just cheerfully explaining that this sort of looks like worms in custard. Yep, and making it impossible for anyone else to eat the food just again by the power of her words.
00:21:55
Speaker
um Anyway, the next day, one of the well-intentioned question mark teachers decides that she is going to ferret out who is the accuser and who is the witch in the class by putting them all opposite each other for little plays where one of them is going to play an inquisitor and one of them is going to play a witch.
00:22:12
Speaker
And Nan and Charles are, of course, which is I think the most that Nan and Charles interact directly in the course of this book is when they are paired up against each other to be the inquisitor and the witch. And they just start screaming at each other. Charles is still hating Nan for the miserable experience of dinner last night. He just starts shouting at her about worms and custard, which that makes it sound like he's reciting a spell.
00:22:37
Speaker
And then they immediately lead degenerate into deeply personal insults about how unlikable the other one is. Right. It's really like significant to this book that not only are these these children bullied and miserable and the bottom of the pecking order, that doesn't in any way redeem them.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yes. They're still crap. yeah They treat each other really badly. The more unhappy they are, the worse they behave, ah which is amazingly true to life.
00:23:07
Speaker
uh like sad kids are very seldom good kids yeah um but it is uh and it gives rise to much of the drama much of the uh the pain and much of the comedy of the book ah Yeah, there's a line from much later on, once the kids have finally started to connect with each other about yet another horrible child, Brian Wentworth.
00:23:29
Speaker
um And Nirupam and Charles are talking and Nirupam says, I know Brian is nasty, but I've always thought it was situ his situation before this. And Charles could not answer at once because he was not sure that a person's character could be separated from his situation in quite this way.
00:23:46
Speaker
um Right. ah Your character and your situation are in fact so closely entwined that in fact, if you are bullied into behaving like a really nasty person, doesn't that just mean you're still being a really nasty person? And Brian is indeed one of the nastiest kids, but also Brian is the bottom of the pecking order on the boys' side of the room.
00:24:09
Speaker
He's the one who's actually facing the physical bullying that dodges Charles because he's so alarming. Yeah, I'm just going to read out the thing that Nan writes about the invisible line down the center of 6B, because I think that's fundamental to the structure They call it 6B.
00:24:25
Speaker
I am baffled by your edition's choices. Is it not 6B? No, they're too wide, because they're very clearly year eight, they're 13.
00:24:38
Speaker
All right, well, okay. No, okay. I've got to tell you this. I was going through Becca's notes before we started recording. And there is a sequence where two teachers are talking to each other about this class of very horrible children. They'll like, is one of them a witch?
00:24:51
Speaker
What's going to happen? What will they become if we don't do something about this? And the very, very tired deputy hair, they'll will be riding around on broomsticks by sixth form. Becca's book says they'll all be riding on group six by sixth grade, which is a very different a very different localisation because the word you want is senior.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yes. A sixth former is sloping out behind the but and building to smoke cigarettes because they're 18. Yes. Yeah, sixth grade does imply much younger children than these are. These are kids who are going through puberty and that is important.
00:25:28
Speaker
Oh yes, it is. Right, so give us the gender thing. and The gender thing is central to how the bullying and the cruelty works in this book. Yes. So Nan writes,
00:25:40
Speaker
no if six b i'm sorry is average or not but this is how they are they are divided into um boys with an invisible line down the middle of the room and people only cross that line when teachers make them girls are divided into real girls teresa mullllet and imitations estelle green and me boys are divided into real boys simon silverson brutes daniel smith and unreal boys, Nirupam Singh, and Charles Morgan, and Brian Wentworth.
00:26:08
Speaker
What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist, provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me, and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.
00:26:26
Speaker
They are allowed to cross the invisible line to prove this. Everyone is allowed to cross the invisible line to be nasty to Brian Wentworth. This is honestly a pretty accurate description of how an unhappy group of 13 year olds behaves.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah. ah But it is also really, really nasty at every turn. what The way I saw it, the way I read it, is that this is a book about self-hatred,
Class Dynamics and Metaphors for Oppression
00:26:53
Speaker
right?
00:26:53
Speaker
yeah Someone in this class is a witch. That's the beginning of the story. And a witch is the worst thing you can possibly be. A witch will be punished at every turn. a witch is doomed to burn for existing, for having been born witch.
00:27:07
Speaker
A witch can't help it and a witch can't stop it But someone in this class is definitely a witch and everyone is terrified of being that person. And the only way they can feel safe is to externalize all that hatred and turn it on these three targets at the bottom of the heap.
00:27:25
Speaker
Charles, Nan and b Brian. Yep. Who are treated very, very cruelly as a symptom of this deeply gendered, requirement to perform a certain kind of person at every moment and if you're not you're doomed yeah yeah um so anyway this is a gay book yeah so i think i've been looking for and i don't think that i found got the quote from reflections where she talks about the writing of this book because i think when we talk about this book as metaphor we have to start with that quote and i've been kicking myself because i didn't grab it do you have it in reflections
00:28:04
Speaker
I have got reflections and my coffee has an index. Let me just flick through. because she talks about it in terms of race. But I really don't think she was thinking about it in terms of race because doesn't actually make sense.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah. um Well, that's not the bit we're looking for, but it is Joan describing herself sitting at a high table when she was forced to go to boarding school, next to the headmistress, watching her eat rice pudding with a fork somehow, which is something that happens in the book. And finds herself inspired to describe the food.
00:28:36
Speaker
Fish's eyes in glue, I used to find myself saying. dead daffodils and mashed caterpillar. but So that's a pretty straightforward Nan is Jones. Yeah, I don't think that's a stretch.
00:28:46
Speaker
Nan is the young Jones, the little fat girl, and I do think actually a lot of the Diana Wynne Jones fat girl cruelty, especially in the 70s books, the early books, is a symptom of self-hatred.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I do think that also, while you're looking for that, I'm going to say that I think it is striking how much less, although Nan is going through a miserable time a bit, her hatred and her self-hatred feels much, much less profound than Charles's.
00:29:13
Speaker
A lot of Nan's misery is kind of portrayed through the things that she experiences, but the passages where she's thinking about herself and her situation are a lot less brutal than the passages where Charles is thinking about himself and his situation.
00:29:29
Speaker
Nan feels much more like a typical Diana Wynne-Jones protagonist. um She's discovering her power. It is in large part the power of words. Eventually it becomes the power of magic, but that magic is really the power of words just kind of given extra force.
00:29:45
Speaker
Charles is going through something different. And I, you know, I'm going, I was looking through, taking notes on everything that Charles says about himself and what is happening to him. The word hatred appears far more often in Charles' narration than it does, I think, anywhere else in any other Diana Wynne Jones book.
00:30:04
Speaker
Okay. Did you find the quote? Yes. Well, i thought i felt no I didn't find the exact one we're thinking of, I think, but I found several that are sort of similar. yeah So which week was my response to another fashionable obsession that all witches were intrinsically evil.
00:30:18
Speaker
Are they even when almost everybody is a witch? And there had been a spate of racial bullying in schools just then, too. Witches are an admirable example of people who are different, but probably can't help it.
00:30:29
Speaker
So, yeah, she talks about the metaphor of oppression she's using in Which Week in terms of racial bullying. Yes. And I think it's fair to say that is one of the things she's thinking of. The character of Nirapam, I think, is in the book because that's one of the things she's thinking of.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yes, and I do think it's quite telling that, no you know, this one of the axes that she kind of falls down on a bit. She is trying really, really hard. I think you can see this a bit in Homeward Bounders, too.
00:30:56
Speaker
um She is trying really hard to be thoughtful and conscious about how she writes about race. So hard that in fact she comes back around the other side. ah The whole, in Homeward Bounders, the whole Jorah's white slavery plot, I think is her really earnestly trying to do a reversal, and you know where Constam the hero is is you know a noble, enlightened, intelligent, you know wealthy brown man from a brown family with this little white boy slave.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's not good. She's trying to do something. If you want to see that, that reversal done well in the children's book, you want Mallory Blackmon, uh, Noughts and Crosses, who is is of course a woman of color writing it. Right. And she did it well.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yes. The jurist plot on a racial level does not work well. Right. Um, NeuroPalm, I think it's, you know, it's, it's better. um and mostly it's better because she talks about it less. Like, I think it's very clear that part of the reason that NeuroPalm comes in for bullying at this school is because he's a brown kid who came from india but it's never really you know it's written around in the way a lot of the other non-witch reasons that these kids are bullied are but written around but very present yes it's in fact it's it's quite striking all the bullying in the book is about you're the witch aren't you yeah but in also very clearly none of the bullying is about you're the witch Right, because witch is kind of an all-purpose metaphor for anything that makes you different.
00:32:25
Speaker
which stands, you know, I think it's one of the reasons that the book as much, I love this book. ah I love all the characters in it. I love all these horrible little children. I don't think the book works or holds together at the end and we'll get there. yeah think the man The metaphor falls apart very noticeably.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah. And with Nan, I do think that there's an argument to be made that you could read this as a racial metaphor because the part of the reasons that Nan comes in for bullying aside from the fact that she's just generally bottom of the pecking order, the thing that really puts the target on her back for being, everyone assumes that Nan is the witch.
00:32:57
Speaker
Nan takes all the heat for being the witch for a good 60% of the book because, and this is again, you know, sort of that Jonesian theme of untrustworthy adults. Nan's real name is Dulcinea.
00:33:08
Speaker
Dulcinea is also the name of the notorious archwitch who led a witch's rebellion in the 1700s. And Nan is a direct descendant of the archwitch, which is something that was when she came to the school, the head of the school had promised would be secret.
00:33:24
Speaker
Promised no one would know her real name was Dulcinea, solemnly sworn that she would be safe in this place. And then one of the things that happens, the reason that the high table incident is so horrible for Nan is because she puts the, Miss Cadwell Otter puts the names of the kids who are chosen. She, you know, picks them off a list and just sticks them on a piece of paper.
00:33:42
Speaker
And despite everything that she had promised, she puts Dulcinea on the list and, So, dlson you know, everyone now knows that Nan is descended from the Archwitch, and it's you know it's it's used like exactly like it's the first time Guy Fawkes comes up.
00:33:55
Speaker
It's like naming your child Guy Fawkes to name your child Dulcinea. It's a name that immediately singles you out, and it's a heritage that and immediately singles you out. So the metaphor for Nan's sort of witch journey is about an inherited trait. It's something that is in your heritage that is going to make people pick on you if they discover it.
00:34:17
Speaker
That's not true for Charles. Yeah, it is very much not true for Charles. i think you can you can read Nan's sort of victimhood in a number of ways. She's picked on because she's the fat little girl. She's picked on because she's weird and can't seem to help herself. yeah She's picked on because she's got the wrong family, ah which as as well as being victim.
00:34:39
Speaker
a race point could also actually be a class point that she comes from the wrong background from compared to all these other children and these are all again i do think this is a self-portrait character these are all things that are visible in Jones's sort of autobiographical writing yes Charles is a very different story.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yes. Charles, as we've said, there's nothing wrong with Charles's family. Charles has a normal family. ah Charles's normal family is afraid of him and of him being a bad influence. But Charles has always known in himself that there was something different about him.
00:35:12
Speaker
And it's when he remembers that second encounter with a witch that he says it, doesn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Where is it? Here it is.
00:35:23
Speaker
He thought of the way she had kissed him, and he was fairly sure it made you wicked too, to be kissed by a witch.
Themes of Identity and Acceptance
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah. And it's all about that kiss, that moment of mutual understanding, perfect connection, followed by the kiss.
00:35:38
Speaker
And this lives in him as his best memory and also his worst memory. Yeah. So Charles's discovery that despite everyone's assumption that... So at first, each kid thinks that there is one witch in the class.
00:35:52
Speaker
Charles is the first to realize that he might be that witch. He discovers this after, you know, he's gone. he's Someone has stolen his running shoes. He's gone on this quest to find them.
00:36:03
Speaker
He thinks that the kid who stole his running shoes, the kid who did steal his running shoes, is out back watching the seniors kiss. Charles goes... but to where the seniors are kissing, thinks it's gross and disgusting, goes to harass the kid who stole his running shoes about his running shoes.
00:36:20
Speaker
The seniors catch them, and they chase Charles into the men's locker room. And in the men's locker room, Charles realizes that in order to escape the seniors, he has become invisible. And this is where, in the men's locker room, having just been profoundly disgusted by older kids having heterosexuality, that he discovers that he is a witch.
00:36:41
Speaker
And... ah The quote And then...
00:36:50
Speaker
now swung to the front of his mind like a headache already there charles began shaking again no he said it wasn't that it was something else and then The suspicion is gone, but the certainty which hung over Charles in its place was so heavy and so hideous that it made him want to crouch on the floor.
00:37:07
Speaker
He was a witch. He would be hunted like the witch he had helped and burned like the fat one. It would hurt. It would be horrible. He was very, very scared. So scared it was like being dead already, cold, heavy, and almost unable to breathe.
00:37:24
Speaker
You have a secret. The secret is inescapable. The secret will ruin your life. There's nothing you can do about it. You were born this way.
00:37:36
Speaker
Yeah. ah There is actually a direct ah direct line where Charles is thinking that, no, it's it's when they're talking about Dulcinea.
00:37:47
Speaker
Dulcinea said reasonably enough that witches couldn't help being born the way they were and they didn't want to be killed for something they couldn't help. The first gay power anthem called Born This Way comes out in 1977, by the way.
00:38:00
Speaker
ah huh So in fact, yeah, a little bit of historical context. That's where we are. ah Homosexuality was decriminalized in the United Kingdom in 1967, following the recommendation of a parliamentary group, which basically...
00:38:15
Speaker
suggest that it ought to be decriminalized on the principle that otherwise it was very unfair to these men's wives. I've read the report, it's really fascinating stuff. hu And it was decriminalized, but it was still heavily stigmatized, especially to be a gay man.
00:38:31
Speaker
And there was more and more concern and doubt about it building up through the 70s. And if you think about the pop culture of the 1970s, and especially the counterculture, ah these are the Bowie years.
00:38:44
Speaker
then you get a kind of conservative backlash in the 80s and this book is 1982, we're early on in the the AIDS crisis, the HIV crisis, with increasing fear of gay people, of gay men especially,
00:39:04
Speaker
and of the disease that's now associated with them. ah In about five years time, that in 1988, we will have passed Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which makes it illegal to talk about homosexuality in schools as a pretended family relationship. That's the exact words.
00:39:22
Speaker
And this is a Thatcherite ah piece of anti-gay legislation that remains in force until 2005, it impossible making it impossible to talk in a positive way about being gay to any child in school.
00:39:37
Speaker
That's what it is. It's silent. Impossible. Yes. Impossible to write about it too. And I think, you know, think it is pretty clear in this book that Diana Wynne-Jones knows that this at least is one of the metaphors that she's pulling on, even though she can't say it. There is...
00:39:57
Speaker
The sequence a little bit later on, we're going back to Watts Minor, the pluckiest boy in school, and Simon Silverson, who is the popular kid, the kid who can't do anything wrong, steals the book from Charles ah that but Charles has been assigned to write lines out of and reads out from it.
00:40:12
Speaker
Swelling with pride, Watts Minor gazed into the eyes of his one true friend. Here was a boy above all, straight alike in body and mind. And everyone starts screaming with laughter. And a teacher comes along, the the worst teacher, I think the Miss Hodges, who is the one who sort of ah has the most absolute conviction of herself as a good influence in these children's lives and is the exact opposite.
00:40:37
Speaker
and says, really, Simon, that was unworthy of you. But Charles, I do think you made a rather unfortunate choice of book. And it doesn't say, nowhere in the text does it say, why or what's so funny.
00:40:50
Speaker
We can't say why or what's so funny. Not in a children's book published in 1982, you can't. But there is no way to read this except as an example of homophobic bullying in which the popular kids are picking on Charles because he's got a book that is kind of gay. yep And actually quite a lot of these old fashioned boarding school books were pretty gay because they were about intense relationships in same sex environments. Yep.
00:41:15
Speaker
um and the other kids are picking on charles because he's got a gay book and it's funny because it's charles yeah that's really clear it's funny because it's charles all the kids know and the teacher knows as well and she tries to warn charles could you be a bit less obviously gay yeah you made an unfortunate choice of book yeah um that's what she's saying to him yeah And I think it's also really notable that, so the other kid who's at the bottom of this pecking order is Brian Wentworth.
00:41:49
Speaker
Brian Wentworth gets picked on primarily because he's the son of a teacher. um And that is the kind of thing that gets you picked on. But he's also, he is ah this is actually the second part of when Nan is writing about the invisible lions in class.
00:42:04
Speaker
ah She says, some of Brian's trouble is that Mr. Wentworth is his father and he is small and perky and irritating with it. Another part is that Brian is really good at things and comes top in most things and ought to be the real boy, not Simon.
00:42:18
Speaker
But Simon Silverson is so certain he is the real boy that he has managed to convince Brian to. Brian is small and perky and irritating. And in... Right after the locker room sequence, Charles actually goes back to the locker room and finds Brian Wentworth there crying.
00:42:36
Speaker
And they have what seems like it's going to be a moment of connection. um they They relate to each other. ah Charles understands that ah Brian is suffering much more than he ever lets on.
00:42:49
Speaker
ah They tell jokes. They make each other laugh. And then... Charles thinks, charles and oh and the other thing that has happened at this point that we haven't mentioned yet, but is really central to the book, is Charles has taken to self-harm to stop himself from doing witchcraft.
00:43:05
Speaker
Charles has tried to burn his finger off with a candle by telling himself, in order to convince himself that it hurts to be burned. That the consequences of doing witchcraft will be terrible enough that he just shouldn't do witchcraft.
00:43:20
Speaker
um Right. This is a really alarming sequence in which Charles gets the dormitory candle. And while all the boys are staring at him, he tries to burn his own finger off. And then for the rest of the book, he has this fat, horrible ah but first degree burn with blister on his finger.
00:43:37
Speaker
um But incidentally, doing that stopped the other boys bullying Charles as they were doing again, as they usually do. Brian thinks, briefly, that Charles did this in order to help him.
00:43:51
Speaker
And hang on, i'm looking for the quote. ah I've got it. but Charles managed to stop himself backing away. That would be really unkind. But what was he to do now? Brian clearly thought Charles had come downstairs in order to comfort him.
00:44:05
Speaker
Probably he would expect Charles to be his friend in future. Well, Charles supposed he had deserved it. This is what you got for putting the evil eye on people's fathers. Quite apart from Mr. Wentworth, quite apart from the fact that Brian was the lowest of the low in 6B, 6B, 2Y. Even quite apart, the words she actually wrote, come on.
00:44:24
Speaker
Even quite apart from the fact that Charles did not like Brian, Charles knew he could not be friends with anyone now. He was a witch. He could get any anyone who was friends with him arrested too. So this is first moment when any of the kids in this book are talking to each other with sympathy, making a connection and it's immediate rejection.
00:44:43
Speaker
I, we are, you know, we are too much alike. And therefore I hate you. I don't like you. ah You're the bottom of the pecking order and I'm the bottom of the pecking order. And the two of us bonding together will just put us both at the bottom of the pecking order.
00:44:56
Speaker
And also, I'm this other horrible thing that has doomed me. And I can't doom anybody else by forming a connection in the men's locker room with you.
00:45:09
Speaker
ah Just because we're the only two gay kids in the class doesn't mean we need to date. Right. And it really doesn't because what happens after this, you know, Charles goes away thinking, I couldn't be Brian Wentworth's friend. And Brian Wentworth goes away thinking, well, I need to escape the school and how I've got to do it is frame one of these other kids who has been sort of nice to me into taking the blame for putting the evil eye on me so I can run away. And they'll probably... I really enjoy Brian, but Brian is one of like a series of 1980s male characters. So I describe it as like The nasty little man. This this is Adam again. he would this would
00:45:43
Speaker
Brian would sell you for one corn chip. Brian would absolutely like sell you for one corn chip. And he does. He does sell out all of the other kids in his class for one corn chip. Because, of course, the thing that is eventually revealed is that Brian wrote the note to begin with. Someone in this class is a witch.
00:45:59
Speaker
And it's never really explained why he did that. It wasn't part of his long game for running away because he says that he only got the idea of blaming someone in the class for putting the evil eye on him after talking to Charles.
00:46:12
Speaker
It just seems to be like Charles burning his finger off, kind of a lashing out of self-hatred because Brian already knows he's a witch. Self-hatred and also self-destruction, right? yeah Because actually, but someone in this class as a witch eventually does bring down the forces of the the inquisitors on the school, which could cause all sorts of problems.
00:46:35
Speaker
which I mean, literally, this is a world where witches, once they're caught, get burned alive. There's no suggestion that children are accepted this. Yeah. like Brian sort of can't hide himself.
00:46:46
Speaker
He is the witch. He knows he's the witch. He can't prevent himself from expressing that there is a witch and he can't stop himself from doing magic in front of his classmates and teachers. Like there's ah a moment where he summons a flock of birds into the musel room.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah. it just bursts out of you. Yeah, there's actually... yeah That's a theme actually throughout the sort of center part of the book as these different children begin to discover their own magic ability abilities.
00:47:12
Speaker
Despite all the possible consequences of doing magic, they start doing all the magic. They cannot help it. They just go. And this is actually, i think, so we've talked a lot about structure in Diana Wynne Jones books, how, you know, at the halfway point, there's usually some kind of turn.
00:47:29
Speaker
And often it's quite dramatic, like, actually, this is the real world. um Or actually, you're 100 years in your future and you can never go home. I think the turn in Witch Week definitely exists, but it's a lot more subtle.
00:47:43
Speaker
The point around 7 and 8 where the book really starts to change is when these kids stop being just terrified that witchcraft, witchcraft is a death sentence and that's it, and start finding joy in it.
00:47:55
Speaker
They start being excited about their witchcraft. They start finding power in their witchcraft. It makes them happy. Right. And they're all doing it differently. That's very striking that each child has an individual way of doing magic that sort of bursts out of them because of who they are and the way they are.
00:48:13
Speaker
Like Brian's flock of birds is that way because Brian's sense of humour is about... things erupting suddenly and unexpectedly. Charles's witchcraft is huge.
00:48:25
Speaker
ah He does these enormous pranks where he summons all the shoes in the school, which is thousands and thousands of thousands of shoes while he's looking for his running shoes.
Unique Magical Abilities
00:48:34
Speaker
And there's a sense of scale in the way that Charles works. He's big inside.
00:48:38
Speaker
And Nan's witchcraft is all about her power of description. yeah She can say things and make them true. There's a really good point ah that was made that I want to shout out in an essay. on Witch Week by, hang on, let me find the name and title, in Deborah Kaplan's The World-Shaping Power of Language, ah talking about the moment when Charles realizes that he has enjoyed himself for the first time at Larwood House.
00:49:04
Speaker
ah And he sits down to write in his journal in his normal code. And he's like, he realizes he has no way to begin. um Because I got up is his way of saying I hate this school. And I hate everything.
00:49:16
Speaker
And he can't write, I didn't get up because that doesn't make any sense. He literally doesn't have he's never had a way to say, i had a good day. i was happy today.
00:49:27
Speaker
But he had a good day and he was happy. And he, after he's sort of overcome his initial fear and terror, it's witchcraft is a joy to him. um So he writes, ah he he leaves out out, I got up altogether. You write some other nonsense code.
00:49:43
Speaker
And then he ends his journal entry by writing down, I shall never be hot again. i will never be afraid everything. the man burning and not know why. i won't ah I will never not understand that anymore. That particular fear and terror is gone.
00:49:57
Speaker
And Nan has this really, really, has this really, really beautiful ah line where she's like, she still felt a strong, confident inner witchiness. It was marvelous. It was like laughter bubbling up through everything she thought.
00:50:11
Speaker
And once these kids start feeling this joy and start by being who they are, by accepting that they are witches in everything that that entails, That's when they are able to actually start reaching out to each other and form connections, because that's the other thing that happens in the back half of this book, is the kids actually do start talking each other. Not Nan and Charles. Nan and Charles never talk to each other. They still don't like each other.
00:50:33
Speaker
Right. ah Because all the actual connections and friendships that are formed same-sex ones. Yeah. So... ah there's Actually, I will say I really enjoy ah Nan's Witchcraft Awakening, which is a straightforward parody of a horse girl book. Yes!
00:50:51
Speaker
So Nan, the whole class has suspected her of witchcraft all this time because she has the wrong name, the wrong family, she gets cornered in the girls' bathroom, like the parallel boys' locker room, girls' bathroom, these single-sex, vulnerable naked spaces.
00:51:05
Speaker
by all the popular girls in her class with the exception of one girl estelle who refuses to take part yes estelle does take a little estelle keeps watch outside because she's not brave enough to outright say i won't do this but she won't come in and torment nan right so the other girls uh team up and try to force nan to do magic in front of them they try to force her ride a broomstick for their entertainment and they threaten her with drowning in the bar yeah as sort of ah punishment that's done to witches and everyone knows that real witches don't drown anyway but they're obviously very serious about it and ah it's really chilling actually they're very sweet about it as well they're very nice and kind and polite because these are the good girls yep and in fact if you asked them if they were being nasty they would say no of course not yep and Jones does draw a direct line between the leader of this group Teresa and the nice and good teacher Miss Hodges yes
00:52:01
Speaker
but la who is by a long way through her self self-righteousness one of the worst teachers for the children yes Nan only just escapes uh this by sheer coincidence I think some of the crazy magic that's going on elsewhere calls the other girls away and she's left alone in the bathroom with the broomstick And then they have a horse girl moment. Yes.
00:52:24
Speaker
The broomstick wakes up and longs to be ridden. Nobody's loved this broomstick for years. All it wants is a rider. And it's very, very funny. And Nan sort of promises this broomstick that she will ride it because she feels so sorry for it. And she and she likes it.
00:52:44
Speaker
The broomstick is a liar, by the way. but Brian Wentworth is riding this broomstick every night.
00:52:50
Speaker
A broomstick is honestly a very vivid character. Yes. But that moment when Nan starts to imagine herself as a witch riding a broomstick, she pictures her ancestor Dulcinea and she is now, with her power of description, imagining what it would be like to be Dulcinea. And this is when she actually has her broomstick riding adventure.
00:53:09
Speaker
ah that night secretly flying out. She imagines Dulcinea flying against the moon in a pink silk ball dress. And this idea of power and beauty and looking spectacular ah gives Nan this sort of new joy in herself and in what she can do.
00:53:28
Speaker
And I do think the pink silk wall dress is very, very important. We shall come back to it. Yeah, definitely. Because the thing that the next turn... So I originally posited... This is a Crestomancy book. Crestomancy turns up 75% of the way through the book.
00:53:43
Speaker
Same as Magicians of Caprona, actually. The book is mostly about children. Yes. And at the end, Crestomancy turns up. Yep.
Crestomancy's Arrival
00:53:49
Speaker
um And I was like, well, maybe the turn in this book towards comedy, because it is a very funny book, but increasingly so as it goes on, is going to be Crestomancy showing up.
00:53:58
Speaker
That's not true. The turn in this book towards comedy is when some of the other kids, Nirupum and Estelle, who have been kind of in the background all along, kind of, you know, thought about derogatorily by Nan and Charles...
00:54:11
Speaker
start reaching out their hands to help. And Nan and Charles start becoming ready to listen. So Nirapam writes Nan a note saying, meet me around back. I see you're in trouble. You can help.
00:54:26
Speaker
And sort of reveals his tragic backstory of witchcraft and tells her that Estelle Green used to be part of a witch's rescue network and has always wanted to be Nan's friend. And Nan was too wrapped up in sort of her own self-hatred that she couldn't notice it and couldn't recognize that Estelle kind of wants to be her friend.
00:54:43
Speaker
Nurpin and Charles keep meeting because as things ramp up and the witchcraft situations get more problematic... They keep having the same ideas and running to do the same thing at the same time. When Brian Wentworth disappears, ah they both immediately run to check his journals.
00:54:58
Speaker
ah When the Inquisitor said that an Inquisitor going to show up, they both immediately run for the shed for the broomstick and they look at each other and they immediately know what the other one is going to do and are like, all right. Well, there's no proof.
00:55:11
Speaker
Not only that, they both thought about how we going to successfully run away from school? We've got a fake that we were just out for a run casually and they put on their PE shorts. Yes. paul Running away.
00:55:22
Speaker
um this isn't that right. This is this a slut in the sort of this rather than, as we've often seen before, the moment of wait, the instant understanding of I'm you and you're me and we're the same.
00:55:33
Speaker
Charles and Mirapam seems to be like, actively trying not to notice yes while the book keeps doing it to them yeah until it gets silly yeah and then they're forced to go, all right, fine, we're the same guy. We've got the same problems.
00:55:46
Speaker
Fine. And Brian, of course, has been using both of them in order to, for his cover, he's gotten one of them and then the other one of them to take him to the nurse so that they can see that there's an obvious witch who's putting the evil eye on me.
00:56:00
Speaker
He's using the same tricks. Before we go on to the ending, do we want to talk a little bit about Brian Wentworth and Mr. Wentworth? Because in addition to talking about Mr. Wentworth as an ineffectual adult in this situation, I also want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about your school story and adults in school stories.
00:56:18
Speaker
Right. So one thing that really comes out in which week is that the adults are as much a part of this story as the children. The teachers are constantly taking action and doing things and causing problems or trying to solve them.
00:56:33
Speaker
It's not just children running around having adventures. There are teachers involved in this, too. And one of the teachers who is most prominent in the story is Mr. Wentworth, the deputy head, ah who is Brian's father.
00:56:44
Speaker
And Mr. Wentworth is incredibly poor. He can't afford to send Brian to a different school, even though Brian has begged. And he is also one of the few teachers the children actually respect. yeah He seems to be good at his job.
00:56:59
Speaker
But there are multiple sequences where it becomes clear that Mr. Wentworth knows that. what's going on he talks to nan about her ancestor dulcinea and says as a matter of fact i admire her for trying to protect witches from persecution he he talks to charles he catches charles doing witchcraft and he screams at him right and charles sort of sees this uh strong reaction from an adult who's sort of screaming and hand shaking when he grabs charles and snatches him away and charles like this man is very very angry
00:57:31
Speaker
But it becomes clear, no, Mr. Wentworth is very, very, very frightened. He's frightened for Charles and for what could happen to Charles. And he's also frightened for himself.
00:57:42
Speaker
Yes. And he has, it becomes really clear, no more power to stop himself doing witchcraft than any of the children do. There's a really great sequence where nan has listened to her horse, horse broom and gone out for an ill-advised flight.
00:57:57
Speaker
And she runs into Mr. Wentworth on his flying carpet. Who thinks that she's Brian going out on his broom. And Mr. Wentworth first starts out by shouting at Brian, quote unquote, for going out on his broomstick and not listening to his advice and not doing magic. And then he's like, yes, yes, I know I'm on this carpet, but the carpet insists on going out every night. So what can I do?
00:58:18
Speaker
Right. So Mr. Wentworth seems like he ought to be the figure we've seen several times now, the adult who gets drawn into the chaos all the way back to the ogre downstairs. We've had this sort of adult man who finds himself in the midst of the of the fun and steps up.
00:58:35
Speaker
but Mr. Wentworth can't do anything in fact Mr. Wentworth is a witch himself and he is being blackmailed by the headmistress whose own ah quarters we discover are extraordinarily luxurious because she has got a lot of money because she's taking his whole salary and he is in this powerless ineffectual position where the the unfairness the injustice of this world is just as heavy or perhaps even heavier on an adult than it is on a child yeah ah I do, I suppose I should talk about my own book briefly. So The Incandescent, which is either out now or... Everyone should read it. ah ah May 13th is my own school story, my own magic school story.
00:59:16
Speaker
And it is about a deputy head, ah an adult in a position of authority overture over children and the limits of the power you have as that adult. Yes. Which is... you have some power, but not as much as the children think you do and not as much as you would like to. Yes.
00:59:34
Speaker
ah It's also about ah being, thinking that you are past the age of making the same mistakes that the children are going to make and then making exciting different yet similar mistakes making the same mistakes and also worse mistakes yeah with bigger consequences because you're a grown-up yes um yeah I do find the way Jones does adults in school really interesting I was part of this book I was reading it and like taking screenshots and that as usual Diana Wynne Jones did my foot my book first rich No, she's brilliant. She's absolutely brilliant. God, I ah do love this book. It's so hard to read in the first half, but it is so worth the payoff. And I do think, speaking of the the the moments of recognition and how the moments of recognition in this book always start out with a moment of sort of ah repulsion at the recognition, when they realize that Mr. Wentworth is just as scared as they are, they are the kids react not in the same way as in previous, you know, adults in cahoots. Great, now we can all, you know,
01:00:33
Speaker
be in this situation together. But Nan looks at him sorrowfully. She had always thought he was such a firm person up till now. She felt quite disillusioned. And so did Charles. So they're disappointed. they They thought that this was an adult who was capable and who was you know trying to protect them and had the power to do so.
01:00:52
Speaker
And they have just realized that adults do not have the power to do so. Not even the adults they respect the most. Right. So the final quarter of this book, and it really is not very much of it, yeah but it shines. yeah ah Brian runs away from school and as part of running away from school, comes up with a cunning plot to ah make it look like he's being kidnapped by an evil witch.
01:01:17
Speaker
Brian is extraordinarily stupid because the natural consequence of this is that the authorities get called in to find the evil kidnapping witch who's going around stealing children. And both b Brian and his father are witches, and the one thing that Brian consistently does try and protect is his father's identity as as a witch.
01:01:35
Speaker
Right! um So, you could... the self-destruction i think of of the unhappy child comes all the way through like nan unable to stop herself uh describing things to the table charles burning himself b brian giving himself away at every second they can't help it it has to come out somehow yes um anyway the inquisition is called in and all the children who think they are witches which at this point to be clear is quite a lot of them Yep. Okay, we've got to run away too. So this is the moment when Nirapam and Charles both run for the shed to try and find a broom. There's no broom because Brian already took it.
01:02:12
Speaker
So they take a mop and a hoe. It's so funny. And these two boys in their teeny tiny PE shorts ah go riding off across the fields on their mop and their hoe in a frankly very, very obvious penis metaphor.
01:02:32
Speaker
Which of course is what the witch's broomstick always was. Right, obviously. Meanwhile, Estelle and Nan have run away. and has used her magic to give them both the clothes they want the most, which is a shiny pink ball gown for Nan, and riding outfit for Estelle, who... Right, so the idea is to run away in disguise, yes?
01:02:51
Speaker
Except that can't do that. Nan describes clothes into existence, but the clothes she gives them are the ah are the things they want in their heart. And Estelle wants to be a horse girl. Yes. But Nan wants to be the Dulcinea she imagined, the powerful woman in the pink bull dress.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yes. And they run away to ah find the remains of the witch's underground railroad. Estelle, by the way, does not think that she is a witch at this point. Estelle is an ally.
01:03:21
Speaker
is still gonna have some realizations about herself in a few years time um well actually no she has them by the end of the book she has them by the end of the book she's so happy about it she's so happy like i'm a right so everyone's running away um and they haven't got a plan for where to run to the boys are running off into the woods Because it turns out the broom, the moth, and the hoe were all friends.
01:03:49
Speaker
They were changing around. They do little dances together. While Brian and Charles and Nirupam yell at each other. right And the girls are running to this old lady in town who's like, I'm really sorry. I can't help you. The Inquisitors are already watching me. They have been for years.
01:04:05
Speaker
The only thing I can give you is this mysterious spell. I don't know what it does. You have to go to a certain place, the Portal Oaks. So a circle of trees, which seems to be a gateway of some kind. And you have to say this word three times.
01:04:19
Speaker
And the word is Crestomancy. Yep. And they say it. That's what the girls do. The girls go to the portal oaks, find the boys already there arguing, wearing tiny shorts.
01:04:30
Speaker
wow They all argue with each other some more. And then they do the spell. And Brian is really mean about it the whole time. Yep. He's like, there's no way this is going to work. This is stupid. You're all stupid.
01:04:43
Speaker
But they say Crestomancy, Crestomancy, Crestomancy, Crestomancy. And Crestomancy always comes when he's caught. Yep. So there appears a tall and elegant and extraordinarily handsome man whom Estelle instantly decides she's in love with.
01:04:58
Speaker
Yes. And this man is wearing the best outfit of all time. which is have to wonder if Estelle's instant love for Crestomancy, if at this point Diana Wynne-Jones had already started receiving letters from people saying they wanted to marry Crestomancy because we know that was a thing that happened.
01:05:15
Speaker
That's true. They did, didn't they? Where is it? Okay. Okay. where the leaves had been there was a man standing he seemed utterly bewildered his first act was to put his hands up and smooth his hair which was a thing that hardly needed doing since the wind had not disturbed even the merest wisp of it it was smooth and black and shiny as new tar Having smoothed his hair, this man rearranged his starched white shirt cuffs and straightened his already straight pale grey cravat.
01:05:40
Speaker
After that, he carefully pulled down his dove-move waistcoat and equally carefully brushed some imaginary dust off his beautiful dove grey suit. All the while he was doing this, he was looking from one to the other of the five of them in increasing perplexity.
01:05:54
Speaker
His eyebrows rose higher with everything he saw. Yep. So finally, we have an adult... who seems to be able to do something but what I find really striking about this first appearance of Crestomancy is how much more of a character he is at this point than he was in Magicians of Caprona or even in Charmed Life yep that moment of confusion where he's got no idea what's going on where he is or why he's surrounded by five children in weird outfits so he fixes his hair first he does he puts on this appearance uh and there's this amazingly detailed description of his outfit which is the male equivalent of wearing a pink silk ball dress yeah multiple people comment on it and say are you going to a wedding look how and this is just what crestomancy wears every day everywhere yes because he is an arch witch an arch enchanter
01:06:54
Speaker
And then the Nan and Crestomancy parallels, I think, are really, you know, that moment of connection and recognition between them in particular, I think, is really strong. Because the next thing that Crestomancy does, once he's realized what, you know, he's sort of got half an idea of what's going on, he immediately starts bullshitting. He...
01:07:12
Speaker
It's like, all right, then ah he everyone's like, well, you're going take us away to another world where we'll be safe. He's like, no, we are going back to the school to sort this all out. And he rolls up to the school and announces to everyone's horror that he is, in fact, to the Inquisitor named Chant um and sets up a whole Inquisition room.
01:07:29
Speaker
He gets Nan, you know, Nan is it the what the other kids describing in great detail, all the things, all the absurd levels of things. that should be in an Inquisitor's room. Meanwhile, Crestomancy is like frantically summoning up chains and thumbscrews and petrol labeled for torture uses only.
01:07:48
Speaker
right
01:07:51
Speaker
And Nan says, so Nan eventually, you know, he starts summoning in everyone in the school one by one. Nan could tell from his voice that he was laughing. i accuse you of enjoying yourself, she said, while everyone outside gibbers.
01:08:03
Speaker
I confess to that. Crestomancy came round the Right, this is the only actual confession that happens in the Inquisitors' room. only actual confession. It's Crestomancy's confession that he's having a great time bullshitting his way through And Nan's reciprocal confession. I accuse you of enjoying yourself too.
01:08:20
Speaker
They are playing. They are having fun. Right. Because, and this has been true back to Charmed Life as well, but I still had a little bit of like a mind blown yeah moment when I saw it.
01:08:32
Speaker
The Crestomancy series is about Crestomancy. Yep. Wow, Emily, what an insight. How fascinating. No, it is more. Hear me out. We can't look forward, so we can't talk about Lives of Christopher Chan, which to me is the culmination of this. Yes. But the Crestomancy series is about Crestomancy, who is this figure of power, right? He is the most powerful enchanter in nine worlds.
01:08:56
Speaker
We know that from Charmed Life. He can do anything. He always looks fantastic. he has a He has a silk dressing gown collection. When you summon him suddenly to another world, he looks like he's on his way to a wedding. He can bullshit his way through any problem. Yes.
01:09:10
Speaker
But the ending of Charmed Life, is when Crestomancy turns to Cap and says to him, you're going to be me. You're the next Crestomancy. You are.
01:09:21
Speaker
This is the adult you're going to be that the world needs you to be. Right? But even similarly in Magicians of Caprona, although it's not quite so striking, this is, again, this figure of power turns up turns to all the children and says the solution is you.
01:09:36
Speaker
Here are your powers. Here's what you can do with them. These things that you have thought set you apart that made you unwanted and imperfect are actually the sign of your great power.
01:09:48
Speaker
Right. And then in Winch Week, ah we have Nan dreaming of being powerful, being spectacular, wearing a great outfit, using magic.
01:10:00
Speaker
Here's the man who does it already, who bullshits his way through anything with the power of description only. yeah He's not actually doing much magic here. He's mostly just selling the story that the Inquisitor has turned up and can do anything he wants. He says divisional Inquisitor and he keeps meeting people who's like, there's no such thing as a divisional Inquisitor. And he's like, pity, I thought it sounded so impressive.
01:10:21
Speaker
ah This, by the way, i think is really funny coming after Homeward Bounders because this the exact kind of activity. Jamie does this all the time and immediately gets scorn heaped on him from all the other children.
01:10:32
Speaker
But because Crestamante is an adult and an adult who looks glamorous, he can do it he can pull it off right but what he's saying to these kids is you're going to be me this is the ultimate outcome of being a weird kid i am the weird adult like crestomancy is very clearly a weird adult they all respond to that in and they're like what what what's he doing now brian hates it Brian is appalled by Crestomancy and also by the way he seems to be winning. yes like it's It's in Brian's interest for Crestomancy to be good at what he does and save them all, but he still clearly finds it very annoying. yes
01:11:06
Speaker
Crestomancy is strange. He's different. He's powerful. He gets away with everything. He wears a fantastic outfit. He's who you're going to be. yeah This is the This is the it gets better. It is absolutely.
01:11:25
Speaker
And 100% is. But I think leading into the ending of the book, this is this is I think this is clearly what she is doing throughout the Crestomancy series. But it is also I think in the ending of this book doesn't quite work.
01:11:38
Speaker
um Because so much of the metaphor of Crestomancy has always been about you are a weird kid and that weird kid is expressed through your magic. You come into your magic that is coming into your own.
01:11:51
Speaker
What happens in this book is that they discover that the fact that their their world is a horrific witch dystopia um because it has all the excess magic that should have been in our world, in our real world, and it was sort of blown apart from by Guy Fawkes screwing up um and and making a little pocket world where all the extra magic went, where everything was sort of miserable and and centered around burning.
01:12:16
Speaker
In order to fix this, they need to put the worlds back together. But when the worlds are put back together, most of these kids won't be witches. So we've just had whole book about where embracing your witchcraft is a you know is clearly a metaphor for embracing who you are inside, finding joy in it.
Resolution and Metaphor Coherence
01:12:39
Speaker
They've all come to love having witchcraft. Right, and there's this final scene of Crestomancy's Inquisition where he sort of sends his magic Inquisition ah machine, witch detector, around the class.
01:12:53
Speaker
Someone in this class is a witch. And the witch detector goes around, beep, beep, beep, beep. Everyone in this class is a witch. Except all of four kids who at the end are left like, wait, not me?
01:13:04
Speaker
so I want to be a witch! Right. So that's the metaphor, right? The magic is in you, is in every single one of you. But you don't get to keep it. You're going to have an equally strong talent for something else in the other world.
01:13:18
Speaker
Right. And I think what she's trying to do, i see what she's trying to do, right? She's trying to say our world, our real immediate world, is one where every child has a powerful inner self capable of it of all sorts of extraordinary things. Right.
01:13:31
Speaker
She's trying to say that in this world, this pocket world, where the idea of being a witch is something bad. In order to identify with your powerful inner self, you have to, i you know, you have to embrace this this this identity of evil that is, you know, something that goes along with all these bad self ideas, this idea of, you know, communing with the devil, all of that.
01:13:53
Speaker
You're going to a world where that's not the tickett case, that's not the connotation. You can let go. i think, you know, the idea of the witch, of banishing the witchcraft, is a metaphor for banishing the bad idea of the self and moving to a place where you can embrace just ah ah you've always had a good idea of the self.
01:14:12
Speaker
It's never been a problem. But because we've also had these beautiful moments of transformation of of joy and power in being a witch and embracing that idea, to then have the ending be, that was never your power all along, just doesn't work, it falls flat. And it's a terrible metaphor for, as she said that she's trying to do, for race, for queerness, for anything that is actually represents difference.
01:14:38
Speaker
Because the way to resolve that is not to go to a world where that thing doesn't exist. Yeah, it really, it it does fall apart. The metaphor stops working. I think she is trying to hint at the end that like, because the the worlds have been recombined, there is now magic in our world and that Charles perhaps still is a witch.
01:14:58
Speaker
despite it all there's a moment at the end where we discover in this correct world this corrected world that Brian and Simon the popular boy who always been best friends because they were two assholes together all along really um Charles and Nirapam are best friends that Nan and Estelle are best friends they all have connections and places to belong now The school is also no longer a miserable boarding school. Thank goodness. It's a nice, proper, comprehensive down down with the upper classes.
01:15:27
Speaker
That is the implication, right? This is real school. And in fact, all the not except for all the nasty popular girls are still at boarding school, but there's a different girls' school down the road. So we got rid of the little girls we don't like.
01:15:40
Speaker
Isn't that great? Isn't that great? I actually have some questions, concerns.
01:15:49
Speaker
Although, looking forward for a minute to Black Maria, Aunt Maria coming up in the near future, this sort of toxic femininity, what do you do with it? Well, the only thing you can do is banish it. That's going to come back.
01:16:02
Speaker
yeah But right, the the metaphor does... Fall apart. I mean, I think it sort of works. It sort of works for Nan. The thing that does work for me a bit is when Crestomancy looks at Nan and says, look, you found such joy in the idea of being a witch.
01:16:20
Speaker
But the thing that you really enjoyed was describing things. You actually did a bare minimum of witchcraft, if that. All you did was be a horse girl with your broom. It wasn't even your broom. It was Brian's broom. It wasn't even your broom. The thing that you enjoyed was being a writer.
01:16:34
Speaker
All right, that's a metaphor that, you know, that that we're familiar with from Diana Wynne Jones, that the power is of words, you can embrace that, and that's equivalent. But it does fall apart when it comes to Charles.
01:16:44
Speaker
he You know, Christomancy talks to Charles and sort of is trying to convince him that they have to go back to this other world. And Charles thinks, lose his witchcraft? I'm going to go on being a witch. So there. And it doesn't matter he's doomed die in this world. He would rather live in this world where he is doomed to death than lose this thing that he has come to think of as his identity.
01:17:08
Speaker
But he has to. Yeah, it doesn't quite work.
Character Parallels in Crestomancy Series
01:17:12
Speaker
I do love Charles. What a great character. you no I know. love all the kids. They're all awful. They're all so good.
01:17:19
Speaker
Yeah, you pointed out actually the sort of sequence of C names in the Crestomancy series. yeah that We've had Cat, now Charles. We're going to have in the future Christopher and Conrad.
01:17:30
Speaker
Tonino is a break in the pattern, but I think does actually belong in this sort of array of unhappy little boys. Right, and as much as Nan recognize looks at Crestomancy and sort of recognizes the the fun and the joy and the power of words, I do think that Charles is an equally important echo of stuff that we're going to that we've seen in the past and that we're going to see forward in the Crestomancy books of sort of the and the the way that you can build a shell up around yourself in order to protect yourself.
01:18:01
Speaker
and how difficult it is to break out of that once you've built that shell. Right. And Charles is, I think Charles is a really striking invocation of unhappiness and self-loathing ah to the point of self-destruction. The scene of it hurts to be burnt when he burns himself is so powerful.
01:18:18
Speaker
And that is something that comes back in the Crestomancy series.
Darker Tones in Crestomancy Books
01:18:21
Speaker
It's interesting because I've often thought of Crestomancy as the lighter end of what Jones is capable full of. I, this is not a lighthearted book. Charmed Life was not a lighthearted book.
01:18:32
Speaker
I think Crestomancy is actually a lot darker than I thought. Yeah, I do think, so Caprona is a lighthearted book, but I do think that it's quite interesting to take Caprona and Witch Week as two books relatively in sequence. They're written relatively close together.
01:18:47
Speaker
And I do think that you can make an argument that both of them are experiments in how to redirect tragedy. ah All of the building blocks of Caprona are tragedies. um Which week for the first six or seven in chapters seems destined for, you know, all these kids seem destined for unending misery.
01:19:05
Speaker
And how do you, how do you change that? ah tragic fate that a child seems to be destined for, can you do it by giving them enough, by introducing Crestomancy, by introducing the figure of power and happiness in yourself that is Crestomancy?
01:19:22
Speaker
And that is a really good question.
Power of Words and Future Discussions
01:19:26
Speaker
Let's call it there. Let's call it there. I can't believe we didn't even talk about the Simon Says spell, but it's another example of the power of words. And we've talked about that ad infinitum. So, uh, Oh, same for the bonus episode. There is always more to say about a Diana Wynn Jones book, especially this series of like early eighties ones, which are so good. Yeah. Dear God, these books are
Conclusion and Farewell
01:19:46
Speaker
good. So we're coming up to, what is it after? Archer's Goon will be doing next.
01:19:50
Speaker
speaking of the power of Archers, Goon, and then Fire and Hemlock. Jesus, what a run. What a run. Happy 80s, everybody.
01:20:03
Speaker
Alright, see you next time. you next time. Bye. Bye.