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Charmed Life
223 Plays6 days ago
"God bless her dear little sugar-coated shining soul."
The English class system, American science fiction, and the Problem of Gwendolen.
[please again pardon our audio this week as we dealt with travel and microphone issues]
Transcript available here, and week we'll be doing Drowned Ammet!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Charmed Life'
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, and welcome back to 8 Days of Diana Wynn-Jones. I'm Emily Tesh. And I'm Rebecca Framel. And this week we are going to be talking about the very first Christomancy book, Charmed Life, published in 1978. This one I'm quite excited about because this was my first day in Owen Jones. I had an original 1970s very dog-eared copy, which I found in Mum's bookcase. I don't know why it was there. She was not a child when it came out. It was way too early for me.
00:00:33
Speaker
ah But I fell in love with that book and read it over and over again until it fell apart. So I don't have that copy anymore. It was demolished. And I'm guessing this was actually probably quite a lot of people's first Diana Wynne Jones book, because not only is it the first Grestomancy book, but I think it's the first book of hers to win a major award. This one won the Guardian Award.
00:00:55
Speaker
Oh, that's true, so isn't it? um And I think this one was the first one to be sort of read quite widely. And it was clearly like, influential both on her own work and on future children's books.
Plot Overview: Cat and Gwendolyn in the Magical Castle
00:01:08
Speaker
Charmed Life is the story of a lonely boy who goes to live in a magical castle. That's the short. but It's a lonely boy. He and his sister go to live in a magical castle. It's set in kind of an alternate version of our own world that's sort of ah more a little bit more Edwardian tinged and a lot more magical.
00:01:31
Speaker
and There's a couple of things that she's doing in this book for the first time that I think it's gonna be really fun to talk about because you can we're allowed to look back there's a lot to look back on as far as how she's looking at her previous works in this book but she's also really breaking from the mold. For the first thing, I don't think there are any evil mothers in this book.
00:01:51
Speaker
directly, at least. Whoa, not directly. Although I think you could make a case that there is still an evil mother figure. ah But no, I think actually, in this book, the adults are possibly meant to be well intentioned. I have I have points, I have concerns, I have criticisms, conceptivism, let's say. In some way, it does feel like Jones is more at home writing a family that was a complete mess than one which works more or less fine.
00:02:18
Speaker
Right. I think she's really trying to figure out how to do it for the first time here, maybe. She's presenting us with a good family. Because when Kat and his sister Gwendolyn get to this castle, so Kat and Gwendolyn are orphans, their parents die in a tragic boating accident. We'll get back to that. We'll come back to the accident. We have theories.
00:02:42
Speaker
yeah um And ah they're raised they're sort of being raised by the the nice mediocre witch downstairs who's giving Gwendolyn all the magic lessons that she could want because Gwendolyn is a witch. And cat isn't Cat is just a nice ordinary boy. He goes to school. He has loads of friends. But he's obviously quite sad about his parents being dead in a boating accident. And so he's a bit clingy when it comes to his older sister, whom he admires very much.
00:03:12
Speaker
Right. And then Gwendolyn, ah Gwendolyn is the driver of this plot. In some ways, I would argue Gwendolyn is the main character of this book. Cat's just also there. Well, that's part of the problem, right? Is that Cat spends most of the book and I mean, and I don't mean a problem for the book and then it's a bad book. I mean, the problem that the book is setting out to solve structurally is that Cat spends his whole life thinking of himself as just kind of also there. He's an accessory to Gwendolyn. He sees himself as a minor character or secondary character in his own life because his life is about Gwendolyn. Right. And
Gwendolyn's Ambitions and Conflicts
00:03:51
Speaker
so when a tall, dark, handsome stranger shows up and says, well, I'm going to take you both away to my castle and teach you you know and adopt you and teach you about magic, Kat assumes that he's there for Gwendolyn and that he's just sort of going along because he's Gwendolyn's plus one.
00:04:07
Speaker
Right. When they arrive at the castle, Gwendolyn hates everything about it and embarks on a campaign of warfare against the tall dark stranger who is Crestomancy, one of the most powerful enchanters in this or any other world, and all the other people who live there as well, ah culminating in her doing something very startling and at exactly the halfway point of the book, which leaves Kat in a difficult position. Right.
00:04:34
Speaker
So I think this is a book in two halves in fact almost exactly like Power of Three which we talked about last time. It's a book where halfway through a character is introduced which completely changes your perspective on everything. Should we talk about the genre?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yes, should we talk about the first half of the book first? Like those first eight chapters, The Gwendolyn Show. Oh my god, it is such a Gwendolyn show. And you can tell that Dinah Wintjoads is having so much fun writing all of the horrible things that Gwendolyn is doing to disrupt this household. Gwendolyn to me feels in some ways like a wish fulfilment power fantasy.
00:05:14
Speaker
ah She is a monster, let's get that a clear up front, like the very first line of the book is... cat ch chance admired his elder sister gwendolen she was a witch he admired her and clung to her great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to Yep. So you start the whole book focused around this key relationship, which is Cat's admiration and clinging to his sister and his desperate loneliness. And even though we have, it's mentioned in passing that he has dozens of friends at school, none of these relationships seem to be deep or real or or meaningful once he's moved away to the castle. Gwendolyn is the only person in his life who matters, which makes it really, really tragic when it becomes increasingly clear that she is evil.
00:06:00
Speaker
But yeah really i don't think I don't think that during the first eight chapters, we know that she's evil yet. like I was trying to explain the Jones thing of being in Kat's point of view, right? Exactly. Kat loves her.
Themes of Agency and Familial Dynamics
00:06:13
Speaker
he's And again, like going back to the previous books, ah when you look at these first eight chapters, Gwendolyn gets to the castle and she hates it. and she hates we've got There are two kids already at the castle. Cresta Mancy has a wife and two children who again appear to be a reasonably functional family.
00:06:30
Speaker
uh they seem to like until they seem happy to be there and Gwendolyn hates all of them and there's this sort of new step sibling thing with Gwendolyn and Kat and Roger and Julia the kids who are already there that seems like it's gonna kind of fall into the same mode as the ochre downstairs or even cart and quitter where you have these kids who are at odds and do these kind of wacky stunts in order to get one over on each other But there's no reason in the first eight chapters to think that it's not all going to resolve and these kids becoming in cahoots with each other the way it always does. Right. In fact, it does feel like Jones is sort of examining a central theme of preoccupation from several angles, when she comes back to this idea of this group of children who are stuck together by circumstance. And that's actually I think it's a thing that Diana, when Jones is interested in, in general, is
00:07:21
Speaker
the family of no choice. Yes, family of this is who you're stuck with, ah which makes a lot of sense for a children's book in particular, because children generally have no choice about who they're stuck with. Children are stuck with whoever the adults in their lives think is appropriate for them to be with, which usually means your siblings, your classmates, this is the life you've got, whether you like it or not, and you are too young to make any decisions about any of it.
00:07:49
Speaker
Even when it's a loved family, it's a family that finds them. They don't have the opportunity to find it. It comes out and gets them, like Cresta Mancy comes and gets Gwendolyn and Kat. And actually, yeah she talks about how the structure of this book is sort of like a Gothic, in that you know Gwendolyn receives this prediction that there's going to be a tall, dark stranger who gets in the way. yeah and Sustomancy shows up and he is indeed tall and dark and seems sort of sinister and he brings them away to the castle and there's something oppressive about the castle and you feel strange. Yeah there's a strange silencing effect of the castle and Gwendolyn sort of responds to it by screaming and shouting and crying and her voice is squashed down to like tiny squeaks
00:08:32
Speaker
um And it is almost, okay, let's imagine this is a book where Gwendolyn is the protagonist, which in my heart, I do want to. Chapter one, she receives a prophecy. that ah So she encounters a ah fortune teller who tells her that she's going to meet this tall, dark stranger who will get in her way. But if she overcomes all these disasters, she can be ruler of the world.
00:08:55
Speaker
yeahp And Gwendolyn's like, yeah, I'd love to rule the world. And then she does everything she can to bring that about. And you know what? I enjoy a character with agency and she does so much agency and so so much ambition. Yes.
00:09:15
Speaker
she wants to rule the world. She's slightly hindered occasionally by the fact that Kat needs her to be his emotional support. So they get to the cat. Merle We've still got this this figure of the parentified sibling is still like central as um has been since the yoga downstairs. that One of the siblings has to parent the other.
00:09:35
Speaker
right we are always doing initial Yeah, she's she's he's constantly clinging to her. The phrase Cat Clung to Gwendolyn shows up multiple times in the book. It's repeated. They get to the castle and Gwendolyn is ready to you know start planning her overthrow of the castle and her takeover. And kat ah Cat is sad and lonely and Gwendolyn says, well, you would take looking after, wouldn't you? And then she gets out her tarot cards that she uses for magic and plays a card game with him to cheer him up.
00:10:05
Speaker
And that is, I think, like I really want that that moment I think is really important because I think it's one of the things that does lead you to believe the reader and again I was with reading this book trying to really hard to put myself in the mindset of someone who'd never read it before and so didn't know what Gwendolyn was really like.
00:10:20
Speaker
And I read these scenes where Gwendolyn is ranting and raging and taking agency, and then Kat says, well, would I need you? And Gwendolyn will say, sigh, and say, all right, and and do it. And you can read that as kind of a tsundere expression of love. I think that you're intended for the first couple of chapters to read it as Kat sees it, as Gwendolyn really cares about him deep down. She's, and she does, not only does she put on a good show for Kat, but she puts on a good show for everybody else.
00:10:49
Speaker
right from parentous is a weapon for her yes from the first chapter, it's clear that Gwendolyn has really careful control over appearances. So there's these descriptions of Gwendolyn and Kat, how they look to others, they're beautiful little orphans. um They're both blonde, and they look great in black. Gwendolyn's very motherly to Kat, when she's around other people, and everyone's very touched by it. ah including presumably Cat himself. This must be part of why he's so persuaded that she's, you know, his good sister he can cling to. ah So Gwendolyn is very aware of how she can look the part and that will give her power. And one of the things she finds so frustrating about the castle is that the appearances are not
00:11:31
Speaker
working in her favor anymore. No. Yeah, she's, you know, in their little town where they're the sad, beautiful orphans. Gwendolyn has been able to go to the mayor and say, I need money for this and that for me and my poor little brother. And they are the golden children of beautiful children. Gwendolyn is gorgeous, in particular, and Kat looks sad and pale and small. And that really allows them to kind of be kings and queens in this town, the whole street that they live on loves Gwendolyn because of her magic power. ah She's the pet of the street. And then they get to the castle, and the castle seems determined to treat them like they're just ordinary kids.
00:12:10
Speaker
Gwendolyn hates this so much. And her war is really against Crestomancy himself, who is, you know, this tall, dark stranger, this powerful adult enchanter. From Gwendolyn's point of view, this is her personal rival, and she is determined to make him acknowledge her. And one of the things that's funny about this book is the way that Crestomancy responds to Gwendolyn. As a reader, you can see it's intentional. The more outrageous she is, the more vague and uninterested he gets.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, and it's sort of like, it's, so the way that ah he gets very vague and refuses to notice or acknowledge, again, she's playing with what she's done before, because I was just editing our dog's body transcript. Mr. Duffield does this, it's because he genuinely doesn't notice. We've got the vague father in Wilkins tooth, it's because he genuinely doesn't notice. So me reading those earlier books, I'm like, oh, obviously this vague and distant older man who seems like he doesn't care is really going to be on the ball because Crestomancy is,
00:13:10
Speaker
But here, it's it's reversed. This is the first time that I think she's trying to play with that expectation of the father figure who seems like he's not paying attention and doesn't know what the kids are like.
00:13:22
Speaker
Right, and we don't find out the truth about Christomancy until Kat is eavesdropping on him and hears him sounding not vague at all as he calls Gwendolyn that wretched child. Let's hope she doesn't try again. So this brings me to Gwendolyn's prank. So when Gwendolyn feels that she is not being given due respect, due acknowledgement, ah she starts to cause trouble. And I was really interested by the kind of trouble she chooses to cause.
00:13:47
Speaker
ah So the castle is, it's described as like an English stately home, right? There is an old bit with a newer bit tacked on, there's an extensive formal garden, there's lots of green, there's an avenue with trees, there's an even older castle that's in ruins somewhere in the grounds. But you could visit places like this. You could visit the more you say that I can.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yes. but that plate let system You can come stay with me. I'll take you to a castle. But Gwendolyn attacks the castle in terms of its beauty and its sort of established image of like long-lasting power and institutional power. Like the first thing she does is she digs up the whole lawn. Like that that beautiful English green lawn, right? Those things take masses of maintenance and years to turn into that sort of a beautiful green sweep. I remember a college being chased off the lawn and by Anne-Marie Porter saying, you cannot walk on the lawn. Do you know how far people walk on its lawn?
00:14:54
Speaker
And the first thing she does is she covers the whole lawn with molehills. Another time she ah she shuts out all the light to the window so she spoils the view in that way. She brings all the trees from all around the countryside right up against the castle doors. All of it is attacking attacking the image of the castle, the physical like fabric of its beauty. right But her best prank is the one that she does at church. Do you want to just read this bit out? Because it's so, it's really really good and I think iconic for a reason.
00:15:27
Speaker
So she starts there sitting in church. And again, I think it's important that these, this castle full of witches and sorcerers and everybody, they all go to church and they're all very respectable about it. But they're sitting in church and Gwendolyn is looking demure and perfect as she always does. And then Kat notices, one of the saints in the stained glass windows yawned and put up his closure elegantly to cover his mouth. He looked around at his neighbor who was a formidable nun. Her robes hung in severe folds like a bundle of sticks.
00:15:57
Speaker
The bishop stretched out his stained glass crozier and tapped the nun on the shoulder. She resented it. She merged into his window and began shaking him. Cats saw her. He saw the colored, transparent bishop clouding the nun over the whipple and the nun giving him as good as she got. Meanwhile, the hairy saint next to them made a dive for his neighbor, who was a kingly sort of saint holding a model of the castle.
00:16:19
Speaker
The kingly saint dropped his model and fled for protection in a twinkle of glassy feet behind the robes of the simpering lady saint. The hairy saint jumped gleefully up and down on the model of the castle. And on and on it goes. Yeah, it ultimately culminates with like the statue on the tomb of a crusader at the back of the church that are drawing his enormous stone sword and sitting up. At which point and only then did the adults intervene and stop the whole thing.
00:16:45
Speaker
like when it looks like it's going to turn into an actual physical threat. right It's really funny if you have ever been a bored child stuck in any kind of religious service and wishing it would end. You may be familiar with I wish something would happen that was funny. Actually Jones in her essays does say this is a personal wish of hers.
00:17:06
Speaker
Gwendolyn
Revelation of Gwendolyn's Manipulation
00:17:07
Speaker
makes a riot at the church service. That was pure revenge, actually, because when I was sent to boarding school, we were marched off every Sunday. We had to wear gloves and hats and coats and all this Sunday stuff. We had to sit through all this incredibly boring church service. I spent my time grinding my teeth and hating looking at crucifixes because they always make me feel terrible.
00:17:24
Speaker
and looking instead at the stained glass windows, of which thank goodness there were many, and thinking, oh, if only they'd come alive and start running about. So Gwendolyn is like, oh, so I know she's a wish fulfillment power fantasy of the child who is in a boring, miserable situation where nobody is taking her seriously going, God, I wish I could tear this whole thing down.
00:17:44
Speaker
all this adult power, ah institutional power, ah all this sort of calm and quiet that squashes the life out of Gwendolyn, that she feels, she says that, I feel like it's trying to crush me. I think this is an experience the children have, you know, you go somewhere formal and that doesn't just mean like getting taken off to a castle, it's being sent to school, having to go and sit in a classroom and sit still, which is a ridiculous thing to ask of a child. Absolutely.
00:18:13
Speaker
child's wisherful fulfill I wish I could just explode the whole lot and make them all run about and scream and complain. I wish I could cause chaos. I wish I could make them respect me and let me do what I know that I can do, which is what Gwendolyn wants. The real the real crux of her frustration is in addition to just feeling like she's squashed in the castle, feeling like nobody's paying attention to her.
00:18:35
Speaker
She knows that she's capable of doing advanced magic and they won't let her do it. Inexplicably? Question mark? They- So you mean it's not that inexplicable because she very clearly is misusing magic quite badly? Yes. um In all sorts of ways, she's a very irresponsible child. And actually that is one thing that comes across not just in like her practice against the castle, but it's Gwendolyn gets into sort of a little petty, personal war with Crestomancy's daughter, Julia. And they are very nasty to each other. And honestly, it read very real to me, if you give two 12 year old girls the power of sorcery, this is the kind of horrible shit they would do to each other. So it's like turning into nasty stuff, turning each other's clothes into snakes, really like mean,
00:19:24
Speaker
inventive, creative, but again, irresponsible things to do with all this power. Yeah. And again, so Roger and Julia, who are Christomancy's children, are definitely a mirror of Kat and Gwendolyn. Julia is older. She's kind of bossy. She seems to be sort of in charge of that relationship to ah to a certain extent. Roger is, he's placid. He's happy to go along to get along. He and Kat click pretty fast because both of them are just kind Yeah, they're chill. Um, and there's this feud going on between their sisters. And meanwhile, Roger is like, well, Kat, you want to come play with us? And then if Kat, who again, Kat has loads of friends, he's very easy kid to get along with because he just says yes to whatever anyone wants to do.
00:20:11
Speaker
So when Roger says, ah let's hang out and play, and Gwendolyn comes storming in and says, Kat, I need you for something. And then Roger and Julia say, no, Kat's with us. Kat's staying here. And Kat just sits back. He washes his hands at the argument and lets that play out. And then Gwendolyn storms away again.
00:20:28
Speaker
But the sort of irresponsible petty misuse of magic is kind of a running theme in in this book and it's not just children who do it. So Gwendolyn has come to the castle in an attempt to overthrow the castle and gain ultimate power for herself. That's not happening in a void. The world she comes from ah is a world of sort of petty magic users and Jones has fun with the well-building right, there's all this sense of like the accredited witch, a professional sorcerer, a necromancer, a warlock, and it's all presented as like sort of, I don't even know how to put it, lower middle class, not very good witnesses, and all these people have or share Gwendolyn's resentment of the castle because what the castle and what Christomancy actually does is regulate the use and misuse of magic.
00:21:22
Speaker
yeah So on a larger scale, Gwendolyn's irritation at being told what she can or can't do with magic is also the irritation of what turns out to be a kind of revolutionary movement to overthrow the castle. And what I find interesting about this is that if I was reading a contemporary children's book in which there is an establishment which controls magic and a revolution trying to overthrow the establishment, I know which side we'd be expected to be on.
Janet's Influence and Contrast to Gwendolyn
00:21:49
Speaker
um yeah But in this book, we are Team Castle. The narrative is Team Castle. It is in favour of tradition, it's in favour of establishment, it's in favour of adults who already know what they're doing and when they tell you you're wrong,
00:22:07
Speaker
Is that right and you're wrong? But again, I do think it is intended to be sort of a bait and switch. We are intended to be on Gwendolyn's side for the first half of the book. And one of the things that I also think is interesting. So I think you've you've made a really interesting class-based reading of this book that I think is 100% true. But when Gwendolyn gets to the castle, part of her disappointment is that it's not grander. the people aren't you know She expects to arrive and for everything to be fancy and for her to be feted and lifted among this ruling class of elites. She wants to be a princess. She wants to be a princess. Everything is very ordinary and that's part of her disappointment. She's so appalled that Crestomancy's wife Millie is just a very nice, normal, homeless sort of person and that the kids are normal kids and that they have
00:22:58
Speaker
just plain breakfast and not elaborate spreads, and that there's, you know, everything is kind of, you know, she feels it as being dull and gray and squashed, but because she has, ah partly because she has this expectation of immediately jumping to high class, and instead what she's jumped into is bureaucracy.
00:23:17
Speaker
Well, I will actually say, I think this is ah also a nuance of the English class system, that the way Gwendolyn is treated when she is brought to the castle, like there is an elaborate castle front door that can be opened by a butler. Instead, Kat and Gwendolyn are brought round to the side door where the housekeeper greets them.
00:23:37
Speaker
And it's pretty clear that this is meant as a kind and friendly and welcoming gesture. It's a you belong here. And this is actually if you like the classier way to behave. Because with Gwendolyn style of ambition is that she's vulgar. She wants to princess but she doesn't know what that really means.
00:23:56
Speaker
ah She has all the appearances of a perfect little girl, but she's not actually a nice person. And although she has family connections to this aristocratic, this fancy world, Chant, the family name Gwendolyn Chant, Kat Chant, is presented early on as a good name, yeah which of which is never explicitly said, but an aristocratic name, a class name, Oshname.
00:24:20
Speaker
And Christomancy is a chant, Julia and Roger are chants, Millie is married into this family of aristocratic wizards and it turns out that Kat's parents have been disowned for this from this family for reasons we'll get into. ah Come back to the class thing, the idea of Gwendolyn as like an avatar of vulgarity, of wanting power without having any responsibility or understanding of what that means.
00:24:47
Speaker
it read It does read to me a little bit like, and I don't know, an Apologia for Y class systems ah actually should exist and are a good thing. Because the girl who's been raised wrong, that's the head of it. She comes from a background where this pettiness is normal. And because of her vulgar, but she she' is this is all she's what my grandmother would call common. What a common child.
00:25:16
Speaker
But because of this behaviour, she can never really belong at the castle or truly appreciate what it means or access its power. And it has this great power. And it becomes clear that there is like enormous power inherent in belonging to Crestomancy Castle.
00:25:31
Speaker
over completely because she would have to take on certain responsibilities and certain like, behaviors, and she refuses to do that. Right. And she also does turn around and come in and is sort of like Dave, you know, you've you've made the comparison between Gwendolyn and Luke in Eight Days at Luke, which I think is right there, you know, she's also enacting days of the week, like she's she's doing a a crime a day, basically. ah Yes, she is the spirit of amoral violence, the the angry child in a horror situation acts out.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yes, I think for the first half of this book, I think you're right. But again, like David in Eight Days of Luke, she then turns around and takes it out on the servants. She's upset with not being high enough in the hierarchy. So she lashes out at the you know, the castle has servants who are meant to take care of them. And they they are the people who immediately take against Gwendolyn the most because she's incredibly rude. She is so rude. I mean, I i think it's the first like really clear sign you have that Gwendolyn is a nasty piece of work is the way she treats people who she thinks are beneath her. It's not clear until she gets to the castle where she has servants because before that there hasn't really been anyone who is beneath her in a formal hierarchy. And she also thinks that Roger and Julia are beneath her. She thinks that because they're ordinary. Yes, and it's it's all about appearances. Again, it's about looks because Gwendolyn is beautiful, and Roger and Julia are just normal looking kids.
00:26:56
Speaker
And Gwendolyn really dwells on that ah and beats them for it. Right. Gwendolyn has protagonist energy and she walks in and looks at these other kids and says, well, you have no protagonist energy. Why should I care about you? I'm waging war on Christomancy.
00:27:14
Speaker
And in a way, I would love to read a book where Gwendolyn was the protagonist, because she is so much fun. Everybody, even Crestomancy is like, wow, I'm, you know, I'm really looking forward to what she's gonna do next. It's a good, you know, it's it's always very fun and funny to see.
00:27:30
Speaker
But then he brings up, what did you think of those apparitions, Kat? And this is a conversation. Yeah, we've got to talk about the apparitions, because I think that's the first clue that this is not just an ordinary, the kids are going to be reconciled to each other, that you know, the kids are going to be reconciled to their new life situation. Right, so there is a tension building through these first eight chapters, where there is something Wendellin is doing that we don't know,
00:27:58
Speaker
the cat, the narrator doesn't know. And actually, I think you can tell that there's something there from the very first time we encounter early on, after their parents have died, Gwendolyn and their new guardian, Mrs Sharp, who's the witch who lives downstairs are going through their mother's box of effects. And a matchbook with nine matches in it, some of them burnt. Mrs Sharp sort looks at this and hands it back to Gwendolyn and says, I think you better keep that.
00:28:28
Speaker
And it becomes clear that this matchbook is the centre of some sort of magic which is not being explained and which Gwendolyn has never explained to Kat. But later on,
Unveiling Dark Secrets and Cat's Power
00:28:39
Speaker
as part of Gwendolyn's pranks, she does these summonings. She makes apparitions appear, is what's called them there.
00:28:47
Speaker
ghosts, zombies. Revenants is what the the adult magicians in the story say. Yes, nobody hates them more than Kat, which I think is significant. Kat looks at them the first time. them Yeah, the first time one appears he says there was a skinny white creature there. It was pressed against the dark outside of the glass, mouthing and waving. It looked like the lost ghost of a lunatic. It was weak and white and loathsome.
00:29:15
Speaker
It was draggled and slimy. Even though Cat realized almost at once that it was Gwendolyn's doing, he still stared at it in horror. And then, next time he sees a full set of apparitions. Whiteness was boiling, moving, forming into a miserable bent thing with a big head. Three more somethings were roiling and hardening beneath it. When the first thing flopped out of the flames onto the carpet, Gwendolyn gave a gurgle of pleasure. Cat was amazed at how wicked she looked. Oh, don't, he said.
00:29:44
Speaker
The three other somethings flopped onto the carpet too, and he saw they were the apparition at the window and three others like it. The first was like a baby that was too small to walk, except that it was walking with its big head wobbling. The next was a cripple so twisted and cramped upon itself that it could barely hobble. The third was the apparition at the window, pitiful wrinkled and draggled.
00:30:05
Speaker
last had its white skin barred with blue stripes, all were weak and white and horrible." And the word that he uses over and over again is that they're weak. They're weak and disgusting to look at, which I think is really telling because what we eventually put together is that these apparitions are all lives of cat. These are cat They're him. Yeah, it's him. In fact, he must he's looking at himself. And like, I think it's probably the case that the other characters can tell it's cat because this is these cat is revealed to have be an enchanter with nine lives, hence the nickname cat which Gwendolyn gave to him. Yeah. And his own lives give him enormous magical power because he combines in one person all the gifts of nine different people.
00:30:54
Speaker
The nickname that Gwendolyn gave to him, which is a yeah at at first he thinks it's a joke, which is quite significant later on because we learned that Gwendolyn doesn't have a sense of humor. So anything that she says that's a joke is it's not probably not really a joke.
00:31:09
Speaker
right but these uh these apparitions are cat's deaths and he has died several times even as the book starts uh he we discover that his in other universes we'll come to this the child who would have been cat died in childbirth so that first apparition of a weak diet a dying baby that's cat uh the apparition having cramps is cat as victim of the spell which put his nine lives into this matchbook with nine matches. He gave him some reason quite a little tells us later. ah But it's the weak draggled one I want to come back to the one that cat is so horrified by when he sees it. That one drowned that one drowned in this boating accident that we have in the very first chapter that killed their parents. And the description of the accident is actually really horrifying. I was Yeah.
00:32:04
Speaker
Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles beating the blue sky. Clouds of steam screamed from broken pipes and drowned the screams from the crowd as every single person aboard was swept away through the weir. And that's how their parents die. And I wish to put forward the theory. This was Gwendolyn. I think the evidence here is all circumstantial, but I think it's pretty strong circumstantial evidence to put before the court. um First of all, she's got cats drowning life here in this procession of horrors.
00:32:40
Speaker
second of all the book of matches that was taken away from her by her parents. But she doesn't get it back until after they're dead. Yes. And as soon as they're dead, she has a plan. She's like, I would like to go live with Mrs. Sharp who lives below and she will teach me magic. ah Please, sir, this is my wish as a poor orphan, but she's she's got that ready. Right. She already knows what she wants. and Once her parents are dead, she immediately starts getting the magic lesson she wants. She gets the book of the nine matches back.
00:33:08
Speaker
And it becomes clear that Gwendolyn actually isn't a particularly good witch herself, but she is really good at using cat power to do what she wants. And that's what's making her so powerful and dangerous. She's exploiting someone else.
00:33:22
Speaker
And we do know that her parents were on to her, even aside from the fact that they confiscated the matchbook. Because we have this series of letters between her parents and Cresta Mancy. That's Cresta Mancy's first introduction into the book. Right. The first one is a very friendly letter, sort of a friendly letter, sort of a condescending letter. um Where Cresta Mancy says, you know, don't get on your high horse, I just want it to help. And then there's a second letter that says, dear chant, the same to you, go to places.
00:33:51
Speaker
and then ah nancy offered ah kat's parents were very rude about it And then and we're told that this letter is dated six years later so And in fact, we can tell it's probably from when Gwendolyn was six years old. Yes. This letter says, ah Sir, you were warned six years ago that something like what you related might come to pass, and you made it quite clear that you wished for no help from this quarter. We are not interested in your troubles, nor is this a charitable institution. Is it Crestomancy's fault that Gwendolyn killed her parents?
00:34:25
Speaker
I think it might be. I think it might be. Let's be fair. Crestomati contributed to the circumstances, but Gwendolyn made the decision to murder her own parents. In the way of her exploiting her baby brother for magical power.
00:34:40
Speaker
ah in the course at which she kills her baby brother several times. So she killed him when she put him in the latch book. She killed him when he drowned and then because he's a nine lives enchanter, survived anyway. And this life with this apparition with the stripes on it, Gwendolyn turned his violin into a cat and used the entire life to do it. She was just so mad because his playing was so bad.
00:35:08
Speaker
Which is another thing about the irresponsibility and the stupidity almost of of Gwendolyn's like, she's enormously powerful, thanks to using Kat's power, but she does completely random and silly stuff, because she's also a 12 year old girl with no morals.
00:35:24
Speaker
Right. She's just kind of spiteful and impulsive. Well, not necessarily impulsive. She makes very careful plans a lot of the time. um But she she's vengeance motivated. ah yeah she She wants people to notice and appreciate her and she doesn't like when Kat does things that are outside of her plans for him as her little accessory. Right.
00:35:46
Speaker
And then, so this episode of Gwendolyn's summoning these horrible apparitions and actually sending them to what turns out to be a very important dinner party for a lot of government officials. Right, like when you go downstairs again, which sort of reinforces the this reading of these chapters as kind of a full mirror of like, oh, it's kids getting into pranks and disrupting a dinner party like you do. ah Except for how modified Kat is when he looks at Gwendolyn's images of himself and how he sees himself.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yes. ah But then finally, and we've had eight chapters of Gwendolyn just doing whatever the hell she wants, and more or less getting away with it while the adults In comes Crestomancy with his right hand man, ah Michael Saunders, who's their teacher. ah And Gwendolyn is first punished and it's corporal punishment. So there's an ogre downstairs sort of yeah echo. She is spanked with a boot, ah kicking and screaming. And um you do get the impression that she is ah selling it a bit, all the kicking and screaming. but It's not quite clear how how nasty this punishment is.
00:36:55
Speaker
um although it is clear that the adults say they've been itching to do it for a while right while she's being punished they take away her magic they say you can't do
Cat's Personal Growth and Realization
00:37:05
Speaker
magic anymore and at this point the book shifts the whole book shifts the book flips so end of chapter eight cat goes to sleep has a bad dream wakes up feeling very ill and then is fine goes to find her sister And he goes in. She's got her neck out on back to front. That's very weird. She's got her night dress on back to front.
00:37:34
Speaker
And it's not Gwendolyn. It's not Gwendolyn. It is Gwendolyn's exact double, a girl like in Power of Three, a girl who's come from our world, our recognizable, I mean, not ours, you and me, because we're in 2020s and she's in the 1970s, but ah you know a recognizable, ordinary British girl who's been pulled into this story and is going to look at it with reader POV eyes in a way that hasn't been done for the first eight chapters and her name is Janet. and Do you want to talk about why she's named Janet? I love this. Cat goes, you're not Gwendolyn, he said. What dreadful name, said the girl in the bed. I should hope not. I'm Janet Chant. So I have obviously known this book for God, the better part of 30 years. um And it's only this year that something occurred to me.
00:38:28
Speaker
Diane Ellen Jones was an avid reader, but she says this to herself, American science fiction. Here's what she says about reflections. For a long while another form of fantasy had been growing and flourishing outside the rules mostly in America. It was called science fiction. The science part was because it based its fantasy on proven scientific facts such as that Mars and Venus are habitable by humans, that galactic empires are possible, or that faster than light travel could happen any day now.
00:39:00
Speaker
I have been an avid reader of SF for years and I can vouch for the degree of cross-fertilisation in my case. Science fiction is full of ideas, not all of them proven and scientific, find new ideas and moreover the best of it is consumably well written.
00:39:15
Speaker
There you go. She's a fan. She's a fan of American science fiction. So what is going on in American science fiction in 1975 when this book was written? Well, this is the year that The Female Man by Joanna Ross was published. Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
you know man is a work of feminist science fiction, which I read for the first time this year and had a spectacular time. It was very fortuitous that you happened to read it. We were thinking about this. It is a satirical piece. She name checked, Russ name checks Aristophanes. It is about four different characters who are all the same character because they are all parallel versions of the same woman from different worlds. yes And the central figure of this book is a woman called Janet ah who arrives from a strange future where there are only women and no men ah into
00:40:20
Speaker
the 20th century present day, and is then there as a tourist and an observer going, this is very, very weird. Yes. But her name is Janet. Her name is Janet. The world from another world appears one day and her name is Janet. She's coming from Ethiopia and the first thing that we get from Argentina um is she arrives and she's uh she complains about constantly about the sort of Edwardian clothes that she has to wear, the skirts and the petticoats. She says I always wear trousers when I'm at home. Um two cats. That's not how we just sew, it says I despise it as female bondage. But we have a feminist arriving from another world to say this is terrible. Um she looks at me
00:41:07
Speaker
Cat looks at it and said, you know, immediately, just like watching the way she moves, ah he says, she moves in a sort of scramble that was more like a boy than a girl. And again, quite unlike the way Gwendolyn would have done it. She's, ah yeah, she's throwing, you know, if Gwendolyn is sort of little girlhood, you know, this, this sweet little girlhood weaponized, you know, of ah the the both, I think the frustration against the restrictions of being asked to be a sweet little girl. And using this, you know, being a sweet little girl, ah Janet calls Gwendolyn very quickly starts calling her your sugar-coated sister, which I think is pretty directly, you know, sugar and spice and everything. Nice. That's what little girls are made of. That's Gwendolyn. I don't know exactly what kind of a person Gwendolyn is. It's really clear that Janet, without ever having met her, quickly gets her head round. All right, Gwendolyn is someone who performs. She has appearances. She's sugar coated, she can seem very sweet, and she has, what to say, don't get me wrong Kat, I admire your sister, she thinks big, you have to And so Janet comes in and she, she's not feminine. She has no interest in femininity. he She doesn't want to be sugarcoated. She, but she and Gwendolyn are the same person in a way. Kat keeps picking up on ways that Janet is like Gwendolyn. I want to posit that Janet is a version of Gwendolyn who's grown up in a world in God bless the 1970s, but far beyond the 1910s who didn't have to be sugarcoated.
00:42:42
Speaker
who doesn't have to sort of compress herself into this this sweet little shape in order to move through the world, and who doesn't have to be responsible for, you know, who doesn't have to be parentified in the same way with regard to you. know She doesn't have a brother, she's an only child.
00:42:57
Speaker
um And when she comes through, in fact, the situation is reversed because she doesn't know anything about what life is like in Christomancy's world. It's a complete culture clash for her. Suddenly Kat has to be responsible for her. She's never been responsible for anything in his life and he's miserable about it.
00:43:15
Speaker
Right, suddenly Kat is the one playing a role as a parent. The first thing he has to do is get her dressed. He had to put her petticoats on her, button her up the back, tie her garters, fasten her boots, and put her dress on a second time, right way round, and tie it sash for her. When he had finished it looked alright, but Janet had an odd air of being dressed up, rather than dressed. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. Thanks, you're an angel. I look rather like an Edwardian child, and I feel a rock, darling.
00:43:41
Speaker
Yeah, she's this sort of ah liberated spirit who needs, I think to be fair to Janet, something that I think is really interesting about Janet and Kat's relationship as this goes on, you know, first she needs him tremendously.
00:43:58
Speaker
But they also, they have fun together. they you know they They have all these sort of bonding moments in a way that Kat, the genuine bonding moments in a way that Kat never really has with Gwendolyn. ah they They play games with each other. They run around and they frolic. And they have such a good time that it it actually pulls in Roger, who comes along and is like, oh, you guys you guys look like you're having fun. um And they all start playing together. um But she's also protective of him.
00:44:24
Speaker
ah There are a couple times later on in this book where someone comes in and threatens Kat and Janet stands in the way, in a very older sibling way, and you know kind of shoves him behind her and says, you're going to go through me. I want to posit that the way that Janet protects Kat is a lot more like the way Douglas and Casper protect their younger siblings than the way that Gwendolyn does. She's like an older brother to him, not like an older sister.
00:44:47
Speaker
I think you're right. And I think actually quite a lot of the ways they play together as well are sort of, it's interesting, like the only time we see Gwendolyn playing with Kat, it's something that they can do sitting quietly in her room together, but Janet gets out there and gets into things with him. So she does things like they go and climb a tree and she rips her petticoats doing it and then has to sew them up again.
00:45:10
Speaker
And then they play Conkers together, which are classic of the English countryside childhood. You get some of those chestnuts, you have them on a string, you hit them together, um whichever one you want. And I think it's Janet who, when she goes, mine's a sevener now. So it's clear that she knows this game and has played it a lot before. And she is really triumphant about winning this Conker battle. Yeah.
00:45:36
Speaker
And I think that both, so I think that Gwendolyn and Janet are both, in a way, Diana Wynn-Jones being wish fulfillment for herself. You know, you've got Gwendolyn, who's the parentified child, we've talked a lot about ah Diana Wynn-Jones as a parentified child, ah who deeply resents it and is frustrated by it and doesn't really want to be taking care of Kat.
00:45:59
Speaker
and acts out in these big, exuberant, ah inappropriate ways, this power fantasy. um But also subsidises it, right? but yeah and in Motherly ah is not a box she's been shut into, it's something she can exploit to get what she wants.
00:46:16
Speaker
and is evil. Like, when we, it becomes increasingly clear through the back half of these chapters that, you know, Gwendolyn, however you read it, cool motive, still murder. She's evil. She murdered her parents. She's that very happy to to try and murder Kat. She has no qualms with any of this.
00:46:33
Speaker
She's murdered Cat multiple times. yeah I mean, he does keep coming back, but it's very clear that the reason he keeps dying is because Gwendolyn is fine with letting him die. Right. And at the very end, we'll get to the very end. But, you know, she set up another murder for Cat and he thinks, well, you know, she knows I'm not mad because she knows I've got nine lives and I can afford to lose one. It's fine. And then she comes into the scene and it's like, you're going to have to kill him multiple times because he's got nine lives.
The Magical Garden and Symbolism
00:46:59
Speaker
And he's like, oh, well. But Janet, when so.
00:47:03
Speaker
Gwendolyn is sort of all the wish fulfillment aspect, I think, of of, you know, weaponizing and using that that motherly little girl role and being just really deliciously evil with it. But absolutely evil, like you don't get, you know, in the comparison with Luke, I think that Danno and Jones can see Luke as a compelling and a potentially semi-heroic evil figure or a moral figure in a way that she can't with Gwendolyn because Gwendolyn is also just as much the companion. She is the the sweet, ah beautiful, feminine child who uses all of that in order to do evil, um which is something that I think Danno and Jones is is has really, really ah complicated feelings about.
00:47:48
Speaker
And then Janet comes in. Janet, who is the same as Gwendolyn, the same person, and is not just, you know, this sort of liberated figure of 1970s feminism, but also a writer. We learned that she writes little stories and she, you know, she hides them for herself. She's a POV character who's coming into this whole world and saying, God, isn't it ridiculous? ah She romps around, she wears trousers, and she genuinely loves Kat.
00:48:16
Speaker
when you know after the first couple weeks of them bonding together I think Janet finds the cat fiddle and picks him up and sort of winks a cat and says I love all kinds of cat which is really cute and I think maybe the only time in any of these books we've read so far that one character says straight out that they love somebody else it's Janet saying that she loves this new little brother that she's found and it's almost like it does feel like these are sort of two different ways of split personality of Dan and Wynn Jones wrestling with her feelings about being an older sister and about being a girl. Sorry, I was talking over you there because I was so excited. Divide that entity.
00:48:56
Speaker
um does the double self. Yeah, that's moral. But I mean, that's that's also I think one of the things that is really interesting and satisfying to explore with the parallel universes conceit is the divided self, the multiple self, the selves who you might have been.
00:49:13
Speaker
And the the self Gwendolyn might have been if she weren't forced to perform The Little Mother, or if she weren't so evil. I do think it is also like fundamentally evil, like it's not every six year old girl who sets out to murder her little brother in order to exploit his magic for her own gain. Right. I really don't think that you can, ah you can read this book without ah and understanding that Gwendolyn is fundamentally just willing to kill anybody to get what she wants.
00:49:42
Speaker
Right, and there is actually a moment where where I think the moment where you see Janet really understand, Gwendolyn, she says, Janet looked at him considerably. I suppose you're quite small still, she said, but you do worry me when you go all cowed. Has anyone done anything to you? I don't think so, Cat said, we're not surprised. Why? Well, I never had a brother, said Janet. Yeah. Cat doesn't understand this exchange, but I think as a reader,
00:50:12
Speaker
you do, you see, has anyone done anything to you? Janet looks at the way Kat behaves, and you are being abused. You react to me as someone who has been abused, like someone who's been very badly mistreated. And in fact, Kat is so deeply sunk in his mistreatment that he doesn't recognise it for what it is. But it's true, Gwendolyn mistreats him. She doesn't, as a full person, she exploits him, she uses him, but she doesn't love him.
00:50:41
Speaker
Um, and you pride i think that the, the, the first moment of break between them is when, uh, he's playing, he's finally playing with the other kids. He's managed to make friends with them. Uh, and Gwendolyn comes in and says, Oh cat, I need you.
00:50:56
Speaker
Uh, and he sort of allows himself to be kept by the other kids instead of going off with Gwendolyn. Uh, and she says, I don't need you now. I was going to explain to you about Mr. Nostrum's plans and I might even have told you about mine, but I changed my mind when you just sat there and let that fat prick Julia send me away. Right. And this idea that she was going to explain Mr. Nostrum's plans and Mr. Nostrum is, uh, he's not the main villain because the main villain is Gwendolyn, but he is sort of the leader of this.
00:51:26
Speaker
evil like group that's planning to overthrow the castle and take control of all the magic in the world for themselves so they can do more crimes with it. And to do so, they're gonna have to kill Kat. So was she really gonna tell Kat about his plans? Or is this just a another way of bullying him? Right exerting power over him.
00:51:44
Speaker
I don't think Gwendolyn was ever really going to tell Kat anything. No. I think Gwendolyn was very happy to let the plans go forward, the plans which involve Mr. Nostrum and his crew slitting Kat's throat on a stone table in a beautiful garden. Yeah, which brings us to, let's talk about the garden. Yeah. we'll see yeah Or works, or both.
00:52:10
Speaker
Oh, my God. ah So, Dinahwen Jones has this idea of the garden that she comes back to quite a lot in reflections over and over again. It's sort of part of her fundamental myth of herself, is this idea that there's a beautiful, magical garden that you can, if you can just get into it, yo'l ah you'll understand and sort of escape from the the daily grind and be in a different world that's thats more beautiful.
00:52:38
Speaker
And it's this it's a physical place that existed, right? During her childhood, her family lived in a sort of school, a conference center called Clarence House. And she says, it had two gardens, one ordinary and one second much bigger across a lane at the back. This other garden was kept locked. I was always begging for a key. It was like paradise or the extension of life into the imagination. And it's clear that to Jones, this idea of the locked garden of the imagination is a sort of powerful personal image and the need to escape into the garden of the imagination and to sort of access the fundamental enchantment that's there.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yes. And so when Kat and Janet find the, you know, they should have had this this spiraling, this series of debacles as they're trying to protect Janet from being discovered to be Gwendolyn. The consequences of things Gwendolyn did in the first half of the book. and Right, i sometimes they assume that it's the consequence of something Gwendolyn did, and it turns out to be something that Kat's doing because when Gwendolyn's not around stealing his magic,
00:53:47
Speaker
Cat is quite a powerful sorcerer, but he has no idea. He he refuses to acknowledge that. um there's you know Immediately after Cat and gw and Janet meet, and he's explaining the situation to her, and one of the maids walks in, and they're both terrified that she's overheard. and she Immediately, she turns into a toad.
00:54:05
Speaker
uh and they're all like oh no Gwendolyn must have left a turning into a toad spell and how are we going to get her out of this but it wasn't Gwendolyn it was panicked cat being like oh no and then just immediately turning her into a toad he just had no idea and couldn't fathom even that he could be responsible Right, because that comes back to that theme of responsibility and irresponsibility, I think, because Gwendolyn, we're always clear, is irresponsible with magic. Yes. What becomes clear in the book is that Kat is also irresponsible with magic, because it is his magic that Gwendolyn is using to do all her evil crimes. And you just have to do it.
00:54:42
Speaker
just sits back like he's got no power at all in this situation and assumes there's nothing he can do. And because he does that, she gets away with everything over and over again. Yes. And this is a point that I think Krista Mansi and the adults in the castle are trying to push home towards the second, in the second half of the book, there are sort of these various opportunities for Kat to explain everything that's going on.
00:55:06
Speaker
And Cat is terrified of doing it, and he's ah terrified of the way that he expects Kreste Mansi to look at him and just be like, oh, and you just went with her to do that? You just went along with that? You didn't say anything about it? And because he didn't say anything about it then, he's too scared to say anything about it now, and so he just doesn't. Right. And honestly, like... Here's my criticism of the adults. I think they are mishandling this. Cat is a small child. You can't expect him to spontaneously overthrow a lifetime of abuse and go, actually, this is wrong without some support. I do think that Cat is quite badly mishandled by the adults in this book, but it's clear that they're largely well-intentioned. And if they're not handling Cat well, it's partly out of fear. ah If he's going along with everything Gwendolyn wants and letting her do what she likes, is he the same as her?
00:55:58
Speaker
right is he just as bad as she is in which case because he's such a powerful sorcerer himself, powerful enchanter, what's he going to do when confronted? And that's a question I think Kat has for himself as well. There's a conversation that he has with Crestomancy. Crestomancy wants to give him magic lessons, and Kat is terrified because this is one of the spiraling ah problems that they're trying to resolve. Kat, convinced he doesn't have any magic, is like, oh god, they're you know because he's confessed to several of the things that Gwendolyn has done.
00:56:27
Speaker
and They've been like,
Resolution and Reflections on Themes
00:56:29
Speaker
all right, well, we're going to give you magic lessons. And he's like, oh, no, it's going to come out that I don't have magic. And then it's going to come out that Gwendolyn's gone. And then it's going to come out that Janet's here. And I'm going to be in so much trouble. So he, in order to get out of all this, he tries desperately to explain to Christomancy that he is, in fact, evil. And Christomancy is like,
00:56:46
Speaker
I think it's the fact that Kat says I'm evil that probably does more than anything else to convince Christomancy that he isn't. Because when he asks Kat why he's so evil and Kat says, I steal apples and I thought Gwendolyn's tricks were funny. And Christomancy's like, alright. I don't think they're dealing with an evil child here.
00:57:06
Speaker
the callback as well as the first time Crestomancy appears in the book has just been out scrumping which is the traditional English little boy uh pastime of climbing apple trees and taking the apples when the farmer's not looking so he's been scrumping he comes back and shows Crestomancy his hat full of apples it's complete stranger he's just met and he's very pleased with himself And Crestomancy, in a very joyless way, goes, Scrumping is a form of stealing. so press steel I bet you did it when you were my age. And we're told Crestomancy coughed and changed the subject.
00:57:39
Speaker
yet which I know we don't look forward, but if you don't look forward, but I think there's stuff in this book itself where we can see that Crestomancy is a little bit projecting his own misspent youth onto Kat and Gwendolyn, and especially Kat. He's very worried about Kat finding out about his nine lives. um And in a way he's proved right, because as soon as Kat does find out about his nine lives, he's like, no, I don't believe it. It's not true. And he takes one of the matches and he strikes it and he sets himself on fire.
00:58:10
Speaker
Which is the ultimate proof for for him. but's it's I think in in a way that's almost, as much as anything else, a moment that reframes the genre of the book. Because it proves to him, and it proves to us, that Gwendolyn has been murdering him, that he is in real peril, that none of this is just hijinks, that he's been dying over and over again, and it's awful.
00:58:30
Speaker
And it's also a very sort of gothic novel moment where Crestomancy who's been very vague and and uninterested and terrifying to cat all the way through comes running in and he's disheveled and he's like oh no you're on fire let me take care of you because of course she really has cared all along. And this is also if you're paying attention the moment where it's clear that Crestomancy knows very well that it's not Gwendolyn, it's Janet.
00:58:54
Speaker
Janet realizes that cats on fire and she can't fix it. She screams for she screams. Crestomancy, Crestomancy come quickly. And he does because he's an enchanter and part of his magic as he comes when he's called. And they have this screaming body where it's really clear that Janet is not talking or behaving like Gwendolyn in any way. Yeah, and you think Christomancy must know. He doesn't know, but Kat continues to be sure that nobody, none of the adults know or understand anything that's really happening to him. Yes, and that's also just a quick side note on Janet's power as the observer in this situation. She's got no magic at all, but she's really quick at putting together how the rules of this world work because she's observing.
00:59:37
Speaker
So she says, you know, as soon as she gets there, Christa Manti shows up casually when someone said his name, and she's like, Oh, I bet he because he's an enchanter, I bet he's going to keep doing that. And cats like, No, it was just coincidence. Cat, you're loving us magic. I'm in the book, right? Janet as an observer on magic is interesting when she said, I don't want to be a witch. The more I see a witchcraft, the more it seems just an easy way to be nasty. Yeah.
01:00:05
Speaker
actually like one of the central preoccupations of the book is what would people actually do with magic and probably just be nasty. Yes, and so to get back to the garden, the, you know, the problems, the escalating problems they're dealing with at this point are Kat turned somebody into a frog by accident and her boyfriend's mad and has challenged him to a magical duel. Kat's got magic lessons starting next week and he's like, oh no, I can't do magic.
01:00:28
Speaker
And three, Gwendolyn bought dragon's blood from yet another one of her shady magical friends and used it for something, and now that shady magical friend wants 50 pounds to pay for it, which they don't have. ah And so Kat and Janet decide that the only way to get out of this situation was they figure out that Gwendolyn went to the magic garden in order to swap worlds, because another one of Gwendolyn's shady magic friends tells them there's something significant about the garden.
01:00:58
Speaker
They're like, well, I guess we're going to have to swap worlds and run away. It's the only way to get out of all these problems. So we've got to get to the garden and as well. Janet said, why don't we I take you back to my world and you could be my little brother back home in 1970s England. yeah um And Kat actually thinks it sounds wonderful.
01:01:16
Speaker
And he'd be delighted to go with Janet to another world and it's revealed that in fact that this is what Gwendolyn has done. Yes. And we we get when they're in the garden, eventually a glimpse of Gwendolyn and her new world where I am so pleased to report she has in fact become ruler of the world. de den She She said out there, well, she succeeded. No further questions. I love it. like As a villain, she gets no comeuppance whatsoever. Nope. ah She sees the narrative that she's in and she nopes right out of it and she just stays noped. It's great. You know, God forbid women do anything. Including become team queens ah who are...
01:02:04
Speaker
several times with power. Listen, Gwendolyn, she's justified because she's that she's got the biggest protagonist energy of anyone. She does and she did dig get results. You can't say that they didn't get results. um But they get to the garden and Gwendolyn's evil friends turn up and are like, oh, you're here. we I thought we said we were going to be here in an hour because they've been trying to avoid Gwendolyn's evil friends. But it's fine. All right. We know what we need to do to liberate the magic of the entire world. And that's murder and innocent child on this stone table in this beautiful garden. And then and then you're like, so Narnia. So Narnia. They've been going the whole time. They've been going further up and further in.
01:02:49
Speaker
Right. and So, if Jones cares about Narnia, although it has Christian overtones, is preeminently the vivid land of the imagination. And of course, she garden this garden her childhood is the land of imagination. And again and again, in Jones's books, you come back to this sort of this mythic world, this imaginative world, which overlaps with but is not the same as the real world and which the real world somehow needs in order to be bearable.
01:03:16
Speaker
Yes. I think this garden definitely is is the source of all the magic in this world that they're in, this sort of alternate version of England that is distinct. And, you know, we we get a couple of points of difference along the way. ah They're on King Charles VII instead of ah King, whatever king it would have been in the 1970s. No, Queen Elizabeth. And, you know, they Janet's constantly getting things wrong in history class because like the Battle of Agincourt, she's like, well, the English one. And they're like, no, that's not how that one went.
01:03:46
Speaker
um What were things like Atlantis? How was I supposed to know that Atlantis is what I call America? Right. And it's all these just like little fun little glimmers of, you know, we have no idea what the actual point of divergence of this world was. But we do know that one of the significant differences is that it has magic. And somehow a lot of this magic is wrapped up in this garden, which is also a portal to other worlds.
01:04:08
Speaker
um And, you know, there's this, there's the stone table, and there's a gate. And through the gate, they actually see Gwendolyn in her new world in a way that I think is really quite a lot like when they look through the the portals in Magician's nephew, and they see Jadis's world. Merle Yeah, I mean, that they don't just look through the portal in that one, they go into Jadis as well. But right, the description of Gwendolyn's new world does sort of echo the world of Charn, the world of the evil witch in Magician's nephew.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yes. And Gwendolyn is in it as the queen dressed up in gold and ah ordering people to be executed and clearly having a wonderful time. And Kat sort of looks at her wistfully and Janet's like, yeah, she seems happy. But she comes running back when the evil witches turn up and try and sacrifice Kat. And it is when, you know, as we said before, Kat is thinking, well, I guess I'll just lose a life and it won't be so bad. And Gwendolyn comes running and is like, no, you've got to kill him several more times. And he's like, oh.
01:05:02
Speaker
um But he can't say anything because even though he knows that he's not in fact the innocent child that she thinks he is, Janet's there and Janet is. And Janet could be sacrificed in his place and so he stays silent and maybe I think his first genuinely unselfish act of the book is staying quiet there to protect Janet. Absolutely and like it's it's not Kat alone though because while Kat is chained up on the stone table waiting to be sacrificed they've also managed to capture Crestomancy using his one magical weakness, which is silver, they found him with silver chains. So he can't do magic either. Yes, it's also misdirecting as hard as he can. So that they don't realise that all they can do is all they have to do is set Gwendolyn away and Janet will be back and she can be sacrificed.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yes, that's the first even though like we understand I think from the probably from earlier on, but from from the moment when Kat sets itself on fire, that Crestomancy does care about these kids and is trying his best, not always particularly well to protect them. I think this is the first moment when Kat and Crestomancy understand each other at all is both of them working together.
01:06:07
Speaker
When Crestomancy is helpless, he doesn't have the power, he's not the powerful figure in the castle. um This also is very Gothic, you need to see the the helplessness of the dark stranger, but ah when they're both working together to protect Janet. ah yeah Actually, I'm going to make an argument with regards to Cat and Crestomancy that this is the the Gothic romance narrative of the the dark the dark handsome stranger who only has your best interests at heart it's that sort of wish fulfillment but it's that wish fulfillment directed towards a parent it's you know it's the parental narrative of if you you know it's that whole kind of fantasy of if i if i understood him really then it would turn out that he loved me oh god you're right aren't you yeah you are this is a fantasy about getting a good dad yeah
01:06:54
Speaker
And in order to see that he's a good dad, he needs to be helpless and powerless. Yeah. Sort of like the ogre and the ogre downstairs, who it's only obviously his total helplessness once Sally's left, ah that he gets drawn in with the children and is on their level. Right. Which is about the narrative. That's Mr. Rochester, who, you know, he's completely helpless once Jane has left, and then she can come back and be in a position to power with him.
01:07:18
Speaker
And it is Kat who has to save the day. And it then is Kat who has to decide to be active for the first time in this book. Really, he's the most passive imaginable protagonist. Yes. ah And it's only in the garden when he's chained up. and And you know, Gwendolyn says, I've been using his magic since he was a baby. He never minds. And Kat says, I do mind rather from his uncomfortable slab. I am here, you know. Gwendolyn looked at him as if she was rather surprised that he was Yeah. And that is actually the moment of Cat's realisation that Gwenflin doesn't love him, never has, doesn't care. You get Cat shut his eyes and tears ran out across both his ears. Now he knew how little Gwenflin cared about him. He was not sure he wanted any lives at all. He's so sad. and
01:08:05
Speaker
It's a desperately sad book. In the end, this is a book, you know, it's not a book about lonely boy finds a new family. It's lonely boy discovers he's actually even more alone than he thought. Yes, although he does, I don't I don't want to write out again, Janet, the genuine connection that Janet and Kat have, but they are who are both lonely children who've lost their entire family because Janet doesn't get to go home to her parents at the end either.
01:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, eventually her final act of total selfishness goes back to the world where she's queen and seals herself in so that she can know. Right, Gwendolyn picks her world. And so no one else gets to pick theirs because Gwendolyn's picked hers. Right. And Janet is dragged back into be her replacement in Cat's World. And it is interesting that the adults around Cat do say, well, we think we possibly could send you home. And Janet says, they didn't notice it wasn't me.
01:08:58
Speaker
And there's this moment of like really painful sorrow where like you can see that Janet feels betrayed and rejected by her parents who have failed to pick up that she was replaced by another world double.
01:09:12
Speaker
And that, again, is sort of, you know, we've seen that before as kind of the ultimate, ah you know, flash signal of bad parenting and ochre downstairs when Douglas notices that Malcolm isn't Malcolm, and the ochre doesn't pick up on a thing. It's if your parent doesn't know you enough to know that you're not you, what kind of parent are they? Absolutely. And and you can see that Janet has this sort of hidden inner life, like she has these little stories that she likes to hide from her parents.
01:09:38
Speaker
She knows all sorts of secrets and hiding places. And she said that's the things that she says she has in common with Gwendolyn, that they keep secrets, that they hide things. And we never get the full story of what's going on between her and her family in our world. But she doesn't want to go back. She wants to stay in Cat's World with him where she has a brother.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah. And that, in a way, I guess, you know, I think it's interesting when we're we're talking about the the sacrifice myth, because this does feel so the, you know, the scene setting of the, you know, the potential sacrifice of Kat or Janet feels so much like Lewis, even, you know, there's a ah quote in this book for British fantasists ah that says, damn it, I'm turning into C.S. Lewis, when she realized the parallels between the sacrifice of Aslan and the climax of Charmed Life.
01:10:24
Speaker
um But unlike in Power of Three, I think there's no feeling that like this is not a Christian book. This is not a book that's really pulling on Christian myths. There's no sense that the sacrifice of Kat has been, you you know, that that that there's power in the story of the sacrifice of Kat. This is actually the first Jones book we've read, where nobody says, I know this story, let me explain. No, it's there isn't a script, there isn't a story to explain cat has to figure it out for himself what he used to do next. Yeah, I think it's the fact that there isn't a script that makes this ending feel, you know, they both they both feel lost. And
01:11:11
Speaker
There, you know, you have, I don't think it's a, you know, its it's not as ominous an ending as in Dog's Body or Eight Days of Luke. ah Because I do think that you can see that there's a, like the Cat and Janet have built a healthy enough relationship. I think this is a book where she's trying to write about what a healthy relationship looks like, what a healthy parental relationship looks like, what the healthy sibling relationship looks like. And Cat and Janet have built a healthy sibling relationship. So there's something to move forward on.
01:11:39
Speaker
But in the moment, they're both, you know, as the book ends, they're both, they're both just lost their families. each other Yes, absolutely. It's, to me, it was rereading it. I thought i don't I didn't remember it was this sad. I find the ending really profoundly sad. Yeah. oh And structurally, I think it's really interesting that this book opens with the death of Cat's parents, it opened the murder, potentially, of Cat's parents. And with Cat just being very profoundly sad about it, we see in small ways throughout the book how sad he is. And then it distracts you. you know There's this sort of sleight of hand. There are these jokes. There's these hijinks. There's these these various crimes, very funny crimes, like Gwendolyn does. But then, unlike in Power of Three, I think, where the genre shift
01:12:29
Speaker
comes in it doesn't really pull itself together it feels unbalanced because we start and end with these tragedies it's the loss of cat's parents at the beginning and the loss of cat's sister at the end it's like oh it was this was here all along um i managed to distract you from it for a while but this is the book that's that's being told yeah <unk> it's a very coherent story about loss ultimately about loss and i suppose about that responsibility that falls on you through loss. Having to be another person. No one else left to rely on, no one left to cling to. Kat doesn't do this by choice. He doesn't want to claim his power. He'd like to go on being Kat who had a ah wonderful big sister who he admired and ah loving parents who tried to stop her from doing evil magic.
01:13:21
Speaker
yes yes Yes, he would love to not take responsibility for anything. But he that's, that is, I think, in a way, maybe unlike any of the others, this is about growing up, it's about having to take responsibility for things, and understand that what you're understand what you're doing to other people into the world around you. Right, and understand when what you're doing is wrong. And that sort of comes back to sort of the the wider plot, which is also a B plot, really,
01:13:49
Speaker
of this like magician's revolution where they say, why shouldn't we use magic any way we like? Why shouldn't we be as wicked as we want? And Crestomancy in his mildest and vaguest way says, well, I think if you think about it,
01:14:03
Speaker
you might come up with something. yeah But this is what I mean by the the bait and switch almost. This is a book where the revolution is in the wrong and tradition and establishment is right because tradition and establishment here is founded on that other garden, that garden of magic, of imagination, of enchantment and beauty. yes ah And what the revolution against that wants to do is destroy that in order to control it.
01:14:33
Speaker
But also in sort of a broader sense, this is saying that there is value in what is ancient, um in the foundations of things in, if you like, in myth, in story, mission even in the church, annoying and boring as it is. It's clear that that Gwendolyn was missing the point rather.
01:14:57
Speaker
when she ah does her extremely funny prank on the church, she is not understanding what the church is actually for or what she ought to be learning from being forced to go. Yeah, and maybe, you know, now that you say that, I'm wondering if perhaps the reason that this book doesn't have a story that resolves it is because it's it's rawr than that. It's there in the garden, which is the fountain of myth itself. It's not It's not being refracted through any specific story, unless Narnia, if you like, or we're reading it and going, it's Narnia. yeah um But it's not, it's- I don't think it is. I think it's the other way around. I think Narnia is drawing on the same stuff because fundamental garden in which there is an apple tree is a considerably older myth from the magician's nephew. And that's kind of the point. So true. But it is, you know, none of the characters are looking at it and going, I know this story because it's not a single story. It's just
01:15:48
Speaker
story. It's the power of story. Yeah. The power of story, which lets you see into other worlds and see who you might have been or who you still could be. Yep. And sometimes rule them. And sometimes rule them. I'm glad. I'm happy for her. I really am. I'm so sad for Kat. All right, shall we end up there?
01:16:13
Speaker
Let's end it there. So we are almost all the way through our season now. There are only two books left in the Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones for the 1970s. And they are Drowned Ammet and the Spellcoats. So two more Delco books. Yes, the end of the Delmark trilogy. Yep. All right. Well, we'll see you next week. And thanks for listening.