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Howl's Moving Castle
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Her mind was such a blank that for a second, it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid!
The fantastic Freya Marske joins us for a discussion of John Donne, fairy tales, unmusical Welshmen, and Diana Wynne Jones' first truly romantic novel.
Transcript available here, and we'll be back next time to close out our season with A Tale of Time City!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast & Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of 8 Days of Diana Wyn Jones.
00:00:21
Speaker
to another episode of eight days of diana winjone I'm Rebecca Framo. I'm Emily Tesh. And this week we introduce our wonderful special guest Freya Mask.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello. i am delighted to be here. Thank you so much for coming and being our Hell's Moving Castle expert, our romance expert for this most romantic Diana Wynne Jones book.
00:00:44
Speaker
Well, thank you for agreeing to humor me when I barged into your space and said, if you're doing Hell's Moving Castle, you have to let me talk. Yes, we did. very kindly agreed.
00:00:56
Speaker
All right. So but before we start talking about the book, Tell us why you perched into Earthspace and said Howl's Moving Castle.
Freya's Connection to 'Howl's Moving Castle'
00:01:04
Speaker
So Howl's Moving Castle is, if not my favorite book of all time, one of my favorite books of all time.
00:01:10
Speaker
I have two copies of it, one it to lend out to people who I'm trying to inflict it on and one that lives on my bedside table and I read it when I can't sleep or when I'm sick.
00:01:22
Speaker
So I reread it at least twice a year and have done since I first read it. ah So I know it very, very well and I have a lot of opinions about it.
00:01:32
Speaker
ah so And ah how about Diana Wynne-Jones in general? Were you much of a Jones reader or just a Howl's Moving Castle reader? They sort of happened simultaneously for
Discovering Diana Wynne Jones
00:01:44
Speaker
me.
00:01:44
Speaker
So I wish I had grown up reading these books. i I did grow up reading quite a lot of the sort of British kids fantasy like E. Mesbet and all of the other stuff that Wynne-Jones herself actually references.
00:02:00
Speaker
because my mother is British and she handed on a lot of the books that she had read as a kid. But we could not get these books here. I was not aware that Diana Wynne Jones existed as a writer until I discovered Hell's Moving Castle.
Collecting the Works
00:02:14
Speaker
And I vividly know the year it was that was the year of Diana Wynne Jones for me. It was when I was 24 and I was in my fourth year of medical school. And I did my fourth year of medical school in a town in New South Wales called Orange, of which I can only assume the librarian is the one Diana Wynne-Jones fan in Australia.
00:02:34
Speaker
Because the library this huge selection of her books and I have never seen that much Diana Wynne-Jones anywhere in Australia before since. There were a couple of re-releases of Howl's Moving Castle when the film came out.
00:02:47
Speaker
And other than that, I've had to piece together my collection ah whenever I'm overseas. Sometimes it pops up in weird secondhand places. Very occasionally I'll find some kind of magical unicorn new edition in a random bookshop and snap it up.
00:03:02
Speaker
And then when you started this podcast, I immediately ordered all the other ones that I had never been able to find at great expense. So happy. It's been...
Exploring Unread Works
00:03:13
Speaker
It's been such a, like, an extra little bonus delight for me of doing the podcast is every time we get to one that you haven't read and then we get to talk to you about it because you're reading it for the first time. Yeah, well, I think because I really just read whatever the library had. I remember because, you know, they're quite...
00:03:28
Speaker
easy to get through for an adult reader i would just go to the library at some point and you know I'd be I was medical school I was doing a lot of study and then Saturday or Sunday would hit and I would just lie on the couch and read an entire Diana Wynne Jones book in a day or an afternoon that's perfect and then go back to the library and I would I used the library as a study hub and I would just which exchange it for the next Diana Wynne-Jones book that I hadn't read ah but I became extremely attached to House Moving Castle I picked it up first because it was one that I had seen people talk about it may have been you Becca I don't know it was someone and so I picked it up first and became immediately obsessed with it why are you obsessed with it tell us why you're obsessed with it I'm obsessed with it because it's a romance, number one.
Romantic Elements and Tropes
00:04:13
Speaker
And I think it possibly gave me unrealistic expectations about Diana Wynne Jones and romance in general, because I think it is an... I will say, this is the thing, could people recommend Howl as like, you haven't read Diana Wynne Jones? Read Howl's Moving Castle, which is great, but it's not representative. Oh, no, not at all. No. mean, luckily, i you know, I think... Part of what I liked about it was I immediately saw in Diana Wynne Jones some things to do with story that I really loved and that I really admired as a writer, especially to do with where she begins and ends her stories, which we can talk about.
00:04:46
Speaker
Definitely. But I think part of it was the romance. Part of it was also obviously that it's such a self-aware fairy tale. And I love anything that is a very self-aware fairy tale or something that's in the fairy tale genre while interrogating the fairy tale genre.
00:05:01
Speaker
So I like that aspect of it as well. And of course, if you like that, then there's a lot more for you in the other books. Definitely. And I do think, so I think that Howl's Moving Castle is actually, since you're doing this chronological project has been really interesting because this is almost, I think the first time that she's doing this particular thing that she's doing in Howl's Moving Castle. It won't be the last, but I think it might be the first where she is building a world out of fairy tales in a very particular way. She's she's going fully metafictional at this point in a way that she hasn't really before.
00:05:34
Speaker
She's always been playing with the the underlying metafiction, the trope, the genre. with Charmed Life is ah is a gothic fit as a gothic romance done inside out and back to front.
00:05:46
Speaker
um And so maybe it's Howl's Moving Castle. Right, so it is. But Howl's Moving Castle, Howl is Gwendolyn? I'm going to come back to that. ah But Howl's Moving Castle is so purely built on trope, on story, on playing with how stories work and how stories ah function that even like magic within the book functions in the way of who's telling the story and how are they telling it and where are the words coming from.
Initial Reactions and Popularity
00:06:14
Speaker
I have an unpopular opinion on Howl's Moving Castle. In fact, or rather I did then I reread it. yeah So i want I want to give you those like two. I'm going to give you M of two days ago. i had to read this very quickly because I was doing a panel at a con on Narnia and had to hold all Narnia in my head until after the panel.
00:06:33
Speaker
But was like, okay, how? Right, but two days ago, i would have said my unpopular opinion on Howl's Moving Castle is I think Howl's Moving Castle is mid. I know, I know.
00:06:47
Speaker
Or rather... as a Diana Wynne Jones. If any other author had written, be like, whoa, what a good book. What else have you done? As a Jones, I'm like, well, it's not in my top five.
00:06:59
Speaker
It's not even in my top five this decade. ah But that actually says more to what an absolutely banger decade the 80s is in Jones's output.
00:07:09
Speaker
And also, then I reread it and I was like, Em, you're just being an edgy bitch. but book The book is extremely good. It's not the book's fault that it's popular. was going to say, I just listened to the rough cut of your Fire and Hemlock episode, having just done a Fire and Hemlock reread.
00:07:27
Speaker
And my main note was Fire and Hemlock fails spectacularly as a romance. Oh, yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah yes. Oh, thousand. But it's interesting. but all that one mid but I remember I was reading it. i was like, Diana, you're not there yet. yeah You haven't read it yet. But it's interesting, actually, to read Fire and Hemlock and Hal back to back. Oh, absolutely. She wrote them back to back.
00:07:50
Speaker
And these are too books that are organized around a a relationship. Romance with Fire and Hemlock is a big question mark, but relationship, definitely. If I wrote Fire and Hemlock, if I wrote Fire and Hemlock, and I got, and this is a quote, or a review that said, this is a girl's book, and I don't see why I should have to understand it.
00:08:10
Speaker
And then the following year, i brought out House Moving Castle, and it was Hal that got all the success and admiration. would actually be furious. Because to me, it does feel like That was a tough one.
00:08:25
Speaker
Deep breath. Time for something fun. i mean, look, those of us who write for a living, but also those of us who have written fan fiction, this is the way it goes. You know, you you write your...
00:08:38
Speaker
2000 word epic that you pour your heart and soul into thematically dense, well plotted, doing some interesting experimental stuff. And then you get drunk one night and write 2000 words of crack. And everyone's like, Oh my God, kudos, kudos, kudos, kudos. This was the one. Okay.
00:08:52
Speaker
Cheers.
00:08:55
Speaker
part of the Part of which is often that sort of uninhibited 2000 words of crap one is the funny one. And gosh, people love jokes. And Howl is so funny. It's so much fun.
Gothic Elements and Secrets
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah. And you can see why.
00:09:12
Speaker
It would be the one that is popular versus Far and Hemlock, which as you point out is a scholar's dream. But I feel like yeah middle grade author Diana Wynne-Jones, she was writing for the scholars. The publishers were probably like, thank fuck something commercial when the next one came.
00:09:29
Speaker
And it is like, if there is book that is the most popular Diana Wynne Jones book, it is Howl's Moving Castle because it plays all the hits. It's extremely funny. It is possibly her funniest book.
00:09:42
Speaker
It is the one where she cracks romance for the first time. Like she's trying to do it here for the first time. Like none of her other books to this point have really been about romance in this way. She's sort of moved towards being able to write that. And then it's fire and hemlock and how's moving castle back to back.
00:09:59
Speaker
What is it about how people fall in love? How do they do that? Let's look at this. I mean, part of the part the appeal for me is also like, you can come at it as a scholar of fairy tale because you're right.
00:10:11
Speaker
What Diana Wynne Jones does so well is the people who learn how to solve the story by knowing what story they're in. Sophie thinks she knows the story she's in. hey Yes. Yes. and Like this is.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah. Hang on. I'm going to read the opening of the book. that It's so important. So the book starts out. In the land of Ingery, where such things as seven league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist.
00:10:36
Speaker
It is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first and worst if the three of you set out to seek your fortune. And what I love about this opening and how it plays into the rest of the book.
00:10:47
Speaker
is First of all, it sets up where we are. We're in fairy tale land. There are fairy tale rules. And it reads as objective, which it isn't. What you realize later is that it tells you something about Sophie in that Sophie accepts what people tell her as truth.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yes. Even though she... Yeah, she's she's young enough to be quite accepting of what people tell her. She comes across as crabby and maybe a little bit cynical, but she is not in any way. So when she begins the story, that she does not recognise that she's in a combination of Beauty and the Beast and the Snow Queen.
00:11:20
Speaker
She thinks for a while that she's in Bluebeard, which is quite fun. She's hunting around the castle for bits of killed women. She's like, where are they? so it's Sophie is trying to figure out what story she's in for the entire book and she is so annoyed when she finds out.
00:11:41
Speaker
because if she was the youngest sister, she would recognize it as Beauty and the Beast, that she has left her other two other sisters and gone into the dark house where you are not allowed to go into certain rooms of the house and and there is a magical secret to do with the soul of the master.
00:11:57
Speaker
But she's like, no, no. Which is Cupid and Psyche as well, which is the underlying romance of Fire and Hemlock. She can't recognize it because she's like, that's stupid. I wouldn't get that kind of story. I'm the oldest. Right. I don't get a story at all. That's not my story. I i am a background character, is what Sophie says to herself.
00:12:13
Speaker
And she goes into everything with that particular like mindset, which I am a background character. Even when she sets off to seek her fortune. And she, you know, the book begins.
00:12:23
Speaker
ah Sophie is... background character eldest sister uh her father dies ah her younger sisters get well we should probably talk about the the setup i think we should because i think this is a very jonesian family and in fact it's one we've seen before it's a family with a mother and father and siblings and jones is always very interested in sibling relationships and sophie is the eldest of three sisters and at this point the alarm bells go off because we all read time of the ghost which has right four sisters, but Becca and I argued that actually the eldest two are ah one and Jones was herself the eldest of three sisters and is constantly doing the little autobiographical bits here and there.
00:13:03
Speaker
So Sophie is the eldest of three. She has a strong minded middle sister and a tantrum having enormously selfish younger sister. ah And she has a stepmother and you're like okay, we're in a fairy story. Stepmothers, right. ah But her stepmother, Fanny, is a really lovely person.
00:13:21
Speaker
ah well That's how Sophie sees her at the start of the book. Fanny is trying really hard to take care of the girls. So she arranges apprenticeships for them that make sense. Martha, who's the youngest, who obviously is going to seek her fortune successfully, gets apprenticed to a witch so she can learn magic for fortune-seeking purposes.
00:13:40
Speaker
ah Letty, the beautiful middle sister, gets placed at a bakery where she can meet lots of boys so she can get married and live happily ever after early on. And Sophie, as the eldest, gets to inherit the family business that was her father's before he died, which is the hat shop.
00:13:54
Speaker
So Sophie, at the start of the book, is working in a hat shop. And she is... miserable. And she never acknowledges directly that she's miserable. You have to read how she's written about how she writes about herself. But there's a description of her going to visit her sister early on. I thought, oh, you poor...
00:14:14
Speaker
She dresses all in grey. She hides in the shadows when she walks through the street. She's scared of people. She doesn't know why. And you can see that the life is being crushed out of Sophie by this hat shop job that she hates, where all she ever does is talk to the hats that she's decorating and tell them about the fantasy lives they ought to live, which are pretty clearly the fantasy lives that Sophie wishes she was living. A different story. Please, any story.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there's... So Sophie's particular gift, I think, and we're going to get into this, is she talks to things. She talks to things around here. And one the things I was noticing really when I was rereading this is that she is so desperate for a story, as you say, that she looks at everything around her and is like...
00:15:01
Speaker
Wow, it's just like me for real. She looks at a hat and she's like, yeah, you know, this this hat, you could be a little fancier. um gonna make you I'm going to make you up nice and then you're going to have a fun time.
00:15:11
Speaker
She looks at a scarecrow and a hedge and is like, wow, I feel like that scarecrow. She looks at a skull and is like, man, I feel like that skull. So she talks to the things around her and as we will eventually learn,
00:15:24
Speaker
Gives them a little bit of the story for real. Because that's how this world works. Sophie can stories. She sees herself in all the characters. But you're right. When it's in narration, it's very often an inanimate object. And it's very clearly that I see myself as scenery.
00:15:38
Speaker
but I really want to break free of being single. Yes, you're so right. So I'm giving the opportunity to for life to all of these inanimate things around me because I can't give it to myself, or I think I can't give it to myself.
00:15:49
Speaker
And when she does give it to herself, it is sidelong and without being aware of it, which is the inciting incident of the book. Yes. yeah Sophie is never aware of the ways in which- so Sophie, the point of view control, as we've talked about point of view control in previous books, in Howl's Moving Castle is perfect because Sophie is so right about so many things and so wrong about herself 95% the time. And also I do find it exquisitely funny that Sophie is just like me for real about everything except Hal himself. And he's just like her for
00:16:23
Speaker
yeah because this book is very much doing that mirror self, that here's the other me, that discovery of of the other person you are.
00:16:34
Speaker
And I think it's full on romantic in Hal's Moving Castle. ah Sophie and Hal have so much in common. ah There's so much that echoes in them. And I think actually also both of them are so much echoed and mirrored by Calcifer the Fire Demon. And it's great.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah. And it is very romantic. Yeah. I have a whole thing about, so like my entire page of notes about this is romance comma yeah and house as self. And then it's just dot points for two pages. So just, you know, just pull the trigger on me whenever you want.
00:17:06
Speaker
and We'll go. Alright, let's get Sophie into the house and then I want to pull the trigger on the house. So, to get Sophie into the house, before she gets to the house, she has to get cursed because she can't bring herself to leave the hat shop and leave her assumed destiny until something gives her the excuse.
00:17:24
Speaker
And what gives her the excuse is the evil witch of the waste, who has been lurking on the outskirts, threatening the town vaguely, ah sails into the hat shop and says, you've done something terrible to my plans, Miss Hatter, and now I'm going to get revenge upon you, and places a curse on her and turns her into an old woman.
00:17:40
Speaker
And then leaves. Sophie has no idea why this has happened or what she could possibly have done to offend the obvious villain of the story that is Ingrid. But now she's old and she kit doesn't want her but like her her stepmother's going to worry. Her sisters are going to worry. she doesn't want any of them to worry about this.
00:17:59
Speaker
So now that something has happened to her, ah the only thing that there is to do is to go off and seek her fortune, which is what happens when someone puts a spell on you. And so she hobbles away down the street, feeling very calm because she's in a state of shock about being turned into a 90 year old woman and and you know has a couple of significant encounters with things that are going to be, with inanimate objects, with parts of the scenery that are going to be important later in the story.
00:18:24
Speaker
And finally finds her way to the other obvious villain of the story, the evil wizard Howl, who is lives in a moving castle that chugs its way around her town and is rumored to eat the hearts of girls.
00:18:36
Speaker
She's like, well, this might as well happen. And again, it's it's that point of view control, because she's like, I don't know where I'm going. I'm just wandering up into the woods. I don't know where I'm going.
00:18:47
Speaker
But there's nothing else up there except the castle. But then as far as she's concerned, she's like, oh, no, it's just that I'm tired and need somewhere to rest. And I guess it seems that the only place for me to possibly find shelter is this moving castle that I well know is the only thing up here where I have been walking all day.
00:19:05
Speaker
like sweet and then And then later on, she judges how for only being able to do things by telling himself that he's not doing them. yeah yeah yeah
00:19:17
Speaker
That is how she works. I'm like reading this, like, why are you going up into the hills? It's nine o'clock at night. You're so tired and you're walking up. I've got to point out before she does that, before she's been turned old, there is a meet cute.
00:19:34
Speaker
first. Before she's been turned to an old woman, we do actually encounter the evil wizard Hal out and about trying to seduce girls and eat their hearts. Sophie does not recognize him because he seems like just a guy, ah very handsome, very friendly guy who singles her out as she's scurrying through the streets, trying to hide from everyone on of the unhappiest days of her life and tries to take her to buy her a drink.
00:20:01
Speaker
ah which Sophie refuses and runs away from him. I remember in the movie adaptation, they make a whole thing out of the meet cute in the book. No, she's too scared. but She's too scared.
00:20:12
Speaker
ah But she runs away and thinking, what a courtly person. Which made me laugh so much because if there is one thing you discover about Hal later on, it's that he is not a courtly person. But you also know that the one thing that will immediately capture his interest is somebody who's not interested in him. And he meets this lovely girl who's just like, bye, and runs.
00:20:36
Speaker
And then he spends the rest of the book thinking about her as we later learn. We do need to talk about when do we think Howl actually fell for Sophie, but let's save that and get to the house.
00:20:48
Speaker
Can I talk about how yeah how she gets into the house? Because this is important. So she yeah is tired and she looks at the moving castle and thinks, oh, there's a lot of smoke and chimneys there. There must be a fire that I can sit next to. That's all I want at the moment. My fortune, my fate in this moment is a comfortable fire that I can sit down next to and never move.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so she goes chasing this idea of a fire. So she runs up to the moving castle. She yells, stop at it. And it stops. There are literal magical walls and barriers preventing her from getting in. So she pushes and she explores and she yells and she shoves in the back door.
00:21:28
Speaker
And once she gets in, she makes a beeline for a chair and immediately curls up next to the fire. This is the entire romance arc. It is given to you in a series of like three pages because, yes, the castle is how and the heart of the castle is the fire.
00:21:46
Speaker
And so what she does is she basically just pushes her way into his heart and refuses to And taking the parts of thinking about the kind of archetypes that Diana Wynne-Jones does. She is a Janet. She's just doing it backwards.
00:21:58
Speaker
She refuses to budge first, and then she falls in love after that. But it's just so funny to me that like it's so literal, the idea of this romance where you are moving past this guy's walls and barriers, shoving your way into his heart and refusing to move.
00:22:17
Speaker
And she does not recognize it yeah at that at the time at all. But because the hearth is the heart of the home, and very literally Calcifer's magic is holding the moving castle together and all of it depends on Hal's heart, it's all the same thing.
00:22:33
Speaker
And the first thing she does is hell. She literally goes, my fortune is this. Yeah, it's so good. And we're told right in the beginning, you know, she can see Calcifer, who is the fire demon, and she can, which was sitting on Hal's heart.
00:22:48
Speaker
um This is another moment, actually, of just like me for real, because she has this conversation with Calcifer. We're told that only people who can see and interact with Calcifer, who understand that there is a heart at the center of this castle, are really welcome there.
00:23:01
Speaker
Most people can't and don't. And so she talks this conversation with Calcifer and Calcifer says, oh, I'm being exploited by this terrible wizard.
00:23:12
Speaker
Won't you help me break my contract? And ah Sophie's like, and again, this is another point of echo because Sophie has gotten the idea from talking with her younger sister, Martha. Her younger sister is like, our stepmother is exploiting you. And Sophie's like, well, maybe she is exploiting me.
00:23:27
Speaker
This is not true. we We learned later on that Martha has resentful against her mother, but actually, you know, Fanny and Sophie are just not understanding what each other needs at this moment. And they are in fact, very fond of each other.
00:23:37
Speaker
Much like Howell and Calcifer. But ah Sophie talks to Calcifer and Calcifer's like, my wizard is exploiting me. Help me break my contract. And Sophie's like, just like me. I know what it's like to be exploited in an employment situation. should break each other's contract. We will form a union.
00:23:54
Speaker
ah yeah So Calcifer and Sophie make this bargain. Calcifer will try to break the spell that he can see that's on Sophie. And ah Sophie will try to rescue Calcifer from his contract with Hal.
00:24:07
Speaker
And this also is where we get our big hint that like a sufficiently powerful magical being can look at Sophie and be like, wow, you are under a serious curse instantly ah because ah the strong magic that the Witch of the Waste has put on her is very, very visible to Calcifer right away.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah. And as a side note, speaking of the way that Calcifer and Sophie mirror each other, ah this also like Sophie, I think, learns how to fall in love with Howl, how to and act towards Howl from Calcifer.
00:24:34
Speaker
ah There's a bit later on where Sophie says it didn't surprise her to find that Calcifer admired the curse any more than it surprised her when he called Howl a fool. He was always insulting Hal, but she never could work out if Calcifer really hated Hal.
00:24:46
Speaker
Calcifer looked so evil anyway that it was hard to tell. Obviously, Calcifer and Hal love each other very much. And when Sophie calls Hal a fool, it is also way of saying love you very much. They completely bookended because the first thing Calcifer says is I'm being exploited. And the very last thing Sophie says Hal, or one of the last things she says is, and you'll exploit me.
00:25:04
Speaker
Like, she she accepts that she's stepping into that role. And she recognises it for what it is. yes yeah Because by the end of the book, she finally understands each other, and understands herself and Howell and Calcifer. These are all part and parcel of the same thing.
00:25:18
Speaker
But also, right, the the first thing that Sophie... so figures out is she can bully calcifer she can get calcifer to do what she wants just by steamrolling over him and assuming he's going to do it and then he does uh which astonishes the other inhabitant of the castle who is howl's apprentice michael whom we later discover howl took in as like a so sad abandoned orphan because how's not that bad really or is he And ah Michael's like, oh, we can't cook when Hal's not here because Calcifer won't let us use the fire because Calcifer is the fire.
00:25:49
Speaker
And Zephy's like, shut up. I'm having bacon, Calcifer. Yeah. And it's funny because I was going to say that this is such a romance thing, idea of like knowing one another's vulnerabilities.
00:26:02
Speaker
Like later in the book, we'll get onto to the fact that he shows her whales, ah but her his true weak flank, as they say, is Calcifer. And one of the very first things that Hal notices about Sophie is that she can manipulate Calcifer, who in all of this is the stand-in for his heart.
00:26:17
Speaker
Like he lets her in, like he walks into the castle it's like somebody is there who is manipulating Calcifer and he's like, hmm, intriguing. Yeah.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe now is the time that we ah that we ask the question of, as Sophie settles in, she's like, I'm your new housekeeper, and was like, well, I didn't want a housekeeper, and I didn't ask, but fine. mean, what he does is he says nothing.
00:26:40
Speaker
ah Sophie spends weeks on Tentor. We actually quite a tight timeline for this book, because we know the the story starts on May Day, that's when they first meet, and it ends on Midsummer Day, which is about two months.
00:26:51
Speaker
And about the about the first half of that time, Sophie is waiting and waiting to be kicked out of this castle. but And Hal just doesn't kick her out. ah just like ah I guess if he doesn't kick me out, I'm not going to kick me Yeah, this is like this is just the soul of it, because again, it's about the castle being Hal, right? So cut the castle is foreboding on the outside, but it is cozy and welcoming on the inside, but also a great big mess.
00:27:18
Speaker
And Sophie is like, looks around, is like, you know what my job is? My job is to clean up this mess. And Hal... And also find the bits of girl that are in the house. But cleaning up the mess. And so she is, Hal is shouting all the way, but he never actually stops her.
00:27:36
Speaker
Because, and this is why he doesn't kick her out. Yes. Part of him knows he needs her love to save him. He's not building yeah his own Janet, yeah but he is sure as hell going to take advantage of the fact that one has walked in the war.
00:27:51
Speaker
And in the beast as well, like it's the, oh, you know, somebody has to fall in love with me to break this curse. And someone has presented themselves to do so. And it is like right away from the moment that Sophie walks in and Calcifer says, I can break your curse if you'll break mine. We can't break each other. You know, we can't break our curses on our own.
00:28:10
Speaker
It needs to be done by somebody else. We need help to do it. Coming from Fire and Hemlock, there's a really, really strong running theme in Fire and Hemlock that you cannot be a hero on your own behalf. You have to do it for somebody else on somebody else's behalf.
00:28:23
Speaker
And that is really literally the way the rules of Ingury work. You can't tell someone about your curse. You can't... You can only sort of kind of ask for help in a roundabout way. You can't say, help, I've been turned into an old woman, please fix me.
00:28:35
Speaker
You need to be able to put yourself in a situation where someone can be a hero for you, or someone can can learn about you and can figure you out enough to break that curse. Like, there has to be kind of a deep knowledge there and a willingness to intertwine yourself with somebody else for long enough to learn how to do it.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I think moving into a house is such a classic way of doing that because you were talking about Diana Wynne Jones and the Gothic and obviously the main romance structure that this book is doing is Gothic romance.
00:29:04
Speaker
Like there is a girl who enters a strange house because it seems like she has no other options, like she's alone in the world and this this is her one option is to move into this strange house. She has to solve the central mystery of the house.
00:29:15
Speaker
and by doing so, release the capacity for love in the house's wicked master. And this allows everyone to move on from the mistakes of the past and be happy in the future. Like, that is what a gothic romance is.
00:29:28
Speaker
You look at it and you're like, well, that's in Exactly. That's Beauty and the Beast. That's what all of them are doing. And it's true. And the Wicked Master cannot break free on his own. you And the girl's role is to move in and to solve the house.
00:29:43
Speaker
yeah and And by doing so, she gets saved herself. But it's through the heroism of what she does in the house. And one of the rules of the Gothic is the the person who looks the most evil is always the person who is actually the love interest at the end.
00:29:58
Speaker
And so Sophie walks into the house and thinks, ah, yes, I've been told that he's been chopping up girls and hiding them in his house, and I'm going to solve that problem. And she's very embarrassed. She's also, she's looking for hints, right? She's been told that she needs to break the the the contract between Howl and Calcifer.
00:30:13
Speaker
and But Calcifer, just like Sophie, can't tell her the exact terms of the contract, of the curses, the thing that's binding them. So she's digging up through the whole house, looking for hints and just coincidentally getting to know the house really well and making it all beautiful and bright. And there's a moment when Hal walks in and something happened in here. It looks lighter.
00:30:33
Speaker
And Sophie's been whitewashing the whole place. yeah But it's so it's it's a metaphor for what she's doing to house her. Oh, there's a bit of light getting in here. Yeah. Like Fanny near the end the book says that, oh, if Hale's not evil anymore, it must be because of Sophie's doing.
00:30:46
Speaker
Like, you know, you must have reformed him. And there's no really easy way to say, no, no, I just cleaned the house. But again, it's ah it's a metaphor. She hasn't actually changed him in any way, but she's made she's forced him to get rid of some of the muck.
00:30:59
Speaker
Like, she's stripped away some of the disguising stuff that was around Hal. and that's her And that's her job in the house. But... It's not one-sided either, because the other thing that's happening, and the thing that is happening to Sophie, and it started happening to Sophie as soon as she was turned old, but really happens to Sophie when she starts living in Howl's house, and learning how to interact with Howl, how Howl and Casper interact with each other, is Sophie is giving herself permission to be a bit worse. Yes! Yes!
00:31:27
Speaker
Which is great. It's so good. Okay, because Sophie at the start of the book is a miserable and very lonely and very bored teenage girl who has resigned to this just being her life. And she's scared and it's sort of, it's flattened her down into almost nothing.
00:31:42
Speaker
And there's a moment when She loses her temper and it's before the curse takes hold, before the wish of the waste turns up. She's had a bad day. She snaps at a customer who comes in like, why is this hat not magically getting me to run away with aristocracy? I know you sold another one that did do that.
00:31:58
Speaker
ah certainly i am not in the mood to give you my fantasy life today. look terrible in that hat. But she feels so much joy in being honestly nasty to someone like, take off the customer service face.
00:32:13
Speaker
I don't like you and I don't like this. And it's ah it's a real moment of vindication for Sophie almost. It's one of the moments where you see her unhappiness come to the surface. ah But also she's not being a very nice person.
00:32:24
Speaker
That is just a random person who bought a hat. And Sophie gives herself permission on becoming old to be her true self. like, well, I don't need to be that good older sister, that good daughter who cares about everyone's feelings, that good shop assistant who even cares about the customer's feelings.
00:32:44
Speaker
I don't need to do any of that anymore because I'm 90 and I'm practically dead anyway. i might as well at least be... honest i think is is is the missing word there um and you get sophie's true self and i think this is who is just as bad as a historical romance trope that diana wynne jones is doing she is doing the i can do be my true bold self because i'm in disguise in romance this is usually the girl dressed as a boy
00:33:17
Speaker
And this is something that Fire and Hemlock is doing a bit ah because what you're saying is I have the freedom to step outside social convention and enter into a man's intimate circle because I am no longer a young girl.
00:33:32
Speaker
in the social role of a young girl. And I think Diana Wynne-Jones is kind of poking fun at it a bit here because instead of it being like, oh, no, you can't be alone with him because he'll compromise you your virtue, it's, oh, well, he won't want to eat my soul because I'm 90.
00:33:48
Speaker
But at yeah um you know it doesn't matter that he's a handsome young man. And if if I was my real self, I would feel very shy and, you know, oh, he's a handsome young man. well, it doesn't really matter because I'm 90. And so she just charges ahead being herself.
00:34:05
Speaker
I'm immune to handsome of young men, she says, even while talking to Hal suits about how she yeah like elder women and aunts and grandmothers are not a immune to Hal suits. Oh, gosh. ah By the way, I should note here that I did go through reflections just before we started recording. So we do have Diana Wynne-Jones' face cast for Hal.
00:34:26
Speaker
She did make a note. if you want to know what Hal Jenkins looks like, Google 1980s Andre Agassi.
00:34:36
Speaker
You want specifically the photos with the blonde mullet and the short shorts. So wonderful. They're perfect. is beautiful. But that's the other thing about how... So the first thing that unlocks mean Sophie is being 90 and being like, well, everyone expects old women to be nosy and mean. So I'm just living up to my disguise. I'm in disguise and I'm doing what one would do.
00:34:59
Speaker
But then the other thing that unlocks it, and think, Freya, you're more expert than me, but I think this is also historical romance trope, which is when male lead has the reputation of being ah bit bad, bit wicked.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yes. This gives the heroine permission to be mean to him in specific, because she's like, well, you're a bad person and therefore I can be rude to you. And it's not a bad thing to do. Right. Right. But but because because Howl's Moving Castle is also a power fantasy, right? so so And Sophie's power fantasy specifically is imagine not giving a shit.
00:35:34
Speaker
Imagine that. And this is why I think she goes straight to the evil wizard's castle. and The minute she under occurs, she's like, I'm free. I don't have to care about anyone's feelings anymore.
00:35:45
Speaker
Where do you go when you're not caring about anyone's feelings? You go to evil wizard castle. That's what you do there. But it is on the structure of a different romance trope, which is the wallflower and the rake. Even though both of them are not actually that thing at the heart, both of them start like...
00:36:03
Speaker
you know the the grey mouse the you know the self-effacing that I am literally an inanimate object like she is being a wolf like wallflower is like everything painted on the surface of Sophie at the beginning uh and Hal has this reputation for being and he is incredibly fickle and flirty and the fantasy of the wallflower and the rake is oh he's so fickle and flirty but nobody actually touches his heart because he pretends not to have one. But I, the servant girl slash shy wallflower, will be the one who will touch and win his heart, quite literally in this case.
00:36:42
Speaker
That's a fantasy that this is built on. And part of it is that if you are so socially removed from the noble rake that you can be the person who speaks back to him and the person who tells him to his face what kind of person he is because you know of course there won't be any consequences and then of course he loves you for how outspoken you are and elevates you socially you know that's the whole you know first it's the cinderella thing but it's also that the the wallflower and the rake Right.
00:37:12
Speaker
And literally happens. I think you are so right that Jane Eyre is in the DNA of this book, because this literally happens to one of the hats in the first chapter. She makes a hat for Jane Fairfax, who is a plain wallflower, who's a bit weird. who's what Everyone's like, oh, that that weird jane weird Jane Fairfax.
00:37:29
Speaker
And gives that says someone in a high position will see your nobility and fall in love with you. And then that happens. Yeah, I think Sophie on one level knows the romance tropes.
00:37:42
Speaker
She just doesn't. And she yes does not recognize the ones that she's walking into, even though they are you know baked into the fabric of the story that she's in. Well, she knows them and she loves them as well. Like she's making all these very romantic hats, which are giving people these romance futures because she is enchanting them without realizing it. There's one she went she looks at and goes you will have to marry money.
00:38:02
Speaker
And we don't get the punchline of that till the end of the book, where we do find that the eventual owner of that hat did indeed marry money. But I think Sophie from the very beginning wants love so much and yet will not acknowledge that she is walking into a romance.
00:38:18
Speaker
She also doesn't acknowledge how, I mean, we see even in the first two chapters, something I think is really interesting with her sisters. So there's the relationship that Sophie has with her sisters.
00:38:29
Speaker
um She is selfless, but she, you know she takes care of them. She soothes their tantrums. She parents them in a real sense, even though they do have a competent stepmother as well, is is so baked into her personality.
00:38:43
Speaker
And she, you know, we see the first thing that we hear her sister say is, Leti says, why should mar and Martha have the best of it? Because she was born the youngest. I shall marry a prince.
00:38:53
Speaker
And Martha says, i will run into disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody. And by the second chapter, we already learned that they they have grown up. Their ideas of themselves and what they want have reversed.
00:39:05
Speaker
ah So, you know, they one of the early punchlines of the book is Letty goes off to learn learn about magic. And Martha, or sorry, Martha goes off to learn about magic. Letty goes off to the bakery.
00:39:17
Speaker
Sophie goes to visit Letty and realizes that Letty is actually Martha because they've swapped Martha. Martha wants to go to the bakery because she wants to marry so young and have 10 children. And Leti wants to go learn magic and ah have an exciting future without having to marry anybody, which is the exact opposite of what we're told that they wanted when they were children.
00:39:36
Speaker
But they've grown and they've changed and they've become different people who can decide their own futures. And Sophie has not hit that point. Sophie is still stuck in this vision of herself as the eternal caretaker to two younger sisters with their paths written out for them that she had when she was growing up.
00:39:52
Speaker
And it takes the inciting incident of something completely out of pocket happening to her for her to start re-envisioning what a future for herself could look like and what her ideas for, what what kind of future she wants for herself. But i think I think you're right in that the actual inciting incident is that like brain stoppage moment where she realizes that Martha and Leti have changed their fate from what they should be based on the story.
00:40:18
Speaker
Like everything for Sophie, I think mentally changes then And everything that happens with the Witch of the Waste and seizing the excuse to go off and meet take her fortune would not have happened if it weren't for what she already knows that her sisters have done.
00:40:33
Speaker
Right. Because then what we learn about the Witch of the Waste's curse is that, you know, the curse is bad. It turns Sophie old. It's shocking. But everyone, by the end of the book, everyone's had a go at taking the curse off Sophie and it just won't go because Sophie's like, yes, my curse that gives me freedom to go certain She's loving it so much. She is having a great time.
00:40:57
Speaker
Part of what is fun about reading Howl's Moving Castle is the minute you get Sophie into the castle, she starts having a great time. She loves doing this. She loves... It's not that she doesn't love cleaning.
00:41:10
Speaker
She loves making everybody miserable with the cleaning. yeah um She loves going through Howl's bathroom and checking all his mysterious tubes of magical potions being like...
00:41:21
Speaker
for decay, hair, eyes, all these bits of a girl drying power drying power, do I want the drying power? It's probably drying powder think that for decay is just that he went home to Wales and saw like some late night TV ad for like L'Oreal rejuvenation and was like I will buy five tubes
00:41:44
Speaker
I thought it was probably toothpaste um
00:41:50
Speaker
Okay, so Hal is as well, Hal is a dandy, right? ah So much of what's great about Hal is he looks great. His hair is fantastic. He dyes it different colors depending on his mood. He has these wonderful outfits that he wears, which is the first thing Sophie noticed about him when they had the meet cute before she even knew who he was.
00:42:10
Speaker
And the thing we do know about Sophie actually is she is a genius with outfits. She loves a hat. She loves a look. She looks a howl and she is like this fashion plate of a man is looking great.
00:42:22
Speaker
And now I will reorganize his bathroom. yeah Which leads us to the slime incident. Oh my god, the slime incident, which is another perfect indicator of ah of, I hate the slime incident on my read.
00:42:36
Speaker
What happens is Sophie's been messing around in his bathroom. And she's moved one of his hair things around and ah he expects to get one sort of hair and instead it turns his hair very, very, very faintly pink.
00:42:50
Speaker
ah And he has a tremendous tantrum about it. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to him. He falls over in front of the fireplace. He produces massive quantities of green slime.
00:43:02
Speaker
And Sophie's sitting there thinking, ah, yes, tantrums, I know about these. My younger sisters have them all the time. They're a childish thing for children. Which, by the way, we need to talk about the mummy issues of the book.
00:43:14
Speaker
yeah Sophie's sitting there thinking this is a childish thing for children and I know how to take care of it. I will treat him as I treat my younger sisters. ah Twelve chapters later, Sophie will have a massive tantrum where she produces a form of slime and goes out and ah starts killing everything in sight.
00:43:32
Speaker
But what Sophie, the important thing about a tantrum is that it is seldom about the thing it appears to be about, which is another way in which Sophie is so insightful about other people and again, cannot recognize when they are mirroring herself. It is everything that Sophie is doing throughout the book is not about the thing that it appears to be about. Let's talk about the mummy issues.
00:43:52
Speaker
because they're very funny. Yes. um So we get to green slime incident, right? And Sophie, I think mother's howl a bit in that she's dealing with the tantrum and be like, this is very silly of you. You're being really childish. She packs him into the shower and turns the shower on to get the slime off. She cleans up, she gets him dressed. She puts him down in front of the fire. She gives him a mug of hot milk. So tell me what's really bothering you.
00:44:18
Speaker
I will say, i think this is probably about the time Hal falls for Sophie. This is my feeling. but Anyway, oh I don't know if we I think we all disagree about the exact moment.
00:44:29
Speaker
um Anyway, back half of the book. At this point, Sophie is a fixture in Howl's moving castle. ah He's not kicking her out. It seems like he's not going to because he's had a brilliant idea.
00:44:40
Speaker
While this has been going on, the Witch of the Waste has been threatening the kingdom and various important people, the ah wizard Suleiman, the prince Justin, they've disappeared. And Howl is desperately trying not to be sent to find them.
00:44:53
Speaker
Or this is what he tells Sophie anyway. I'm trying not to do this thing and you're going to help me. You're going to pretend to be my dear old mother and go and visit the king and tell him what a bad and useless person I am so that he will then not require me to do anything brave or complicated or difficult.
00:45:14
Speaker
And Sophie goes, you want me to what?
00:45:19
Speaker
But, but, but he buys her a really nice outfit about it. He does. He spends all the money the king has already given him on buying her the best possible outfit.
00:45:30
Speaker
For being an old lady. And no point is, so if you're like, I'm 90 and you're 27, how does how am I your old mother? Nobody questions this at any point.
00:45:42
Speaker
Nobody questions this. It's... I'm not sure there's a single character who's actually fooled by Sophie's, Hal's mother impersonation.
00:45:52
Speaker
I think everyone knows because I think the whole thing is set up by Hal because he loves it when Sophie causes chaos. It's extremely funny and delightful for him for Sophie to cause chaos. And one of my favorite moments in the book is Sophie getting swept off through the palace to see the king and Hal realizes at the last moment he's not going to get to watch. Yes. He set all this up so if he could watch Sophie and the King have this insane conversation. And now he's not going to be there.
00:46:23
Speaker
It's about being a bitch who loves drama. And it's like, it's, it's a mirror. If we're going to, if we want to stick on the Jane Eyre thing, it's that thing where Mr Rochester dresses up as a fortune teller and is like, I will get her to talk about her true feelings about me and I'll get to listen.
00:46:37
Speaker
And he's doing that. He's like, I will make her talk about me to an audience. This is going be so good. And then he doesn't get to be there. And it's true that the minute that she's standing in front, so her task is blacken Howl's name to the king.
00:46:51
Speaker
And this is, I think, one of our first indicators of Sophie's true feelings about Howl, because she's standing there in front of the king and her mind goes blank and she's like, oh my god, I can't think of a single bad thing about Howl. What happened?
00:47:04
Speaker
But then the king starts helping her and starts telling her bad things about Howl. She says, yes, I agree. And you know what? Far the more. Because you know what Sophie loves to do? She loves to talk about Howl.
00:47:15
Speaker
oh she does. Hang on. I'm going to read out what Sophie says about Howl. Her mind was such a blank that for a second, it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid.
00:47:27
Speaker
Well, he's fickle, careless, selfish, and hysterical. She said, Half the time I think he doesn't care what happens to anyone as long as he's alright. But then I find out how awfully kind he's been to someone.
00:47:37
Speaker
Then I think he's kind just when it suits him. Only then I find out he undercharges poor people. I don't know, your majesty, he's a mess. The king says, my impression was that Howl is an unprincipled slippery rogue with a glimped tongue and a clever mind.
00:47:51
Speaker
Would you agree? How well you put it, Sophie said heartily, but you left out how vain he is. She looks especially at the king across the yards of carpet. He seems so surprisingly ready to help her blacken Howl's name.
00:48:06
Speaker
The king does not think Sophie is Howl's mother. I'm really sure of that. i mean, in fact, also, I do think Howl is getting a kick out of going round town introducing Sophie as Mrs. Pendragon.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And the important thing about this scene is that it happens directly after an emotional turn, a romantic turning point, which is she learns his true name. Yes.
00:48:30
Speaker
Like this is directly after when he's like, I may as well drag you to Wales or you will just stick your nose in and come by yourself. But it is a huge step. Because you know that no other girl he's ever flirted with has seen where he really comes from, met his family, and learned his true name. And he's like, hey, this is Sophie!
00:48:49
Speaker
She appears to be old. I just thought you want to meet her. Speaking of the the old mother thing, though, there is kind of this fun constant reversal because he does bundle.
00:49:01
Speaker
I noticed this when he's like, well, I want to bring Sophie to Wales. And I guess I'd better bring Michael, too, because it's not fair to Michael if Sophie gets to go and Michael doesn't. There is this sort of like weird head of household thing with Hal where he's like, if these are my two wards, Sophie and Michael, and I have to treat them the same or it's not fair.
00:49:20
Speaker
But then also Sophie, like it is, and again, this is something that flips over from Fire at Hemlock, this constant power dynamic reversal of who is responsible for whom. Like Hal's like, well, I'm responsible for Sophie. She lives in my house.
00:49:32
Speaker
ah She's one of my you know retainers. ah But then Sophie is my mother. She's responsible for me. She has to clean up after my slime and make sure that I feel it so and it's constantly flipping back and that scene does something very different does something for Sophie and does something very different for the reader because obviously for Sophie it's the equivalent of that scene in in ah historical romance where you shift from using someone's title to using their name Like you've been allowed in yeah intimacy that nobody else has thus far been allowed.
00:50:03
Speaker
For the reader, it's where you realize that Sophie has just undergone a very brief and confusing reverse portal fantasy. I love it so much. And then you realize where Hal comes from and you're like, oh, oh, oh, he's a nerd. my God.
00:50:23
Speaker
So the great delight of Howl's Moving Castle, the book, as opposed to the film adaptation, is that you read the book and you're like, he's Welsh. He's a Welsh PhD student who discovered how to magically transform transport himself to another world where he is an evil wizard and he is doing this all the time because it gets him out of finishing his PhD.
00:50:49
Speaker
yeah and then you go home and his sister's like you spend all this time at university you don't get a proper job you bring shame on our household he's like and then he goes to the rugby reunion dinner and comes back singing filthy rugby songs and you're like oh this man this man i've met him many times And this is actually my theory for when Howl falls, not becomes romantically interested in Sophie, but like starts to fall properly in love with Sophie. Because the other thing about this reversal is Howl seems very, you know, what a courtly person.
00:51:21
Speaker
Very important in Ingrid. He's, you know, everyone's afraid of him. The king is asking him, you know, is trying to bring him on board. He does, you know everyone is respectful of his powerful magic. And he goes home and he's nothing. He's the layabout that his family is is kind of embarrassed by. His nephew is kind of embarrassed by. Everyone's like, oh God, it's Howl.
00:51:39
Speaker
And at the end, when they're about to leave, you know, he's sort of trapped on the staircase with Megan lecturing his older sister lecturing him like you wasted all this money, all these sacrifices that other people made. You've got nothing to show for it. What have you done with your life?
00:51:52
Speaker
And Sophie steps up in order to get them out of the house, defends him and is like, how we must be going. The servants are selling the gold plate in your absence. He's such an important man.
00:52:04
Speaker
Which is so weird for Megan. But that is also a classic romance novel beat, right? It's the like, someone is being humiliated. Someone sort of, you know, this is Emma, which I think, speaking of Jane Fairfax, is also in the DNA of this book.
00:52:19
Speaker
ah the the The moment in Emma when Mr. Knightley saves Harriet from standing alone at the dance. And Harriet's like, well, obviously that's when I fell in love with him because I was being embarrassed and he rescued me from social embarrassment.
00:52:30
Speaker
And I think that Sophie rescuing Hal from social embarrassment is the moment that he falls in love with. Freddie, give us your take then. Oh, my take is more controversial.
00:52:41
Speaker
yeah and My take is it was love at first sight. Oh. the for that is because, okay, so when the witch comes into the shop the first time, she says all this very confusing stuff that we do not get an explanation for until nearly the end of the book.
00:52:58
Speaker
And one of the things she does is as soon as she casts the spell on Sophie, she says, let that teach you to meddle with things that belong to me. And if you don't know, the rather confusing and a bit weird thing that she thinks that Sophie is Lettie,
00:53:14
Speaker
You think, okay, like she came in talking about jealousy and like nobody sets herself up in opposition to the witch of the waste. And if Sophie is a Janet, it's because the witch accidentally made her one.
00:53:28
Speaker
She walks in and it's like, you've been messing with this howl person who belongs to me. how dare you? And walks out here again. Sophie's like, well, didn't really understand that, but words are so important.
00:53:41
Speaker
Like I think in this moment, and we know that they have met once already. And, you know, you and you can make an argument that Hal recognizes in Sophie in that moment somebody important or somebody who is going to be important.
00:53:53
Speaker
And even though it's more of a story logic than internal logic, I think when the witch walks in, The witch also has this moment of recognition of this is the person who is going to try and take Hal from me or who is going to be the person who breaks the spell.
00:54:10
Speaker
Even though she's a very bad Laurel. that is There is still a Tamlin going on here. She is still attempting badly to collect young men. And, you know, there's more of like a toxic ex-jilted, my ex-girlfriend went crazy kind of narrative going here, which is not wonderful.
00:54:28
Speaker
But at same time, she is trying to get at Hal. And Sophie is going to be the one to rescue him and get him out of for good and it's just it just really struck me that first scene because that note about like oh you were Letty was in Percival's memories and I thought you were Letty and walks in it's a bit convoluted and the whole point of it is to create a situation where the witch walks in and is like you are setting yourself up as competition and I won't have it And it's true because Sophie is setting herself up as a powerful witch and she's about to take hell and all of it unravels from there. And I think the witch speaks it into being.
00:55:06
Speaker
in that scene. Oh, I love that. Which is Sophie's spell gift as well. I think that which the witch is pretty clearly an an incarnation of the Diana Wynne Jones evil older woman.
00:55:19
Speaker
In fact, she is the ah she's ancient. She is actually the age Sophie appears to be, ah but she's keeping herself young and beautiful through her magic. ah But she is also the power that steals Sophie's youth from her.
00:55:32
Speaker
I think we've got, for once we don't have the mother figure being a monster. Fanny is not a monster. and In fact, Fanny and Sophie have a very touching reunion near the end of the book, which always gets to me. I'm always like, because all that sort of monstrous older woman has been projected onto the witch, who is the real person who's taken Sophie's everything away from her.
00:55:53
Speaker
But to talk about the, you know, there's the other Diana Wynne Jones thing going on here where the villain of the book is also an echo of the protagonist of the book is someone that they could both. But I think this is true. and Another thing that licks Howl and Sophie as reflections of each other is that they are both in slightly different ways, reflections of the witch of the waste.
00:56:09
Speaker
So the witch is, you know, she, as you say, she said sales into the beginning and it's like, you're setting up as competition to me. You are the most powerful other witch in this story to Sophie. And I'm going to make you old like me while I look young like you.
00:56:22
Speaker
But the thing that we eventually learned about both the witch and Howl is that both of them gained part of their powers by rescuing a a falling star and giving their heart away to a falling star a long time ago.
00:56:35
Speaker
And various people throughout the book, eventually, mostly it's Mrs. Pentstemon, who's Howl's old teacher, who says ah the witch got the way she is over a hundred years by as a long term result of this curse. And Howl is going that same way.
00:56:49
Speaker
So the witch is also who, quite literally, who Howl will become if the curse is not broken, if he continues to have his heart heart sort of outsourced to Calcifer and loses part of his humanity that way.
00:57:00
Speaker
And we see, you know, there's this very explicit theme with the witch where every time Sophie sees her, she looks different. She looks, you know, she's got a different hair color and a different outfit and a whole different vibe.
00:57:11
Speaker
And this is what Howl is doing is he constantly redyes his hair and like changes his effect. Like I think the three hair colors that Howl goes through, which are dark and kind of gingery, fairish, you know, pinkish and white are the same hair colors that we see on the witch when Sophie meets the witch time and time again.
00:57:27
Speaker
They both are kind of constantly trying to transform themselves ah in order to find like a person they can be that's comfortable. And so similarly, you know, the thing that Howl is doing with his, you know, we eventually learned that Howl is going around making women fall in love with him until, you know, when they fall in love with him, he suddenly loses all interest.
00:57:45
Speaker
Because he can't love because he hasn't got his heart. Because he can't love because he hasn't got his heart. We eventually learn that what the witch is doing is she is trying to build herself the perfect man, Rocky Horror style, by taking bits and pieces from all these other interesting men in the story ah and to construct herself the perfect consort with which to rule the kingdom.
00:58:05
Speaker
And I think the implication there is a mirror to Howl's like, well, i'm I'm constantly trying to find the right woman, a woman true and fair, and I can't do it because I've lost my heart. I can't attach myself to a single person.
00:58:17
Speaker
And the witch also can't attach herself to a single person. She's got to make a composite person out of missing parts in a really know real sort of literalization of Howl looking all over the place to try and find just the right one.
00:58:29
Speaker
um I think there's a really strong echo there of sort of the underlying story logic of what's going on with Howl. Should we talk about the curse while we're at it? Let's talk about the curse. The curse is you like Diana, Diana, Diana. You just can't help yourself.
00:58:44
Speaker
um So this is written as children's book, sold children's book, entirely organized around a John Donne poem just to keep you amused.
00:58:55
Speaker
And the poem is Donne's song. Witches' poem about the difficulty, the impossibility of finding a woman who will be true. And it's the curse that the witch has laid on Hal.
00:59:09
Speaker
But it is also John Donne's song, a beautiful poem from, what is it, 17th century England? Yes. Go and catch a falling star. Get with child a mandrake root.
00:59:20
Speaker
Tell me where all past years are or who cleft the devil's foot. Teach me to hear mermaids singing or to keep off envy stinging and find what wind serves to advance an honest mind.
00:59:32
Speaker
And that is... poem that Sophie comes across and she finds this very confusing piece of paper with strange markings on it. And this is before we know about whales. At this point, as far as we know, this is just a ah secondary world fantasy.
00:59:48
Speaker
So like mysterious piece of paper with mysterious poem written on it. And at the end of the poem is written, and decide what this is all about. Write a second verse yourself. Sophie doesn't even find it.
01:00:00
Speaker
Michael Michael is like, this is my spell homework. I don't know how to do my spell homework. Can you help me with my homework? So Sophie tries to help Michael with this spell homework. They have to do the spell somehow. They even try to catch a falling star. And there's this very moving sequence where they almost catch it and it throws itself into the the puddles of the marshes to die. And they feel so sorry for it. And of course, the falling star is a fire demon like Calcifer, because Calcifer is the falling star that Hal caught.
01:00:33
Speaker
So eventually they give up on the spell homework. This is too difficult. Show it to Hal. And Hal very clearly looks as this is a photocopy of someone's English homework. This is homework, but it's not spell homework.
01:00:47
Speaker
And that is when they have to go to Wales to find the actual spell, which has been swapped somehow with this photocopied piece of homework. But it's not an accident. and But we are told the second verse. Sophie is poking around Hal's self.
01:01:00
Speaker
ah Yes. She is the one who opens the door with the black knob downwards and is like, huh, weird, some nothingness, and then closes it again. But that's how the spell and the curse creep through. It is actually Sophie's fault because she has been opening, quite literally and figuratively, all the doors she can and poking her nose into every aspect of how she possibly could.
01:01:23
Speaker
Because Sophie and the witch both really... by the end of the book really know how and one of the things how says about this curse is it lays him bare it literally describes him word for word the things he's done the things he knows and that is something sophie and the witch have in common that they they they they want to lay him there but anyway they go off to wales they have to go on a little mini quest to find the english teacher who set this homework and they find her and sophie is the like I hate her. i wonder why hate She is beautiful and Hal is it it instantly interested in her and I hate this bitch.
01:02:02
Speaker
for no reason no reason
01:02:07
Speaker
miss angorian and her beautiful throbbing voice i've got to say i've got to say some of the ways that surfy talks about miss angorian specifically i'm like okay part of your power fantasy with howl is that you really like the idea of going around the countryside seducing beautiful women go into this Yes, you enjoy judging him for it, but like as an abstract concept, Sophie perhaps would also like to be going around the countryside seducing beautiful women.
01:02:34
Speaker
um So they they they find the English teacher and Hal starts flirting with her instantly. And we do discover later that flirting is actually one of Hal's ways of getting information out of people.
01:02:45
Speaker
I think Hal clocks that Miss Angorian is what she is immediately. yeahp i don't know if you guys agreeing i agree. I agree. I think I agree as well. Yeah. it's I think Hal clocks almost everything immediately. I think Hal knows Sophie's under a curse from the first time they have an actual conversation.
01:03:01
Speaker
He's just lies a lot. He's a lying liar who lies. i know. Also doesn't use his magic um much, but he, but he could like so much of the, the entire book is how is Sophie just thinking,
01:03:14
Speaker
having these little moments of being like, actually, he probably could just clean his entire house or clean up his slime or fix his outfits himself. Or turn his hair back to the magic hair dye sequence. Besides not to. So like clearly.
01:03:29
Speaker
Because it's more fun to have a big tantrum and then be coddled and comforted about it afterwards. And to him at this point, it's much more fun to make Sophie believe that he is in love with this random English teacher ah because he enjoys jealous Sophie.
01:03:44
Speaker
than it is to actually tell the truth. A lot of problems would have been avoided if he had told Sophie. what we What we eventually know is that this English teacher, Miss Angorian, is the fire demon, the witch's fire demon, the other one. So a hundred-year-old demon ah living on the power of a human heart that it's taken.
01:04:05
Speaker
And it's clear that So this is an eventual fate of Calcifer. This is a totally amoral, powerful being that has sort of consumed the life of the person it's attached to.
01:04:16
Speaker
Right. Because what happens at the end when Sophie eventually goes to confront the witch, confronting the witch is not that challenging. Defeating her is easy. It's defeating because all of her her, she's so old, all of her power is in the fire demon. You know, the fire demon has sort of taken on the the person you know the power of the witch and become the real enemy because she's looking out for another heart now that her heart is her the person that she was attached to is gone but in the meantime what she says is oh i was engaged to ben sullivan who disappeared from here a long time ago
01:04:50
Speaker
which I'm sure, ah and my my theory is that she does this because ah she knows about Howl, that Howl is only interested in uninterested women. So she has to set herself up with a backstory about how she's unavailable because she's she's attached to this other man, who we eventually learn is in fact uh oh we haven't even we have we a wizard we have mentioned him yeah he's one of the men whom the witch has kidnapped to make her sort of frankenstein man um and she's discarded the parts that she didn't use into various bits and pieces including skull and a scarecrow whom we have met before
01:05:26
Speaker
but The other interesting thing about Ben Sullivan is that he got there first. He was the first one to come to Ingury and you just know that this eats away at Hal's soul. He managed to find his way Ingury and set himself up as a wizard and there was another random Welsh dude who got there before him.
01:05:44
Speaker
And it was because Ben Sullivan had a guitar and Hal, who goes everywhere with this guitar, which he's purchased and picked up somewhere, can't actually play it. And he's like, it's my great sorrow. I'm an unmusical Welshman. So two things about the guitar.
01:05:58
Speaker
One, this is a small, small minor note, but you know that Hal cannot play the guitar but because he doesn't have a case for the guitar. He's just picking it up and carrying it around the countryside bare naked. And he's like,
01:06:10
Speaker
every time he goes out courting he brings the guitar and i'm like you are gonna ruin the guitar um but second one of the first things we learn about uh when he got the skull and the guitar is michael is complaining because michael is also in this sort of semi-parentified role towards how he's like he's so irresponsible with money i have to try and take the money and hide it because otherwise he'll spend it on useless things like we were starving and he went out and bought the skull of this guitar because he said they looked good But what we learned at the end is that the skull and the guitar both belonged to Wizard Sullivan, whom Howl is looking for while telling himself that he's not looking for them.
01:06:45
Speaker
So I think it's you know it's quite clear to me that Howl went out, saw these you know this Welsh guitar and the skull that vibed and was like, oh, God, this is part of my like magic puzzle to find these missing people.
01:06:56
Speaker
I've got to get them and bring them home. I need a skull and a guitar for decorative purposes. And spent the last of his money on it. It's all about the aesthetic. Yes, exactly.
01:07:10
Speaker
And then eventually they find, so the other thing that the bits of wizard soloman Sullivan and, and Prince Justin, who is the King's brother who went off to look for wizard Sullivan because they were,
01:07:21
Speaker
In a relationship of some sort. they their Their leftover bits also got turned into a composite person, another like leftover Franken-human who is sometimes a dog, who also just wanders his way into the castle.
01:07:33
Speaker
he doesn't just He does just wander his way into the castle. He's there for a reason. he's there to look after Sophie. ah Sophie, but because he's excuse only a dog, he's a dog most of the time, Sophie doesn't clock what he's really there for for quite a while. She's like, well, I have a cursed dog now.
01:07:51
Speaker
As soon as he turns back into a proper person, he's like, guitar! And starts playing it.
01:07:58
Speaker
What's actually going on with the dogman, of course. Oh, sorry, for you you were going to say something. No, no, no, keep going. Finish the explanation. He was hanging around Letty, whom Howl is attempting to court. So there's there's this whole very funny bit in the middle where Sophie is like, well, I wish that Howl is going off to court my sister Letty and she's going to get her heart broken unless he falls in love with her properly. So go fall in love with Letty. Be really in love with Letty.
01:08:22
Speaker
um Which is, of course, again, Sophie projecting the thing that she really wants for herself onto her sister. Meanwhile, but there's there's also like the really funny bit where she's like, oh, I mean, how so interesting once you get to know him. He's so complicated. like I could see a strong-minded woman like my hot sister being really into that. She could get hurt.
01:08:42
Speaker
I'm really worried about my hot sister, not about me, because that's that's not me. nothing to do with me. to do it But you know, Letty's in such danger from the sexy wizard. Letty has never for a single instant been interested in Hal. No, what Letty likes is this dog man who's hanging around being like, oh, I'm so cursed and sad.
01:09:05
Speaker
Letty's entire arc, and this is so funny, because you're yeah you think, oh, yeah she does seem like somebody who's really strong-minded, she's got she knows what she wants, she's got everything sorted out, and then she does seem weirdly attracted to this man who she just treats like a dog. yes And the way that Snoopy describes their interactions is so of funny. yes like the She actually describes Letty hanging on his arm in an owner-like way, and she couldn't quite prove that.
01:09:30
Speaker
And then petting him like he's an actual dog. And then at the end of the book, Paul Letty gets her nice tame dog man taken away and replaced with an older mentor figure.
01:09:43
Speaker
Because Diana's like, this is what you actually need if you're a strong minded young woman. An older mentor figure and a prince she doesn't actually like, whom she was so annoyed
01:09:54
Speaker
The possibility of marrying a prince for Lettie is there. And she's like, oh, no. oh that one. Okay. um But anyway, so Lettie has this dog man. she We eventually learn, so Sophie sees a scene of Howl and Lettie courting, which we eventually learn is both of them attempting to use each other to find out information about Sophie.
01:10:20
Speaker
It's funny because Sophie sees herself as a background character and scenery. No, everybody in the world is obsessed with what is Sophie doing and why. No one understands why she's doing what she's doing.
01:10:33
Speaker
but ah so Leti, who is worried about Sophie, sends the dog man to go watch over Sophie. And from then on, the dog man's main role in the book is any time that it seems like Hal and Sophie are going to have like a heart bearing moment where they get closer, the dog comes in and is like, nope.
01:10:50
Speaker
you like What the dog man does mostly is try to bite Hal because he has been sent to protect Sophie from her own terrible taste in men.
01:11:01
Speaker
Mostly he just like herds her out of the room. Like there's a scene when so Hal gets a terrible cold two thirds of the way through this book and he's lying and pining in bed. And he's trying to summon Michael and Sophie up to entertain him.
01:11:13
Speaker
He wants them to like run and fetch and carry him things, which again, he could snap his fingers and summon a box of tissues. And later he does, but he's like, Michael, you must bring me tissues. Sophie, you must bring me hot soup.
01:11:24
Speaker
And Sophie runs upstairs and brings him to the hot soup. And they have what seems like a tender heart to heart where Howl is actually laying bare some of his feelings. And the dog comes in like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
01:11:37
Speaker
Absolutely not!
01:11:40
Speaker
But it's too late at this point. Sophie fallen Yeah, but here's the corollary part of the question earlier. When do you think Sophie falls for hell? No, I think that is love at first sight. I think that meet cute in the marketplace, which is like, oh, goodness, the most handsome man here is paying attention to me. What a corporate person.
01:12:00
Speaker
I think she gets that. And then when she meets Wizard Hal and realizes they're the same person, she's like, I think that's it for her. And she was an evil wizard. but The thought she has is he can never know that I was that like scared little girl that he met.
01:12:18
Speaker
Like her first thought is like immediately lie, lie, protect myself in which he can't think badly of me. And she thinks that immediately and everything from then onwards is a self-defense. I think you guys are right. I'm 100% in agreement.
01:12:32
Speaker
She is gone from the, from the very first chapter of the book. She's gone. But i do I do think that the point where Hal goes from like, I'm interested in this weird puzzle to, oh, I'm in love with Sophie, is actually ah being mothered after the green slime tantrum.
01:12:49
Speaker
I think he really enjoys that. And then he keeps trying to set up more situations where Sophie will do that. And like, I've got an awful cold. He starts faking his sneezes for fake sympathy.
01:13:02
Speaker
loves the sympathy. Yes, he loves sympathy. He loves careful. Well, on the a slightly like more romantic level, it's also about the moment of falling in love is when somebody sees you for who you truly are.
01:13:14
Speaker
And so for Sophie, it is a love at first sight because one of these beautiful young men picks her out of this beautiful, wonderful Mayday crowd and is like, I'm going to treat you like an individual.
01:13:26
Speaker
I'm interested in you. You are not just background scenery. And she can't cope with it at the time. But that's what's happening. It's someone who's seeing her and being like, you are worth paying attention to. You are interesting and of yourself.
01:13:39
Speaker
And for Hal, I think it's the moment when she's, she realizes that the tantrum is about something else. yeah yeah And finally, he has somebody who is prepared to see through all of the stuff that he is very deliberately putting on the surface. then Because what he then does is is she says, OK, what's this tantrum really about? Is it this girl who's not interested in
Howl's Romantic Gestures
01:13:59
Speaker
you?
01:13:59
Speaker
And he goes, yeah, it's so difficult. It's so hard to be me. I think about her all the time. Lovely, lovely Letty Hatter. I'm like, I think he's lying. Yeah.
01:14:10
Speaker
I think he did that for the reaction. i don't think Letty is the sister he's thinking about all the time at this point, because at this point he's already using Letty to get out information about Sophie. But to go back to the house thing for a second, Freya, I think after after the blackening of the name to the king and after Wales, when when the romance is really, really kind of kindling along in the background, this is the point that I think Howell does what he thinks is perhaps the most romantic thing in the book.
01:14:37
Speaker
Which is, they've got to, so Sophie's been in his house. She's been learning him inside out, upside down, all through the book. He's decided, you know, the witch is after him. The curse is is pursuing him. Oh, we never actually, we got to Miss Angoria, we never actually finished.
01:14:51
Speaker
I think, I don't think we said explicitly, so the the John Donne poem is the curse that the witch laid on him ah by way of Miss Angoria. And it's pursuing him, and he knows that he's he's got to move and go on the run ah so that the witch doesn't get him immediately.
01:15:04
Speaker
He's like, all right, well, where are we going to move the houses of the castle to? I know, there's this hat shop that's just sitting abandoned market shipping. Why don't we go there for no reason and start selling hats?
01:15:23
Speaker
ah And Sophie's like, not hats. but right But actually, Howl is, I think, trying to do a big romantic gesture. This is very like difficult to move where the castle is. It's actually life-threatening for both Howl and Calcifer because it involves physically moving this heart, ah the hearth.
01:15:41
Speaker
And like, I will move it into your home. And Sophie's just... she left for a reason. She didn't like it there. But Hal also asks her, so the castle has multiple doors, right? Or one door that opens to multiple places.
01:15:54
Speaker
One of them is Wales. Another is going to be the hat shop. And then Hal goes to Sophie, like very casually and offhand, says, where would you like to live? And she goes, oh, a nice house with lots of flowers. So he finds the nicest house he can a huge array of flowers.
Sophie's Identity and Family Sacrifices
01:16:08
Speaker
He doesn't just find the flowers. he goes out and grows the flowers. There's multiple things about him going out and growing the flowers. So, for one thing, talking about people being their environment, the flowers are there on the edge of the waste, because both Howl and Wizard Sullivan were like, how do we fix the Witch of the Waste?
01:16:26
Speaker
Well, her environment is terrible, but if we put a lot of flowers there, then Perhaps she'll be nicer like flowers. So that's why the flowers are there. They're there to make the witch of the waste bloom.
01:16:37
Speaker
And what actually happens instead is they make Sophie bloom. But the other thing is that... Oh, go for it. yeah Well, they're you're right in that that it's this attempt at a romantic gesture because she says, i would like a big house lots of flowers. And he makes this enormous show.
01:16:52
Speaker
And it is the scene where the beast shows Belle the library, except he's like, I'm going to show her the flowers. And he like opens the door and there's mist and there's beautiful flowers. And Sophie's entire inner monologue is, I can't look impressed. Yes.
01:17:08
Speaker
I spent way too long being unimpressed with this man. I can't change now. And Hal is completely devastated. But my moment. But I did this for you.
01:17:20
Speaker
It's so funny. But the other reason that she says flowers, which to go back a second to Sophie as reflection of the other people in this book and to Wales. So the reason she says flowers is because she's thinking of Mrs. Fairfax, who is the other older witch figure in the book. She's Lettie's tutor and she lives in a nice house with lots of flowers.
01:17:39
Speaker
And when Sophie is like, where would I like to live? What's the future I see for myself? She thinks about Mrs. Fairfax and a nice house with lots of flowers and kind of ah a successful witch, which I think is really telling.
01:17:50
Speaker
Someone one who has this happy life, ah but also has this magic and enchantment and like is is able to be really domestic and also really powerful, um which is kind of the source of Sophie's power. And I think Freya, you said something really, ah really thoughtful when we were talking about this book in advance, which is that as much as everything in the book is a reflection of Sophie, Sophie sees herself in all the older women in the book.
01:18:12
Speaker
She sees herself in the witch. She sees herself in Mrs. Fairfax. She also sees herself in Megan, who is Howl's mean older sister, um because Sophie is an older sister. And, you know, when she's arguing with Howl, she's like, sometimes I know how Megan got the way she is.
01:18:26
Speaker
But I do think Megan is also a sort of dark reflection of who Sophie might have been had she stayed along her path. Because what we know about Megan is that she know she she kind of obliquely refers to sacrifices that other people made so Howl could have the education that he got.
01:18:42
Speaker
which implies very strongly to me that Megan perhaps wanted to go to university and didn't get to, and you know, her house has Rivendell on the door, like as our Lord of the Rings reference. Megan has an inner life of fantasy and perhaps had dreams at one point and said, no, my younger brother has to go to school.
01:18:58
Speaker
I shall stay here and live an ordinary life so that he can achieve something great, which he doesn't do. And that is exactly what Sophie is doing at the beginning of the book. It's my younger sisters need to have a big adventure.
01:19:09
Speaker
And that's, You're right. You're absolutely right. And then Megan is, i mean, she's a very real cut character. She's really nasty. She's really bitter. She's got this life with like a not very interested in her teenage son and a ah daughter who adores Uncle Howell and is not very like impressed by her mother.
01:19:28
Speaker
Megan's lost her future, if you like. she's she's ah She's not happy in who she is. She envies Hal desperately, and there isn't really a way to fix that. And you don't really know anything at all about their parents, but what you do know is that Hal responds really well to Sophie using these mothering tactics that she's thinking of oldest sibling tactics.
01:19:50
Speaker
And we know how Diana Wynne-Jones feels about parentified oldest siblings. And there's that very clear parallel of him saying, you remind me of Meghan. And her being like, yeah, I know where where Megan gets the way she is. um and And he says something at one point, which I think gets to one of the really important shared themes between this book and Fire and Hemlock.
01:20:12
Speaker
And he says, Megan's full of envy because she's respectable and I'm not. Yeah. And that is also one of the really important things. So this comes back to this whole, the message of this book, which is very similar to the central message of Fire and Hemlock, is the way to get you what you want and be happy is to conquer social awkwardness and shame and to not care what people think of you.
01:20:34
Speaker
And Polly fights it the whole book. Sophie discovers a shortcut, which is... Yes, lady. You know, and Howl has already managed it. Like he he has people calling him a coward and he calls it a wicked and slitherer and a disappointment.
01:20:50
Speaker
um And he clearly doesn't care what people think about him. while seeming like he kind of does because he's very vain. And one of the things that makes Sophie fall for Hal in the midst of being very exasperated and disapproving of him is how he doesn't care about how people think of him and how freeing that clearly is.
01:21:10
Speaker
Because it's not it's not really very fairytale heroic to be like, oh, I need the king to think I'm flighty and pathetic. Go and tell him that for me. you know But in another way it is because the opposite of the true heroism is shame.
Reunion and Personal Growth
01:21:23
Speaker
And it's and and so Sophie is seeing this reflection how of that is her deep, deep envy of not caring what people think and not caring what the story that you're meant to be fitting into is.
01:21:36
Speaker
And it just goes to war against her responsible eldest sibling programming. And it is, it's an envy because she's trying to be respectable and Hal is deeply unrespectable.
01:21:47
Speaker
And it's, do I want it or do I want to be it? Everything with Hal is, do I want it or do I want to be it? And the answer is yes, it's both. Yeah. But then the the the final older woman who Sophie says, oh, I'm like you, is her stepmother, Fanny, who at the start of the book there, when Sophie meets her sister Martha and Martha says, Fanny is exploiting you.
01:22:08
Speaker
Sophie accepts that narrative completely. She's like, oh, that does describe the situation. That explains the facts. I guess I'm being exploited. Yeah. And then we get all that fellow feeling with Calcifer later on. But when we reunite with Fanny at the end, Fanny has put on the hat that Sophie made that is going to marry money. And accordingly, she has married money and she is happy and she is beautiful. And she is delighted to see Sophie again when they meet.
01:22:32
Speaker
She is so overjoyed to see that Sophie's okay. and she's at And also it's clear that she was heartbroken when Sophie went off and disappeared. She blamed herself. She said, it's overwork. It's all my fault.
01:22:44
Speaker
But Sophie looks at Fanny and understands her. And I do find it so touching. She so saw that Fanny was afraid that she would be just like Sophie, old for no reason, with nothing to show for it.
01:22:58
Speaker
And it's Sophie's experience of being old that gives her such sympathy for all these older women in the book going who what am I going to be when I'm done being a very unhappy teenage girl what are the options I do think there's something like the moment Howl moves back into Sophie's old house is so interesting and so nuanced because it's really uncomfortable for Sophie but like she's like oh this is not this is the place that I was that I was unhappy but that I grew up and that I knew really well And now i move back here and it's changed. It's not the same.
01:23:29
Speaker
And I'm not the same. But at the end of the book, there's no, like, she's going to stay there. Because I think that's a reflection of the fact that, like, we are coming close to the point where at the end of the book, Sophie has to turn back from being an old woman into being a young girl.
01:23:43
Speaker
She has to find a way to come back to the person that she was while being changed, while being this new person that she has become by living with Hal. And that is all all metaphorized by ah by going back to the old hat shop and being like, all right, but we've transformed it.
01:23:57
Speaker
We sell flowers now. We live here together. i am you know i i have this new reputation as well, Aunt Jenkins is what she's going by in the hat shop, actually. She said she doesn't want to be Hal's mother anymore. Now she's his old aunt, which obviously that's going to change when ah when they get married, as they will at
Dynamics of Sophie and Howl's Relationship
01:24:14
Speaker
the end of the book.
01:24:14
Speaker
But it is like, it's a return to the self. It's an understanding of the self, you know but but transformed and reconfigured. And sort of, it's a very uncomfortable process for her, but a necessary process.
01:24:26
Speaker
So it is a romantic gesture, even though she doesn't think of it as one at first. Like he he does have to come, they do but both have to come live in Sophie's house. I think you're right that the the reconciliation with Fanny has to happen then, and that recognition of Fanny. Because, I mean, when she's young, she thinks of Fanny as being not an old woman, but like an older woman.
01:24:47
Speaker
And then when she's old, she thinks of, she's like, oh, Fanny's actually quite young and pretty. Reading between the lines of this book, Fanny, at the end of the book, is probably in her late 30s, if that. Because it's said that Sophie's father manages marries his youngest shop assistant.
01:25:02
Speaker
Yes. you know, a pretty blonde girl. And at the end of it, she has what, like a 15 year old daughter and then, you know, 17 and 18 year old stepdaughters. Yeah. And she probably was quite young when she got married.
01:25:15
Speaker
And so she's probably, yeah, quite, quite a young woman. And Sophie is generously 18 and about to marry a 27 year old. Like she is going through the same steps that Fanny went through just in a different situation.
01:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, we need we need that recognition and we need that reconciliation. And we need Sophie to have been Howell's old mother, I guess, before she can be his 18 year old wife. mean, yeah, like if you're looking at it, then Letty and Sullivan is probably much more of an age gap.
01:25:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We don't know how old he is. He could just be prematurely cranky. I will say that Sophie and Hal do seem to be about the same maturity level. but countryruwise I mean, he went and caught a falling star and then like stopped.
01:26:04
Speaker
emotionally developing whenever he did that. So, you know, he's not... We know when it was. It was five years ago. So he was like 24 at the time. But speaking of tantrums, we do have to talk about Sophie's big tantrum. Well, no, he like it was if it was five years ago, he was 22 because we know he's 27.
01:26:21
Speaker
Oh, yes, you're right. Sorry, I was doing my 10,000 days math wrong. Yeah, because we... He was 22. Yeah, so he was 22. So yeah, and you yes he has a PhD student. And it's a very similar age gap between Fire and Hemlock, but it's just done...
01:26:38
Speaker
appropriately in that they are allowed to interact while adults. Yes. Adults plus, you might even say. But I think it's really interesting about, so the Sophie's tantrum after they've moved into the new house comes when it becomes obvious that everybody knows that she's in love with Hal. Yeah.
01:26:59
Speaker
she's mad about everything that's happening she's mad about sort of being you know she I think it's it's becoming clearer both what has happened to Howl and that Howl kind of knows what's going on with her he's moved her into her old house it's making he's made this bay of flowers for her it's making her feel very weird so she makes and she's trying to make it's actually no it's right after Miss Angorian comes in and she's still madly jealous of Miss Angorian but also the suit we haven't talked about the suit Right, yes. ah Sophie has been... go for it. Yeah, so early on, Sophie, when she's banging around Hal's house finding things to do, Hal to stop her, gives her an old suit of clothes of his and is like, that's that's in pieces, mend it.
01:27:40
Speaker
Hal, you must love servitude, he says. and so But Sophie, who you remember, is a genius with clothes. Does it? She fixes the suit. And once it's repaired, Hal looks, it says, you've given this a new touch. It's got a little more style now. And of course she has because she was talking to it the whole time she was mending it, which is how Sophie does magic.
01:27:59
Speaker
At the time, she didn't realize she was doing magic, but she was saying, built to pull in the girls, aren't you? So Hal is wandering around with a sexy spell sewed into his outfit and having a great time.
01:28:10
Speaker
But Sophie is not pleased. Once she realizes what she's done, there's a whole panic, like, oh, no, this is very unethical. I've got to get those clothes off him. Happy idea. Happy idea. So she goes through series of ah comedy chaos events designed to try and get Hal out of the enchanted suit and into his other one.
01:28:30
Speaker
At which point Hal decides he's hes going to Mrs. Pentstemon's funeral. He transforms all his clothes into black and then Sophie doesn't know which one he's wearing. And there's a whole thread through like the final third of the book, which is Sophie like, I've done it to myself.
01:28:46
Speaker
I am under the spell of the sexy spell I put on his clothes and that is why I'm having these problems. Yes. yeah And then right at the moment when she realizes everyone knows, she demands how shows her which suit the black one really is. And it's not the enchanted one.
01:29:04
Speaker
She's just into him. And she's so angry. Yep. yep ah But it is. And i the angriness that she has manifests as something explicitly designed to destroy the romantic gesture that he made to her.
01:29:20
Speaker
He's like, I will give you flowers. She's like, I will give you weed killers. but she doesn't But she has a bowl of of like ferns and and like you know like normal plants, and she's crouching over the plants going, Beat daffodils in June!
01:29:35
Speaker
Beat daffodils in June! And that turns them into a weed killer because she's trying to turn them into something they're not. And then she goes and weed kills her way down. And that's when the dog man says, ah, I arrived far too late. And she's furious. And she goes back and picks a fight with Hal. But the thing she picks a fight with him about is not, you've known you over, you were listening on this conversation and you know that I'm in love with you.
01:29:57
Speaker
They both know it at this point. The thing she picks a fight about is you knew I was under a spell. You knew I wasn't secretly 90. They don't say anything about the fact that at this point, I think they both know that the feelings are kind of mutual, like that they don't argue about it at all.
01:30:12
Speaker
i don't I don't think Sophie quite knows yet. Like, I think on one level she does, but Sophie is the queen of projection and defense mechanisms. And like, that's why she was so attached to the idea of the suit yes being enchanted. Like, she's like, of course it's like, it was something else. It wasn't me.
01:30:31
Speaker
And I think she, she is still stuck. And in romance parlance, she is still stuck in her core wound, which is, I am the oldest, I'm a failure. And that allows her to believe right up until almost the very end.
01:30:45
Speaker
ah in the story that Hal is telling her about, I'm i'm in love with another woman. And this is a mitche brought Mr. Rochester thing as well. He's like, I will allow you to believe that I'm in love with someone else ah because it's funny.
01:30:57
Speaker
But also because he's like, oh, I was relying on you being too jealous to let her into the castle. Nonsense. You could have just told her. yes but Yeah. Yeah. yeah if you but i about this and is it This is doing stuff well. going on The Yeah, is still, oh, he must love Miss Angorian very much because she recognizes that the romance promise that was set up very early in the book has been fulfilled.
01:31:21
Speaker
And the romance promise is, you will know he's in love when he doesn't spend two hours in the bathroom putting spells on his face and his hair. And as soon as that happens on the page, you know as a reader,
01:31:32
Speaker
that we are going to get the payoff of this. This is something is that something that's been put up on the shelf and it's going to get knocked down and it's going to be very satisfying. And it gets set up, it gets knocked down and Sophie goes, oh, he must love Miss Angorian very much.
01:31:47
Speaker
And I think part of her still believes that. Yes. True. Part of her does not. Part of her does know. i think you're right from the weed killer moment that it is mutual, ah but she can't move on from the story. She's telling herself about how much of a failure she is. And so she can't let herself truly believe that how loves her.
Climactic Showdown and Conclusion
01:32:07
Speaker
yeah So she's got to keep the 90 year old disguise on and she's got to keep her belief in her defense mechanisms going until she literally can't any longer and it happens in the wind of being honest.
01:32:18
Speaker
Yes. And she recognizes it in how she's like he is finally being honest about himself and that is what forces her to finally be honest about what she knows about his feelings for her.
01:32:29
Speaker
So what happens at the end, because everyone, you know, the the witch clearly believes that she is successfully seduced. Well, no, the witch doesn't believe it. The witch sets it up as a trap for Sophie. The witch knows what is going on.
01:32:40
Speaker
ah But the witch basically says a fake announcement. I have kidnapped Miss Angorian and Hal must come to rescue Miss Angorian. And Sophie's like, oh no, Hal will never forgive me for letting harm come to Miss Angorian.
01:32:53
Speaker
I must go myself and rescue her. And then as she needs to get to the witch, it's like, great, I've kept up Hal's true love and now going have to come and rescue you. And all this happens in maybe three pages.
01:33:04
Speaker
This is over with like that. Sophie gets there. The witch is like, I'm so tired. I've spent this whole book watching you play out this love story in which I'm barely involved. You're still old for some reason. i don't know.
01:33:18
Speaker
I guess Howl is coming and I'll take his head and make my perfect man? And Howl gets there and the fight is over in 10 seconds because the real fight is with Miss Angorian, the fire demon.
01:33:30
Speaker
And having rescued Sophie, Howl and Sophie run back and Howl explains the plot of the book in plain language, a thing he has been congenitally incapable of doing. For the past 280 pages.
01:33:42
Speaker
And this, you're right, is when Sophie knows inarguably that she that they are mutually in love. ah This is the moment of crisis. And we know that this has happened because she... No, right right when we get back, we start seeing her hair. She notices that her hair is red again.
01:33:57
Speaker
She sort of half notices that her hair is red again because she's very busy thinking about other things. But that's the signal that the spell is off because she doesn't need it anymore. Yeah. No, the moment it is described as fair and red again is the moment when she is returning Hal's heart to him. She has literally got her hands on his heart and her hair is falling around her in reddish fair hanks. And like, that's the moment her narration realizes what has happened to her. And it's because she is at a point where she has his heart in her hands. She cannot argue with the story she's in anymore.
01:34:30
Speaker
And we were told at the beginning of the book what kind of world Ingury is. It's a world where metaphors are true. They are literal. They are going to happen. Everything is real. And Sophie puts Kyle's heart back in his chest for him after having her heart in her hands and ah lets the part of his heart that is Calcifer be free.
01:34:48
Speaker
And it comes back to them. It is very cute. It's a very cute ending. We started the season with Magicians of Caprona, which is Diana Wynne-Jones' I think first attempt doing comedy, and it doesn't quite work.
01:35:04
Speaker
This is a perfect rom-com. yeah Yeah, it's lovely. It's just delightful. And I said one of the things that I love about Diana Windhoes is that she knows when to end a story. And you're right, like the the climax happens very fast.
01:35:17
Speaker
It's very chaotic. The entire last page is just different people yelling lines of dialogue that Sophie is barely noticing because she's in love and holding hands and smiling. And then Castle comes back, the end, boom, done.
01:35:31
Speaker
I remember hitting that as a reader and being like, my god, you mean you don't have to like mess around in an epilogue for ages. And this is why epilogues in romance still kind of annoy me because like, no, just ended as soon as humanly possible. And that means you, you capture it at the moment of the highest joy. Yes.
01:35:50
Speaker
Yes. The moment of highest of that book is that like distilled chaos and the happier, happy ever after has been said as a word And then Calcifer comes back, boom, and like the heart has returned to the house. Yes.
01:36:03
Speaker
That has to be the moment the book ends because like that's the only image you can end it on. Yeah. It's so good. i love this book so much. yeah so Yeah. Everything to do with Calcifer I think really stuck with me.
01:36:17
Speaker
And like there is a ah scene in the book that I have coming out. Yeah. Can you talk about your house book? This is the Calcifer Moves House scene. Yeah. because that's how I was envisaging it the entire time. Yeah.
01:36:31
Speaker
Tell us about your house book. Tell us about your house book. Ooh, my house book. So my house book, in retrospect, is an enormous mishmash of a great deal of things from Howl's Moving Castle. ah But the reason it can be that is because Howl's Moving Castle has a lot of fairy tale in it, and especially does have quite a bit of Cinderella in it, kind of sidelong.
01:36:49
Speaker
So this is a novella which is a Cinderella retelling. ah called Cinder House. And the way I sold it to myself when I started writing it, and the way I have been describing it, is it's gothic romance in which the house, the girl, like the ingenue, and the ghostly secret at the heart of the house are all the same person.
01:37:09
Speaker
So it's a Cinderella retelling in which Cinderella is a ghost ah haunting her father's house. And this is why she can't leave. And there's that line of Calcifers in the end that says, I don't mind so long as I can come and go. Because he is fighting his entrapment in the house the whole time.
01:37:24
Speaker
And to me, that was a really interesting desire, like a very interesting key motive for for a character to have, which is I am trapped as the spirit of a house. what if I could come and go and that is the the driving impetus of Cinderella in in my in Cinderhouse and I won't spoil too much of what happens but there is a Calcifer moving house scene that I always get excited for it right before we finish because we ought to wrap up because we have run over by so much but so but busy old fool unruly Sophie
01:37:58
Speaker
Yeah, i think we need a moment for busy old fool unruly Sophie because Song by John Donne is the curse, but it is not the only Donne moment in the book. There is also a moment, one of many, many moments when Sophie is causing chaos in Hal's house, which is Hal's heart, and Hal turns to her and goes, busy old fool, unruly Sophie, which is a quotation from a John Dunn poem, because Hal, when he is not being the evil wizard of Ingrid, is a PhD student working on charms and spells, so presumably ah medievalist ah with extensive reading in English literature.
01:38:33
Speaker
He is quoting The Sun Rising by John Donne, which is an absolutely beautiful poem about go away, son. Me and my lover are having a great time. Don't bother us.
01:38:45
Speaker
You guys were talking about it ahead ahead of the time and how the poem moves from go away, son, to get in my bed, son. yeah wi And Hal's quote a but to Sophie is so romantic.
01:39:01
Speaker
That's, Hal brings different texts into Ingeri. That's not my point, that's Becca's point, but but she's right. yeah How, in this world that is governed by stories, Hal is bringing the stories of his own world in with him, flu flu fluttering through the window on old photocopies.
01:39:18
Speaker
and Some of them are very sexy poems. And this one is sexy.
01:39:24
Speaker
I think that, you know, this is not, this is a book for, this is a children's book. It's not a sexy book, but ah there there is a little bit of it in there. And I think it's coming in through the John Donne. And I think it's it's Diana showing her hand as to the, you know she's always building a world out of stories.
01:39:40
Speaker
And this, you know, this is how she shows her hand as to what stories are in this book. It's really good. This would be a really lovely note to end the season on, but we have one more book in this season, which is Tale of Time City, which is what we'll be doing next week.
01:39:55
Speaker
which is one of the ones I have never read. it's an interesting one. Add it to your very expensive list of books you need to import to Australia. I've got them all now. Oh, yes. Like, I'm trying to show you, like, the entire last shelf and a half of my bookshelf is now my Diana Wynne Jones collection. Good. And all of the ones, the two from the 80s that I haven't read are The Time of the Ghost and of Time Seating. Oh.
01:40:21
Speaker
Read Time of the Ghost. What a book. But Taylor Time City. I'll tell you what. As they come up on the podcast. Nice. 80s theme, time, memory and storytelling.
01:40:34
Speaker
I think I'm going to draw a circle around that and end the episode here. Thank you so much for joining us. It was such a treat to have you. No, it was wonderful. Like every other episode, I will be sitting there being like, I have things to say as well. Then say them to us. Come back and talk to us about it. and so It was very nice to be like, I can be on it and say the things I have to say.
01:40:54
Speaker
Wonderful. all right. Well, we will let you go to bed because it's quite late in Australia. And I have to go because it's quite early here and go to work. But this was a delight. Thank you, guys.
01:41:05
Speaker
Thank you all very much.
01:41:12
Speaker
So