I wanted to have another look at the
references to Christmas Eve. I was also hoping to find some previously overlooked
material about witches, but instead I noticed for the first time that a conversation
between two of the characters resonates with what I now know about cults.
This dialogue was written in 1935. It is
uncanny how relevant and significant it is when we look at the methods cults
use to recruit their victims and what constitutes an effective resistance to
these techniques. I missed all this in past readings of the book but can see it
now.
Maria Jones and the evil witch
One of the characters in the book is a girl
called Maria Jones. She is a friend of Kay Harker, the young hero.
She is just a small child; she is known to
everyone as ‘little Maria’. She is blunt, tough and fearless, rather like Joan
Aiken’s Dido Twite in The Cuckoo Tree. She loves guns and has gangsters on
the brain.
Maria shows that she has more sense than many
adults who are manipulated into joining cults or other unethical organisations
when the witch Sylvia Daisy Pouncer and her villainous husband Abner Brown
decide that Maria shows promise and would be a good acquisition for their gang.
They kidnap and imprison her. Sylvia Daisy
tries to persuade her to join them. Maria is not fooled; she is defiant and not
at all daunted and she stands up for herself very well.
This is what she tells Kay and the other
children about her ordeal after she is released:
“We only
brought you here,” the female said, “because we hope that you may be
interested. We are rather in need of a dashing young associate at the moment and we
wondered whether we might persuade you to become that.”
“Oh,” I said,
“what are you: a gang of crooks?”
“Oh no,” she
said, “a business community.”
“Oh,” I said,
“what business does your community do?”
“Social
service,” she said. “Setting straight injustices with the least possible
inconvenience to all concerned.”
“And how do
you do it?” I asked.
“Oh, sometimes
in one way, sometimes in another,” she said. “You would soon learn if you would join us.”
“Why d’you
want me?” I asked.
“Well, you are
young,” she said, “and full of dash. It’s an interesting world for our
younger agents: lots of motor cars, lots of aeroplanes. Life is one long, gay
social whirl.”
“And what is the work?” I asked.
“Ah,” she said,
“we shall discuss that if you expressed a willingness to become one of us.”
“If your job
were honest,” I said, “you’d say what it is. It can’t be nice, or it wouldn’t have you in
it.”
This conversation speaks for itself. Sylvia
Daisy is vague, evasive and deceitful - as are many recruiters for cult-like
organisations.
Maria is cautious and sceptical; she notices some warning signs;
she asks some sensible questions and her two final comments nail it.
Everyone who is thinking of joining an
organisation that actively tries to recruit people should copy her approach.
Some of us learn these things the hard way;
little Maria was on the right track right from the start.
Maria (in the white bib) recounts her story
in the TV adaption:
