Halloween is the time when many people's thoughts turn to witches.
I suddenly remembered reading Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week (1982) many years ago; I decided to take another look to see if it contains any article-inspiring content.
This little book for children combines magic-related fantasy with boarding-school life. While there is little to say about the main story and there isn't much material suitable for direct quotation, there are still a few elements that inspire commentary.
The Witch Week of the title, a time of many strange incidents, begins a few days before Halloween, which makes the book very suitable for the occasion.
The cover on this edition is just right for Halloween:
A previous article mentions the importance of balancing depressing books with reading material that lifts the spirits.
Witch Week provides supporting evidence for the proposition that hatred can sometimes be helpful.
Charles Morgan is a loner and odd one out among the pupils. He lists in his journal everything that he hates, which includes the school buildings and at one point all the people in the school!
This hatred helps to keep him going.
Nan Pilgrim, another unpopular misfit, questions everything.
She is very scornful of the girls who get a craze for knitting with fluffy white wool. The most popular girl in the class started it, and the others imitate her. These girls usually go around in groups too.
Not being collective-minded is often the sign of someone who has special powers. For example, Terry Pratchett’s witches, one of whom is Tiffany Aching, think things through for themselves.
Two scenes involving Charles Morgan are of very great interest because they describe how people with certain abilities can feel when they receive an unexpected and jarring shock.
This extract gives a very detailed description of the experience:
“Ah, Charles.” Mr. Wentworth laid his pipe in an ashtray that looked like Brian’s first attempt at pottery. “Charles, I was told this afternoon that you might be a witch.”
Charles had thought, in the locker room, that he had been as frightened as a person could possibly be. Now he discovered this was not so. Mr. Wentworth’s words seemed to hit him heavy separate blows. Under the blows, Charles felt as if he were dissolving and falling away somewhere far, far below. He thought at first he was falling somewhere so sickeningly deep that the whole of his mind had become one long horrible scream. Then he felt he was rising up as he screamed. The shabby room was blurred and swaying, but Charles could have sworn he was now looking down on it from somewhere near the ceiling. He seemed to be hanging there, screaming, looking down on the top of his own head, and the slightly bald top of Mr. Wentworth’s head, and the smoke writhing from the pipe in the ashtray. And that terrified him too. He must have divided into two parts. Mr. Wentworth was bound to notice.
To his surprise, the part of himself left standing on the worn carpet answered Mr. Wentworth quite normally. He heard his own voice, with just the right amount of amazement and innocence, saying, “Who, me? I’m not a witch, sir.”
Another shock for Charles:
“He made Charles jump. Charles had been sitting all this time trying to understand the way he was feeling. He seemed to have divided into two again, but inside himself, where it did not show. Half of him was plain terrified. It felt as if it had been buried alive, in screaming, shut-in despair. The other half was angry.”
Could Diana Wynne Jones be writing from personal experience here? How else could she have known about such strange sensations and the splitting that results from what might be called psychic shocks?
Linwood Sleigh's Boy in the Ivy contains a few elements that make me wonder if J. K.Rowling was slightly influenced by this story.
Another cover that is very suitable for Halloween:
