The Craft of Margaret Atwood

With Help from Esme Weatherwax

I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s new book of short stories: Old Babes In The Wood. It’s a magnificent collection. My favourite story is My Evil Mother. The story opens:

‘You’re so evil,’ I said to my mother. I was fifteen, the talk-back age.

‘I take that as a compliment,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m evil, as others might define that term. But I use my evil powers only for good.’

As the tale progresses Atwood weaves folk elements into a story of contemporary parenting with consummate skill and dark humour. The mother it appears, is a witch. Throughout we are never entirely sure whether she really is and neither is the narrator. It’s a kind of double wrong-footing that’s a source of uneasy fascination.

As the mother approaches death, her daughter visits her in hospital and asks outright if she made it all up:

‘You were such a sensitive child. So easily wounded. So I told you those things. I didn’t want you to feel defenceless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.’

The daughter thanks her for inventing all those moments for her.

‘She looked at me sideways out of her green eyes. ‘Invent?’ she said.’

It’s a loving, funny reimagining of the magic and power of the hag/wise woman/witch narrative that has for so long ended in burning, drowning, fear and pain. It regifts the uncanny to women and the ending sees the narrator, now a mother herself, passing that power on to her own daughter.

But what does the magic of a witch look like?

Atwood evokes it by describing school feuds, difficult teachers and questionable boyfriends that the mother deals with. She only has only to point her finger for it to be as good as or actually a hex. Then there’s the more domestic magic. The pestle and mortar that’s as brilliant for bashing up garlic as it is for creating potions.

The question here is, does it actually matter if it’s ‘real’ magic or not, as long as the desired outcome is achieved?

This duality makes me think of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld witches. They are pragmatic, earthy women who understand that the only point of magic is its practical application.

In A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany Aching, an apprentice witch, questions why she spends so much time helping people with everyday things, that have a distinct lack of mysticism. Granny Weatherwax says.

“Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and centre!”

Magic is about power and belief. If magic was just an illusion you used to impress people, it would just be a conjuring trick. Witches were burned at the stake, not because they could pull a dove out of their sleeve, but because the things they did actually changed things. Change is powerful and scary. That change causes people to believe, and belief is itself a whole other magic.

The things that witches do often occur in traditionally non-male areas. Witching in Atwood and in Pratchett is about patrolling the borders of life and death, of caring for the vulnerable, raising children, nursing the sick. This is magic on a domestic scale. Granny says:

"the start and finish is helpin' people when life is on the edge.”

Magic like this so often slides under the radar because it doesn’t seem magical at all. That’s just because you’re not paying attention.

Magic operates in liminal spaces, where the edges of normal life get a little bit frayed, and it’s women who so often find themselves at those edges. Dwelling in these places requires flexibility that being in the mainstream doesn’t. If you live in a flux state, you need a certain facility for reinvention and repurposing that are a gift to the witch in you.

Madness, motherhood, illness, birth and death are all powerful liminal states where women reign. Now though, I think old age is becoming an equally powerful place for a witch to play.

I was listening to Katy Hessel’s podcast, The Great Women Artists today in which she interviews Marilyn Minter.

Minter is now in her seventies. Her body of work is extensive but she has only really found fame in recent years. She talks about ageing. At one point she talks about Madonna, and the backlash she has received for refusing to age gracefully. It made me think about the fact that ageing is magic in itself.

I only have to think about Call The Midwife to know that if I’d been born in my grandmother’s generation, I would almost certainly have died long before I made old bones. Minter talks about patriarchal representations of beauty and ageing and how the male gaze skews and seeks to control the narrative around women’s appearance but I wonder, even if we rediscovered all the women painters who have been lost to history, how many of them would be in a position to paint old women, either because they died themselves or because there weren’t many left to paint?

The modern midwife is surely a witch? I expect that’s why they are increasingly thin on the ground. The lack of funding for safe birth, midwife and nursing training is not just economic. The lack of Sure Start centres, sexual health clinics, regular smear tests and family planning centres is not an accident. The HRT shortages, ignorance of the menopause and general carelessness with regard to any legislation around women’s health and longevity makes me suspicious and furious.

Despite all this, women still live longer than men.

It can only be witchcraft, right?