A Discovery of Witches

As A Discovery of Witches begins, Diana Bishop is trying not to be discovered. She lives as a human to avoid calling unwanted attention to her true nature, and to hide from her own magic. Diana’s avoidance is fear-based: she believes humans murdered her parents because of their magical abilities, and she doesn’t want the same fate. This childhood trauma leads Diana to keep her magic under wraps, partitioning it off from her scholarly pursuits, making her way in the world with “reason and scholarly abilities, not inexplicable hunches and spells” (3). Diana also fears that magic would undermine her autonomy. If she uses magic to get what she desires, she worries that “nothing would belong entirely to me” (25-26). She feels that giving in to desire is a form of cheating.

By suppressing her magic, Diana represses her own identity. She refuses to think about magic, and maintains strict, self-imposed rules about how frequently she will allow herself to use even a fraction of her power. Choosing to fear her magic has farther-reaching consequences: Matthew’s research shows that contemporary witches are less powerful than in the past because of their struggle over time to fit into an increasingly human world.