Weyward

“She just went to the library to read, to escape into other people’s imaginations [...] Perhaps that was what he really had a problem with. That he could control her body but not her mind.”

Simon tracks Kate’s whereabouts through an app on her phone. He has already made her quit her job as a children’s book editor. Her only other option for remaining connected to the books she loves is to go to the library. Kate’s observation here suggests that she is something more than a pretty toy: She has a mind of her own. Because thoughts and imagination are invisible, Simon has difficulty staking a claim to this territory.

“She’d be cloistered indoors and forced to learn all manner of useless conversational skills and rules of etiquette. All so that Father could offer her up to some grizzled old baron or another—as if she were something to be bartered with for favors. Or something to be rid of.”

This quote is from Violet, but she makes an analogy similar to Kate’s remark about being treated as a present. In this case, Violet sees herself as a sacrifice to be “offered up” to one of her father’s friends. In both instances, women are commodities that only hold value to the men who own them. In Violet’s case, she questions whether she has any value at all to her father and speculates that he may only want a convenient way to get rid of her.

“From that day on, she kept away from the squirrels and the worms, from the forest and the gardens. Birds in particular were to be avoided. Nature—and the glow of fascination it had always sparked in her—was too dangerous. She was too dangerous.”

Kate is recalling her childhood after the car accident that killed her father. She blames herself for chasing after a crow as doing so cost her father his life. In Kate’s childlike mind, guilt is fused with the last memory before the tragedy. She interprets nature and her interest in it as dangerous. This conclusion alienates her from the power she possesses. Reconnecting to it will one day save her life.

“For Father, the tusk—and everything else in the Hall like it—was just a trophy. These noble creatures weren’t to be studied or venerated, but conquered. They would never understand each other.”

Lord Rupert has an elephant tusk in his office. Like all his other trophies, it symbolizes his mastery over nature. To some extent, this is the impetus for all forms of witchcraft persecution. Women were once viewed as more elemental than men and more closely aligned with nature. To a patriarchal man, both forces must be mastered or destroyed. As Violet observes, she and her father interpret reality quite differently.

“Really, it was just that the glass wall was being replaced with another kind of cage [...] Now, she wonders if she’d known this, even then. Perhaps it had been part of the allure—the thought that, after all those exhausting years of locking herself away, here was someone who could do it for her.”

In this quote, Kate makes a telling observation about her complicity in Simon’s abuse. All her life, she has known that she was different from other people but interpreted this quality as monstrous. She erected a glass wall to keep others from coming too close because she feared that she might harm them with her power. In other words, she believes that she volunteered to become Simon’s target for control and isolation. This mindset is a symptom of abuse in and of itself; survivors often blame themselves, but their abusers make it difficult to act in their own self-interest.

“The firm set of the mouth, the jut of the chin. As if Violet has fought something and won. She would never have ended up like Kate: soft and malleable, yielding as easily to Simon’s fingers as if she were clay.”

Kate has been reading Violet’s papers and finds an old passport photo. She reproaches herself for not having the resolution that Violet’s face shows. Kate fails to realize that Violet had already found Altha’s journal and understands her Weyward heritage. Knowing this gives her strength. Kate will eventually reach the same point and exhibit the same strength.

“Men roamed their eyes over her. Searching for a sign that she had sold her soul to the devil. What did they know of souls, these men who sat on bolsters all day, clothed in finery, and saw fit to condemn a woman to death?”

During her trial, Altha is stripped and searched for a witch mark. The experience is dehumanizing. Her quote implies that the only devils in the courtroom are the two judges and the jury. By condemning innocent women to death to assert their power over forces they cannot control, they have sold their own souls.

“There was a hungry look to him, she thought, as he surveyed the things in the dining room: the Queen Anne, the musty old portraits, her. It didn’t go away, even though he’d eaten rather a lot of pheasant already.”

Violet is observing Frederick during dinner one evening. His behavior shows he is eager to acquire the wealth that Orton Hall contains and foreshadows the actions he takes to get it. In this regard, he is exactly like his Uncle Rupert. Perhaps this explains why Rupert approves so heartily of his nephew; he sees something of his own scheming nature in him. Just as Rupert used foul means to gain the land and title that should have gone to his elder brother, Frederick is planning to cut out Graham by raping and then marrying his sister.

“It was hard to tell if Father loved her. Often, it seemed that all he cared about was whether or not he could mold her into something pretty and agreeable, a present to be given away to some other man.”

Violet is pondering her father’s feelings for her, if any exist. She uses the same word as Kate did earlier: She is a “present” intended for another man. While Kate’s wrapping is a red dress to attract Simon’s lust, Violet’s wrapping is good breeding to attract a titled spouse. Of course, such an arrangement would benefit her father by improving his social status. The “present” has no say in who her recipient will be.

“Witch. The word slithers from the mouth like a serpent, drips from the tongue as thick and black as tar. We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those who speak it, not those it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses. No. It was not a word we ever used.”

Altha is considering the derogatory connotation associated with the word “witch.” It is a noun intended to condemn the person whom it describes. Altha and Jennet think of themselves as healers. Ironically, “witch” is used as an accusation of demonic power. It is hurled by men who fear any degree of power that women demonstrate. A witch, by her very existence, is a walking refutation of the notion that women are weak.

“For I had begun to suspect that nature, to us, was as much a life force as the very air we breathed. Without it, I feared my mother would die. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I wonder if she herself knew this—if she had decided that she would rather face that great, yawning unknown than continue our existence in the shadows.”

Once the witch persecutions begin, Jennet withdraws from any overt displays of her connection to nature. She sends her crow away and tries to avoid being noticed by the villagers. She cuts herself off from her powers because she fears the consequences. As a result of this disconnection, Jennet loses her life force and soon dies. In seeing this negative transformation, Altha resolves not to follow her mother’s example. She does not give in to fear.

“A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it. I would explain all of this to my mother when I saw her in the life that follows this one, I decided in the dungeon that night. I would tell her the ugliness. The truth.”

Altha is thinking about Grace’s wedding day. She assumed her friend was happily married to John, but he turns out to be a vicious brute, cunning enough not to mar his wife’s face when he beats her. He conceals his brutality, and Grace conceals her bruises to protect his secret. Appearances can be deceiving, but Altha now knows the ugliness that lurks beneath the façade of a happy marriage.

“The spitting image of her. In image and in manner, too—it has been passed down, this rot, like a contagion, from mother to daughter…They’re not like other women. Living without a man—it’s unnatural.”

Grace’s father makes this statement in court. His accusation against Altha is based on nothing more than her resemblance to her mother. Her ability to live alone and to thrive is an affront to men who want women to be dependent on them. They can only feel strong by making women feel weak. Altha’s independent existence exposes the lie that women must rely on men to survive.

“As we know, our womenfolk in particular are at great risk from the devil’s temptation, being weak in both mind and spirit. We must protect them from this evil influence, and where we find it has already taken root, tear it from the earth.”

One of the judges makes this statement to the jury. His assumption is condescending, implying that it is common knowledge that women are particularly vulnerable to being led astray by evil. Ironically, one reason for witch trials was to eliminate any woman who exhibited power greater than the culture would allow.

“Despite everything that happened to her, her great-aunt had built an independent life for herself. She may have never married and had a family of her own, but she had her cottage, her garden. Her career. Now Kate, too, has built her own life. And she won’t let anyone take it away from her.”

As Kate becomes more immersed in Violet’s story, she finds a positive role model for her own behavior. Violet is her only relative who has the same magical gift, so she helps Kate see how to use her connection to nature constructively. Her fear of that connection diminishes. Further, she now sees her great aunt’s power and recognizes that she also possesses it and is willing to fight to keep it.

“I should have listened to you, that day we argued down by the beck. ‘He takes you for a dog that he can train to eat from his hand,’ you said. I thought he loved me for myself. But you were right. To him I am but an animal, like those he hunts and puts on display.”

Lizzie makes this comment in a letter to her mother after she realizes who Rupert really is. Initially, he was fascinated by her power over nature because he saw its potential to further his own ambitions. For her part, Lizzie thought she was in love. So did Kate when Simon first charmed and flattered her. In both instances, the men in question see their women as trophies.

“Doctor Smythson says he cannot find the reason. But it makes sense to me—God could not mean for a living child to be brought into the world by such an ugly act.”

Grace is telling Altha about her multiple miscarriages. Her experience of sex with her husband is hardly pleasant. She refers to it as an “ugly act.” John will continue to force himself on Grace until she conceives a son or dies trying. He doesn’t seem to care which result ensues. Grace’s condemnation of conjugal bliss is easy to understand.

“I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us—the Weyward women—that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow, or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants—they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own.”

Jennet has just explained the unique gifts that the Weyward women possess. Unlike so-called civilized people, they are not alienated from nature. They don’t seek to master or exploit it. Instead, nature becomes their partner to heal or destroy. At this point, Jennet makes Altha promise not to use her powers because they will attract the attention of men who are jealous and seek to punish those abilities. She succumbs to fear in a way that her daughter never will.

“Of course he hasn’t given up. He is never going to let her go. Never going to let them go. These are the worst moments, when the fear recedes only to close its cold fist around her heart again. But as Kate turns the fragile pages of Altha’s manuscript, as she reads a story that is centuries old but echoes her own life so closely, rage unfurls inside her.”

Kate is hiding in the attic while Simon stalks her downstairs. He assumes that he can intimidate her into returning with him as he has always done in the past. Simon doesn’t reckon on the power of Kate’s newfound connection to her Weyward heritage. Rage can be a far more constructive emotion than fear when dealing with a bully.

“‘You are nothing,’ he says, the words tolling in her skull, ‘without me.’ The panic is rising. Except it isn’t panic, Kate knows now. It never was. The feeling of something trying to get out. Rage, hot and bright in her chest. Not panic. Power. No. She is not nothing. She is a Weyward.”

This is a moment of anagnorisis or epiphany. Kate is now in Simon’s grasp. and is fearful since he is choking the life out of her, but she reaches a pivotal point in defining her identity. Simon always won before because Kate agreed with his assessment that she was nothing. In fact, she always believed that she was a monster. Knowing her birthright as a Weyward gives her a clearer sense of who she is, and she will no longer tolerate her abuser.

“Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.”

As Kate watches the destruction that she has unleashed on Simon, a crow lands on her shoulder. Its touch reconnects her with all the Weyward women in her ancestry. Simon’s instincts were initially correct when he sought to isolate Kate from all her friends and family; she draws strength from those associations. However, he couldn’t anticipate her dead ancestors rising from the grave to support her. The novel implies that female solidarity is eternal.

“So I have set it down, as I promised to. The truth. I will let whoever reads this when I am gone decide whether I am innocent or guilty. Whether what I did was murder, or justice. Until then, I will lock these words away in the bureau and keep the key around my neck.”

Altha finishes writing her journal and sets an entirely new sequence of events in motion by doing so. Unlike her mother, who suppressed her knowledge, Altha shares hers. This quote indicates the origin of the key that has been worn by all her descendants and the locked drawer where her story was kept. Even though Altha is ambivalent about her own actions, the course she took saves at least two more lives after she is gone.

“It is as if she had been in hiding—like the insects—dormant and docile, until she came to Weyward Cottage. There could be others like her, in need of waking [...] Perhaps something has survived, in the dark, hidden places where men dare not look.”

Now that Kate has gotten rid of her abuser, she contemplates other women who might share her gift but remain ignorant of their potential. Just as Altha shared her knowledge and saved her descendants, Kate intends to expand that knowledge beyond the boundaries of her blood kin group. Women who don’t bear the name of Weyward may have a unique connection to nature too. Their surest hope is for someone to take off their blinders and open their eyes to their own potential.