White Is for Witching

“Lily was the changer who came home the same. But that last time the signs were bad. When she left, she had forgotten her watch on the telephone stand in the hallway, a brass body with thin leather arms, ticking away Haitian time, six hours behind ours. How could she have forgotten her watch? She never had before. Miri and I had debated leaving it where it was (that seemed luckier), then Miri had confiscated it for safekeeping in case one of the houseguests stole it or broke it or something.”

Eliot describes his deceased mother Lily’s final trip and the symptoms of her unraveling. She dies in Haiti, killed by stray bullets, and the watch she leaves behind symbolizes that her time ran out. Miranda wears the watch long after its battery dies. A link between Lily and Miranda, the watch connects them across time.

“Our new house had two big brown grids of windows with a row of brick in between each grid. No windows for the attic. From the outside the windows didn’t look as if they could be opened, they didn’t look as if they were there to let air or light in, they were funny square eyes, friendly, tired. The roof was a solid triangle with a fat rectangular chimney behind it. Lily bounced out of the van first and I scrambled out of the other side and crooked my arm so as to escort her to the door. The house is raised from the road and laid along the top of a brick staircase, surrounded by thick hedge with pink flowers fighting through it.”

This quote describes Miranda and Eliot’s initial reactions to the Silver House in Dover. Their observations emphasize the human-like quality of the house, highlighting characteristics like its “eyes.” The image of pink flowers fighting to escape the hedge that surrounds the house foreshadows the house’s imprisoning of Silver women.

“I climbed one of the apple trees and surveyed the garden, the patches of wild flowers that crumpled in the shade, the Andersen shelter half-hidden by red camellia shrubs. I was well pleased. “Wicked house,” I said. “Magic,” said Miri, from somewhere below.”

This quote anticipates the magical nature of the house, teeming with spirits. The house’s apple trees and shrubs, appropriate for Eliot and Miranda’s imaginary games, inadvertently reveal its true nature (due to the winter apples being poisonous). Eliot jokingly calls the house wicked, and Miranda claims that it holds magic—both of which prove true.

“Pica is a medical term for a particular kind of disordered eating. It’s an appetite for non-food items, things that don’t nourish. The word itself is pronounced pie-kah, a word like a song about a bird and food. Miri said it tiredly to herself and to me. “Pie-kah, pie-kah, I’ve got pie-kah.” Lily told all our teachers at primary school and all the dinner ladies knew.”

In the novel’s first full discussion of pica, Eliot discusses his sister’s experiences with the condition. Recounting that Miranda chants “pica” over and over, Eliot reiterates its pronunciation, connecting the word to food (as to be expected of the son of a pastry chef).

“Anna Good you are long gone now, except when I resurrect you to play in my puppet show, but you forgive since when I make you appear it is not really you, and besides you know that my reasons are sound. Anna Good it was not your pica that made you into a witch. I will tell you the truth because you are no trouble to me at all. Indeed you are a mother of mine, you gave me a kind of life, mine, the kind of alive that I am.”

The Silver House‘s quote captures its malevolence and Anna’s connection to it. Calling Anna its mother, the house acknowledges that her anger at her husband’s death (fueled by racism) imbued it with agency (and informs its aggression).

“In a psychomanteum glass topples darkness. Things appear as they really are, people appear as they really are. Visions are called from a point inside the mirror, from a point inside the mind.”

This quote describes Lily’s room in the Silver House, which Miranda now inhabits. It suggests that the visible world is but a shadow of real people and things. In her psychomanteum, Miranda can see past versions of the visible world, offering a metaphor for characters’ different interpretations of events.

“Lily’s photo studio was a small extension to the house, a lump that had grown on its side when it was young. It had its own tiled triangular window frame; from the outside it looked like a cuckoo clock.”

This quote personifies the Silver House and Lily’s addition to it, by calling the latter a lump. The space’s resemblance to a cuckoo clock reinforces time as important to the house, as the house strives to stop the progress of time (and society’s changing values).

“Since Azwer and Ezma were leaving, Miranda felt she should give their daughters something. Suryaz and Deme would each need a talisman, an object that smelt lovely, or that felt kind to the hand; such things are little suitcases to put sad feelings in so that they can go away by themselves.”

After Azwer and Ezma decide to leave the Silver House, Miranda decides to give their daughters Deme and Suryaz gifts with good energy. These objects reflect the belief system of juju that surfaces throughout the novel. Talismans can have bad or good juju, and connect to Sade, the new housekeeper, who believes in this energy.

“This house is bigger than you know! There are extra floors, with lots of people on them. They are looking people. They look at you, and they never move. We do not like them. We do not like this house, and we are glad to be going away.”

In a letter to Miranda, Deme and Suryaz warn her about the hidden spaces of the house. This warning implies that these spaces are more than physical, full of spirits that Miranda will later see for herself.

“Our great-grandmother, GrandAnna, the one who left the house to Lily, was named Anna Good. There’s a cupboard in the attic full of her things, or at least the things that Lily didn’t give to charity shops. The cupboard was a treasure trove for Miri—Miri found things in there I couldn’t even see until she brought them out—white kid gloves, silver hair ornaments, fans.”

This quote reinforces the importance of the colors white and silver to the plot and themes of the novel. Anna’s hidden white gloves stress the exclusionary nature of the house, and her silver hair ornaments refer to her married name. The house is only open to white people and punishes any kind of racial or ethnic difference.

“The woman Luc was interviewing was a black woman, short and round, with a placid gaze. An orange head wrap and an orange gown that made her formless, a vapour sinking through the sofa. She had a big, grey-black bird printed on each sleeve at the elbow; one was visible every time she lifted her teacup to her mouth. The birds had iron feathers and claws as long as their beaks, but they hid their heads behind their wings. She was wearing sandals despite the cold, and her toenails were painted bright orange. Her eyelids were daubed with a green that dotted her gown in emerald specks but turned khaki coloured on her skin. The woman spoke to Luc, unhurriedly and with a heavy African accent.”

This quote describes Sade, the housekeeper who replaces Ezma, donned in colorful clothes that contrast with Miranda’s black clothes and the white cliffs of Dover. Sade wears orange, green, and a gown printed with gray-black birds, colors that symbolize her defiance of the Silver House and its overwhelming whiteness.

“Believe it, don’t believe it, as you will. Of course there is the idea that Anna caught Jennifer and tried to stop her from leaving, that the two fought, that Jennifer strangled to death in a circle made of Anna’s fingers. But that is unrealistic for a number of reasons. And besides, without a corpse there is no proof of what may have come.”

Another example of personification, this narration of the Silver women’s history demonstrates that the Silver House has agency and motivations. In attempting to explain the death of Jennifer, Lily’s mother, the house defends Anna, Jennifer’s mother. The house implies that a corpse doesn’t exist because the house has hidden it.

“Two houseguests picked their way around the first of the boxes on their way downstairs. They were a black couple from London who had enthused about their love of English history while Miranda had swayed, glassy-eyed and dead on her feet, and drawn red circles around the Cinque Ports on a map of Kent for them.”

This quote foreshadows Miranda’s future through a discussion of Dover’s past: In the future, Miranda will sway within the Silver House’s walls, glassy-eyed and dead. Her response to a Black couple’s enthusiasm for English history symbolizes the weakness of the privileged (who refuse to consider diversity and inclusivity).

“Sade looked so alarmed that Miranda thought the topic must be the utmost taboo. Then she saw herself on the floor. Water makes a mirror of any surface. She’d sucked her cheeks in so far that the rest of her face emerged in a series of interconnected caves. Her eyes were small, wild globes. The skull was temporary, the skull collected the badness together and taught it discipline, that was all. Miranda wanted to say, That is not my face. No, it wasn’t hers, she had to get away from it, peel it back. Or she had to leave and take this face with her, defuse it somewhere else. Eliot and Luc, she had to protect them.”

Mirrors and photographs are key to the perception of reality within and outside of the Silver House. While sharing food and conversation with Sade, someone who can see spirits, Miranda sees her own face and describes it in horrifying detail—reinforcing the house’s hold on her.

“White Is for Witching, a colour to be worn so that all other colours can enter you, so that you may use them. At a pinch, cream will do. Four years later Anna Good put the cream dress on again, and an expensive white coat that Andrew had bought her, and she did some witching.”

This quote explains the novel’s title and the history of the Silver House’s malevolence. White is a symbol for magic and witchcraft, as it absorbs all other colors—which illustrates how white supremacy operates, threatening to erase people of color.

“‘I hate them,’ she said. ‘Blackies, Germans, killers, dirty…dirty killers. He should have stayed here with me. Shouldn’t have let him leave. Bring him back, bring him back, bring him back to me.’ She spoke from that part of her that was older than her. The part of her that will always tie me to her, to her daughter Jennifer, to Jennifer’s stubborn daughter Lily, to Lily’s even more stubborn daughter Miranda. I can only be as good as they are. We are on the inside, and we have to stay together, and we absolutely cannot have anyone else. It’s Luc that keeps letting people in. To keep himself company, probably, because he knows he is not welcome (if he doesn’t know this he is very stupid). They shouldn’t be allowed in though, those others, so eventually I make them leave.”

The Silver House relates this anecdote, explaining Anna’s hatred of national, racial, and ethnic differences. After Anna’s husband Andrew dies flying a plane over Africa during World War II, she conjures life into the house, imbuing it with evil as she vents her anger against non-Britons.

“She bit at the white side—she bit! In my distraction I lost hold of the other black guests, the couple on the second floor who I had kept in their bed the past three days, curved around the bed like fitted sheets with their faces crusting over. The African with the silent chest chewed, swallowed and opened her mouth for more, while the couple picked up their cases and fled, leaving money on the hallway desk as payment for their stay. Then, precise as ever, Luc Dufresne’s car pulled up outside, the car with my Miranda inside it, and there was nothing more to be done at that time.”

In this frightening anecdote, the house describes how it animates a mannequin in order to take control of Sade. This mannequin serves as a metaphor for the doppelgängers that the house employs to hurt immigrants and maintain the so-called purity of the Silver family.

“I was taking the whole thing too seriously. Or I was taking steps to blindfold myself so that when I came out of the door of my college room this morning I didn’t see the glass windows glaring at me out of the fourteenth-century walls. Walls and windows forbade me. They pulled at me and said, You don’t belong here. Again and again, over textbooks and plates of mush in hall, I gritted my teeth and said, Yes I do.”

Ore describes how hostile spaces seem to her at Cambridge University, referencing the medieval walls of her dorm. She personifies these walls and windows, assigning them agency and motivation. As with the Silver House, these locations seem imbued with the emotions and energies of the people who populate them in the past and present.

“She saw the wicked soucouyant feast on the girls and boys in her village and the next. She saw where the soucouyant slept, and was bold enough to follow her there. She saw where the soucouyant put her skin when she walked in her true form. Her lover the moon told her: ‘If you cared to, you could kill the soucouyant. Treat her skin with pepper and salt. How it burns her, how it scratches her. Only the night gives her her power, and if she is unable to reenter her body by sunrise, she cannot live.’”

Ore’s mother quotes a book that details the soucouyant, a vampiric being who eats the souls of its victims at night. This quote offers context for how the Silver House employs doppelgängers and ancestral spirits, and foreshadows how Ore’s relationship with Miranda and the house ends.

“She took a stick of chalk from her cigarette box, but before she could raise it to her mouth it broke in her hand. Her palms were clammy. She licked her lips and asked Lily a question; she asked Jennifer and her GrandAnna the same question: How is consumption managed?”

This quote describes Miranda’s vision of her mother Lily, grandmother Jennifer, and great-grandmother Anna at a dinner party deep inside the house. These ancestral spirits serve as foils not only for each other, but Miranda. Asking all three spirits the same question emphasizes their roles as foils, because each handled pica differently.

“Juju is not enough to protect you. Everything you have I will turn against you. I’ll turn sugar bitter for you. I’ll take your very shield and crack it on your head. White Is for Witching, so ti gbo? Do you understand now? White Is for Witching, Sade goodbye.”

The Silver House issues these threats to Sade, and they serve as more evidence of its hatred. White absorbs all and creates nefarious magic, strengthening systems of oppression—even threatening to corrupt Sade’s own means of protection.

“Disgusting. These are the things that happen while you’re not looking, when you’re not keeping careful watch. When clear water moves unseen a taint creeps into it—moss, or algae, salt, even. It becomes foul, undrinkable. It joins the sea. I would save Miranda even if I had to break her.”

The Silver House expresses disgust at Miranda’s relationship with Ore, alleging that the former’s racial “purity” will be polluted by a nonwhite Briton. Using the metaphor of water and waste, the house weaponizes an image of nature to argue for Miranda’s superiority over Ore.

“Miranda politely flicked my hands away from her and sashayed out among them. They all looked at her and smiled slavishly. When she had passed through them, they looked at me again. They were alabaster white, every one of them. I went after her. They looked at me, crowded so close, murder in their eyes. If I didn’t believe in the salt I would be lost. Believe, believe. Salt is true. Salt is true. Kill the soucouyant, salt and pepper.”

Trapped on a hidden floor, Ore comes across the hordes of spirits who inhabit the Silver House. Using rich imagery, Ore describes the spirits as white and murderous, linking them to the mythical soucouyant.