RE: A SECRET HISTORY OF WITCHES By: Louisa Morgan
A Book that I Just Finished
From: Travis
January 16, 2022
Back in our high school days, Other Chris and I were lucky enough to take a trip to France as part of a student exchange program. Seeing as we had just finished French 2, I, for one, was desperately under-prepared to fully embed in such a way (my French is still not that great, par parenthese).
Thinking back on my time with my host family, I recall a lot of awkwardness. Thanks to me, well, being generally socially inept, and the amount of French I could speak, let alone understand, I never became much more than polite with them, but the family still did what they could to include me.
I can't recall now exactly where we stayed (Other Chris was able to search his memory banks recently and confirmed we were somewhere near Elancourt) but I do remember the big, farmhouse style shutters in the guest room I stayed in that leaked in cold air overnight, the fireplace the family used as a primary source of heat, bowls of cherries that had been collected from the trees in the back yard passed around for snacks as we watched handball on TV. It all kind of made young high school me feel out of place ... in a setting that was part farmhouse, yet squarely in the suburbs of Paris, in a situation simultaneously so familiar to my life at home and just different enough to feel very alien.
While we were there, we would all ride the bus to school with our hosts (on, like, a regular city bus which I was constantly surprised could fit down the narrow streets of town, not a big yellow one like at home) and then set off with our group for outings. Aside from the usual touristy stuff (which Other Chris and I dutifully tried to ditch in an effort to avoid being seen in a big group of loud teenage American girls) like the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Sacre-Coeur, pain au chocolate, our teacher also set up some off-the-beaten-path things. We went to a kind of renaissance day in Houdan, visited chateaux in the Loire valley, attended an outdoor opera (I forget where that was), and even went to a theme park focused on movie theaters (Futuroscope, which is worth looking up for the retro future architecture, btw).
We also had a day trip to Carnac, which we were told was a type of French Stonehenge. "It has menhirs, like Obelix is always carrying around in the Asterix comics," I'm sure our teacher said as we set out. We spent a long, long day in the charter bus without much else to do but watch the countryside go past (and complain about the only other boy on the trip who was clearly trying to come back to the states with a girlfriend). After we were nice and cranky and worn out from the road, we finally arrived ... in a kind of a field.
A field with, you know, like some smallish hills.
And some rocks on them.
"Where the hell is the henge?," said I, in a Spinal Tap-esque despair. We walked the place in what feels like less than a half hour and learned; "Why are these rocks here? ... no one really knows". Well, just great, glad we came. I was so annoyed that I stole a Carnac key chain from the gift shop, exacting my revenge in the form of 5 francs of shoplifting shrink.
All this came flooding back to mind as I read the opening section of a Secret History of Witches, by Louisa Morgan, wherein, family of Romani are huddled between the stones of Carnac, desperately trying to flee from a group of witch hunters who had tracked them across Britany. The family matriarch, Ursule, brings out her magic stone and casts a spell so powerful that not only is the entire family safely hidden from those that would harm them, but the last of her life energy is drained and she dies there amongst the menhir.
"Damn," thought I, "maybe that's why we could never find anything interesting there?"
The main idea here, the secret history as it was, is a recounting of a line of witches that traces from Ursule, giving her life in Britany, to her daughters, granddaughter, and several layers of great granddaughter as they establish and reestablish themselves in Cornwall, in Wales, in London. The story of them discovering and re-discovering their birthright, while exercising constant vigilance against those who would condemn them for practicing witchcraft. A lot of the stories take place on farms, that current generation's daughter either taking charge of the daily chores and livestock or taking produce and "simples" into market. They are usually the one person in the family at the time that can speak anything other than French and so are usually caught between worlds, so to speak - both a part of the community but also outside of it. That part also made me think about my time as an exchange student. Sometimes the daughters are also caught between the family traditions and the demands of the modern world, whatever "modern" happens to mean at the time.
I will say, overall, I enjoyed the journey. The book, obviously, covers several generations, over about a hundred years, but the way Ms Morgan structures each daughter's story, we are never with any one generation all that long. We stop in, rather, with them as they go through the most important event(s) in their live(s) and then are off again as soon as their daughter(s) have anything to say about it. While this keeps the characters themselves fresh, and keeps the narratives close enough in mind to be able to easily compare each character's lives to one another, at times, I found myself wishing that some of the generations had had a bit more distinction. Maybe some kind of radically different reaction when they all inevitably learned about their great grandmother's stone (which sparked just for them) and they all found out they were in fact, for-real witches, with for-real witch powers. Not to say that there aren't any daughters that think it's all just play pretend, or that think they've finally found something they can exploit ...I don't know, I guess I would have liked it a bit more if there has been more doubt woven in; less direct responses from the goddess, or someone who went through the motions, unsure if any power would be there for them when they called on it.
The story's repeating structure, the repeated re-discovery of magic each generation also seemed to lead to the characters repeating the main point (as I see it) every hundred pages or so -- that men can't allow for witches, because they can't stand the idea of women having power, and especially not having power over them. This is a fine main point and, I think, historically supported -- the past is littered with made up charges of witchcraft against women just doing their own thing -- but, I think it loses just a bit of its bite when the charges of witchcraft are 100 percent accurate? Not that people practicing witchcraft is a reason to, you know, burn anyone at the stake ... I don't know, the comparison they repeatedly make between witch craft and other nearby organized religions is stronger in my mind if the witchcraft is truly just rituals. When the characters are actively able to entreat the goddess to - let's say "expel" - enemies, I wondered why none of the priests they come across could cast Sacred Flame or something. (maybe they were always confronting the Orchiere family after only having a short rest?)
At the end of the day, though, this is a series of stories about family. About making your way on your own in a place you weren't born, where you don't speak the language natively, where you've just arrived and things are not quite how you expected, but you still have to make do. It's about what you learn to accept in life, and how to dream for something more. It's about traditions, passing down your religion and keeping an unbroken line to all those who came before you. It's about mothers and daughters, and how they relate to one another, how hard it can be to pass on your life's lessons to youth.
And then you get to the last generation of daughters. And oh boy. I really a) don't want to spoil anything and b) don't want you to get the wrong impression of the rest of the book. SO. Feel free to just click off this post right now if everything above tells you what you think you need to know. And... if not, read below, but keep in mind, it's a really small section of the whole; only about 5 years in a span of just over 100.
OK, so.
Call these personal gripes, I guess.
But the last section...
Everything beforehand has focused on direct connections between mother and daughter, direct conflict and direct passing of traditions. All of them until the last woman in the book ... her mom died in childbirth and she never knew her. Which is fine. I think the idea here is that even if you are disconnected from your history, your traditions, your flesh and blood, you can still learn about it, still reclaim it. That is a powerful and sweet message. That isn't the problem.
The problem: she learns about her witchcraft heritage?
From fucking Queen Elizabeth.
While joining a coven casting spells to try to thwart fucking Hitler.
I mean.
I think I can see what Ms Morgan was thinking here; the woman was alive in the 1930's, she has Romani heritage, Romani were among the groups that were devastated by the Nazi regime, and even if they hadn't been, the religious persecution would've been a very strong parallel to literal witch hunts and burning people at the stake.
But it's another place where I feel the book would've been stronger if there had been some doubt, some question if all their spell casting had any effect. They could've made the same point if the orphaned witch in question had been taken on by the owner of the store that she requests occult books from, and they meet in secret with a local coven to cast their spells... instead of being put up in a castle, going to Buckingham Palace, being on a first name basis with QE1 and the king, and exchanging chit-chat with Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth. I might've accepted it more easily if there had been more of this kind of "Secret historical influence" throughout, too. Like, where were they in World War 1? They could've had some need to magically influence the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand? Maybe in the sequel, I guess.
But then that part is over, and things get back to a more natural, more understated plot and I was able to leave the book without the bad taste of evoking Godwin's Law in the most literal sense possible.