Week 5: Witches

For this week I read Aunt Maria or Black Maria. In this Wynne Jones tale she focuses on the relationship between the sexes and gender relations. She brings up her own thoughts on how problematic the nature of the two sexes are where there is too much power on the women’s side as opposed to the men. This causes a huge imbalance, the women are in complete control of the town and the men are literally described as zombies.  

            It’s definitely not my favorite Wynne Jones books but I thought the story was interesting until the very end. Jones likes to build up her conclusions and wrap things up in the last few chapters but here she did it way too suddenly and random things were happening left and right. I didn’t find it as strong a novel as Howl’s Moving Castle or the Chrestomanci series but I suppose it was meant for a much younger audience anyway. There was something about her style of writing that I could easily get lost or feel as though events were happening too fast. Things weren’t described in enough detail, I had no idea how old Mig or Chris were, and the magic of this world was a little confusing. The main family seemed to cool with the fact that there was suddenly magic that I had no idea if magic was a natural thing in this world. In the end, I found Aunt Maria’s fate to be rather disappointing. Where I wanted her to suffer and pay for all the trouble she caused, I got exactly the opposite. 
         There are two types of witches: stereotypical and modern. Stereotypical witches are normally long pointy nosed, green, cackling old hags that wear pointy hats, ride on brooms, and use cauldrons to mix potions. And then there are the more modern witches that are basically normal everyday people with magical powers. When it comes to stereotypical witches I think of Hocus Pocus, the Wizard of Oz, and I think Kiki falls a little more inbetween. Kiki falls more toward the modern side but she shares the broom riding and potion-brewing trope as stereotypical witches. Modern witches I think of American Horror Story: Coven, Aunt Maria, and Harry potter that also falls into that inbetween category. Coven and Aunt Maria probably have the best example of modern day witches. When it comes to the sort of power witches have I think I can say a lot of it is manipulative. This was the main focus of Aunt Maria where she even used her innocence to get people to do what she wanted. Witches are also more powerful when united as three or more.