Hour of the Witch: Good Seasonal Read, though Flawed

 

HOUR OF THE WITCH (2021)

By Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, 406 pages.

★★★ ½

 

Chris Bohjalian offers a spooky treat that makes good Halloween reading. Hour of the Witch and its characters are fictional, but the dilemmas he describes are not. Although the North American colonies paled in comparison to Europe where at least 40,000 people were executed for witchcraft, 26 or more people met their ends after being convicted of consorting with Satan and scores of others were accused.

 

 Hour of the Witch is set in Salem, but in the 1660s, decades before its infamous 1692 witch trials. The latter overly compress a much wider phenomenon. (The first American “witch” was hanged* in 1647.) It seems incredible today, but as Bohjalian writes, “It was always possible that the Devil was present.” Even Mary Deerfield believed that, she being the central figure in Bojhalian’s novel. Mary is beautiful and handy with herbal cures and midwifery, but her world was dominated by men to whom she was expected to be compliant and subservient. That includes her husband, Thomas. At 24, Mary is his second wife and acquires a step-daughter, Peregrine, who is her age. Thomas is 45, but Mary is blamed for not getting pregnant. It doesn’t help that Peregrine already has two children and another on the way. Nor is it a good thing that Mary befriends Constance Winston, an unmarried older woman who isn’t a church member and provisions Mary with some of her “simples” (remedies).

 

Even if you’ve not made an exhaustive study of the pre-scientific world of Colonial America, you probably know it didn’t take much to upset the fragile Puritan worldview. How does one explain a cow that suddenly goes dry, unexpected deaths, a garden that withers when a neighbor’s thrives, freak accidents, barrenness, strange markings, or poppets? In a world so fraught, even the importation of three-pronged forks disrupts a community in which gossip, grudges, and fear dominate.

 

A fork plays a part in Mary’s woes. Her father is an important merchant in Salem and it was he who received some forks in a shipment from England. He gives one to Mary, but this being New England, not Olde, some locals see the humble table implement as the “Devil’s tines.” Mary’s marriage is also a shambles. Thomas is a bully who drinks too much, subjects her to rough sex, and repeatedly “corrects” (beats) her. In one drunken outburst he drives the fork into her hand and breaks it. These acts prompt Mary to seek divorce from Thomas. I won’t go into historical detail; let’s just say that very few women were granted divorce in the 17^th century. Mary’s lawsuit, though (mostly) supported by her birth family, sets tongues a-clacking.

 

Bohjalian introduces chapters with “documents” (most are made up) pursuant to Mary’s divorce and subsequent witchcraft trials. Mary forges a unique strategy to defend herself. Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy (a religion-based government) in which the line between pulpit, courts, and authority often overlapped. Because ministers hold power, Mary knows she needs clerical allies. What rulings are appropriate for a woman with a reputation for piety?

 

It is at this juncture that Bohjalian oversteps both history and credulity. Whilst Mary is estranged from Thomas, she develops a lustful infatuation for another man and isn’t very good at hiding it. (At least Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne had the wisdom to tryst in the woods!) Mind, this is during a time local wags and those with vested reasons to hate her insist she’s a witch. The novel’s resolution goes a step further down I-Don’t-Think-So Lane. It’s lifted from a folksong (Child Ballad 95) and might be how we’d like things to go down, but not how they actually did. It’s fictionl, so Bohjalian can invent and imagine to his heart’s content, but there is a great tonal inconsistency in leaping from the legalistic and religious to a swashbuckling caper.

 

Hour of the Witch is a decent read, for the season, though I doubt this will be remembered as one of Bohjalian’s best. There is no surfeit of witchcraft novels and, let’s face it, a one-off from Bohjalian isn’t going to dethrone Alice Hoffman from her roost as the queen of witchcraft fiction. If you’ve not already done so, you might want to read her Magic Lessons as a companion to Hour of the Witch.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Contrary to common belief, no witches were burnt in the Americas.