A Discovery of Witches

Prejudice and fear of the “other” motivate the Congregation and many others, as each group of creatures voluntarily and happily segregates itself. Maintaining group unity is so critical it takes precedence over even safety. Each species must stand united against outsiders.

Each creature species has its own negative stereotypes of the other two. Daemon Agatha Wilson views vampires as a “step away from animals,” (57) and believes witches are untrustworthy. The wizard Peter Knox believes Ashmole 782 is “our book” (185). Vampire Ysabeau has no love for witches, who were responsible for the death of her husband. These prejudicial views ensure that vampires, witches, and daemons do not interact with each other. The result is mistrust, fear, and misinformation handed down from generation to generation since the Crusades.

Even Diana admits she has “deeply ingrained prejudices” (311). She peevishly tells Matthew that she knows little about “someone like you” (132) other than from human myths and legends. She maintains a “healthy fear of vampires” (132). In her effort to protect herself from her magic, Diana rarely interacts with creatures. Diana initially knows little about other creatures aside from the biased opinions she learned from her prejudiced Aunt Sarah, who sees witches as the top of a “hierarchy of creatures” (24), with vampires ranking below dogs, cats, and untrustworthy daemons. Sarah parrots the Congregation’s party line that creatures are never supposed to mix— a covenant designed to keep the groups separated, fearful of each other, and keep bloodlines pure even at the risk of species extinction and gradual decrease in preternatural and supernatural abilities.

Still, because she grew up so sheltered from inter-species conflict, Diana is more open-minded than her fellow witches. She relishes the “mixed” yoga class (78), an hour of being “gloriously free from fear of other creatures” (114). As Diana grows closer to Matthew and learns more about vampires, her prejudices fade. She grows fond of Ysabeau, Marcus, Nathaniel, and Sophie and learns to see them as individuals, not as the feared other. Matthew is also progressive. He appreciates witch yoga teacher Amira, and his best friends are daemons. While he is fearful about a forbidden liaison with a witch, his love for Diana overcomes his own species prejudices.

Diana and Matthew’s love enables other creatures to set aside differences and unite around a common cause: the future. Diana and Matthew’s relationship ostensibly threatens creatures with human attention. In reality, it threatens the Congregation’s agenda to keep species separated. Alarmed, the species’ leaders ally against Diana and Matthew: Witches and vampires work together to kidnap and torture Diana. Although Peter Knox calls Diana a “traitor” (185), for crossing species boundaries and sharing information with a vampire, the witches betrayed their own and killed Diana’s parents.

The Congregation needs to learn Diana’s secrets and stop her and Matthew from changing cultural norms and diminishing their dictatorial control. Matthew’s DNA research into species origins may render the Congregation and its segregation rules moot: If Matthew discovers “we aren’t different species but only different lineages within the same species, it will change everything” (165). If the species are related, there is no justification for prejudice or “segregation rules” (537).

While the Congregation supports discrimination, the ad hoc conventicle embraces inclusion: its witches, vampires, and daemons have “pledged loyalty” to one another (484). They navigate and celebrate each other’s differences, united for their children’s future and their species’ survival.

Family connections are a powerful force behind characters’ motivations in A Discovery of Witches. Past family tradition and obligations weigh heavily on many characters. Diana is the last of the Bishop witches and spends much of the novel denying her heritage. To an extent, she abandons her family by making her own way after the death of her parents and denying Sarah and Em’s efforts to get her to use her magic. Diana ignores traditional wiccan holidays and doesn’t associate with other witches. Family never abandons Diana, however, and she ultimately returns to its fold. Her parents reach out to Diana when she is trapped in the oubliette, and the ghosts of past Bishops peacefully haunt the family home and participate in family activities. Diana’s family and birthright is in her blood and she cannot escape it, even though her newfound responsibilities and familial “burdens” (482) make her wistful for her past independence. Family obligation is equally as significant to Matthew. Unlike Diana, he was previously married and a father. The loss of his human family still haunts Matthew and makes him fear losing future children. He worries about his patriarchal ability to adequately protect them.

Familial feelings determine characters’ sense of home. When Ysabeau becomes Diana’s surrogate mother, Diana sees Sept-Tours as home. The Bishop home is a home for the conventicle, which functions as a non-traditional family headed by Matthew. Family is tied to blood. Whether through daemons and witches giving birth or vampires creating new vampires, each species passes down their bloodline. For this reason, the discontinuation of family lines is the greatest threat facing all three creature species. Vampire blood is increasingly impotent. Witches and daemons are losing their powers across generations. The idea of acceptable family must evolve to conceptio, the union of opposites represented in the “genetic supercombination” potential of Matthew and Diana’s children (473). Children are a family’s legacy. Diana is willing to fight for all mixed children and is ready to take on motherhood, believing that having Matthew’s children is “meant to be” (481). 

Diana and Matthew need to learn how to be together, but still be themselves. Even though Diana’s parents foresaw their love and relationship and the goddess apparently sanctioned it (283), parts of Matthew’s personality bother Diana. Diana worries about Matthew’s secrets, “ferocious temper and his need to control everything” (514). Simply asserting her love for Matthew will not make these flaws disappear. But Diana doesn’t know how to deal with them. She has bound herself to him completely (355).

In the 40 days Diana has known Matthew, she has sacrificed her autonomy. She gives up the scholarly life she dearly valued, moves to France to live with vampires, sacrifices her hard-won career, and is tortured and physically branded as Matthew’s property. Em is rightfully concerned that the Diana they knew is gone. The new Diana does what Matthew tells her (514): Diana has let her love for Matthew subsume her newfound sense of self.

Both Diana and Matthew must navigate how to keep their bond while growing personally and independently: each being half of a strong whole. Diana chafes under Matthew’s control, but also loves his attention. Part of Diana views Matthew taking care of her as a demonstration of his love. She even accepts a deferential role in the relationship, deciding that, “given vampires’ pack behavior, it wasn’t going to be possible to swap obedience for something more progressive, whether he called me ‘wife’ or not” (355).

Another part of Diana longs to “return to the safety of independence” (481). That part of Diana is irritated with Matthew’s hovering behavior. Before Diana met him, she was a successful, independent professional. Diana dislikes his “old-fashioned” attitude towards women (136). While Diana truly cannot take care of herself when attacked, and Matthew’s protective behavior is justified. Later, when Matthew sees Diana fight Juliette, he adjusts his behavior towards her: “He wasn’t coddling me or telling me what to do” (517) because he recognizes that Diana can now take care of herself. Matthew knows he must change in order to keep his relationship with Diana. While he is not “accustomed to making requests and negotiating agreements” (249), he relaxes his protectiveness and forswears keeping secrets. He understands that secrets aren’t good for their relationship (421).

This tension between Diana’s love for Matthew and Diana’s own conflicting feelings and concerns about his darker personality traits is not completely resolved by the end of the novel.