Shadow of Night

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Parts 5-6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Themes

The Complex Nature of Time

Unanswered questions about the complex nature of time linger throughout the novel, such as whether or not Diana and Matthew are actively changing the outcomes and course of time and history, or if, instead, they were always fated to go back in time and make the choices they did.

Evidence for the former is that Matthew remembers the last time he lived through the 16th century. That seems to indicate that he was not “displaced” in his own timeline the way he has displaced this 16th-century version of Matthew. He ruminates on all the things he did then that he now regrets and tries to set things right. When witches are being persecuted in Scotland, he says, “Before, as the Queen’s spy, I delighted in the trouble in Scotland. As a member of the Congregation, I considered Sampson’s death an acceptable price to pay to maintain the status quo” (327). He believes he has another chance to live the same events but do things differently and help the witches more.

Matthew and Diana constantly fear that they are affecting the past too much. Stephen convinces Diana that she “screwed up” by changing the past. Diana and Matthew think they are making changes in the past that create aspects of the present that were not there before their timewalk. However, Matthew says he feels that he “cannot seem to break this cursed pattern” (327). This suggests that the outcomes of their actions have always already been fixed.

There are more indications that—even before Matthew and Diana timewalked—the consequences of their timewalk were already coming to pass. For instance, Philippe warned Gallowglass to look out for historical anomalies decades before Diana was born. Gallowglass watched after Diana her whole life, and he remembers her from meeting her in the 16th century. This suggests that Matthew and Diana were always fated to make the choices they did, even before they made them.

These questions remain unresolved at the end of the novel. Regardless of which one of these possibilities is true, the novel conceives of time not as linear, but as circular or interrelated. This is further conveyed through the “eternal” knot Goody Alsop teaches Diana before she leaves for her own time. The eternal knot is an endless loop, without end or beginning. She says it symbolizes eternity, which is unending time.

Though the precise nature of how time works in the novel is unsettled, its complexity is explored through Diana’s various weaver powers and the role of the historical anomalies.

Gender Roles in Different Historical Periods

Embodying the role of a 16th-century woman is much harder than Diana anticipated. Some gender roles were predicted, like the ideas that women can’t do serious science or hold professional jobs, but others did not occur to her, perhaps because of her elite education and knowledge of the past.

When the School of Night meets Diana, she immediately encounters gendered stereotypes and judgements she didn’t expect. Walter calls Diana “mature” and a “widow,” even though she “had just turned thirty-three” (21). In the Elizabethan period, women married and began having children much earlier than in Diana’s 21st century. Mary and Diana are the same age, but Mary began having children right after she was married at 15. Diana marvels over how efficiently Mary runs her household while Diana struggles to learn how to do so.

Diana thought she was prepared to learn to be an Elizabethan woman, but she did not realize that the differences in gendered roles and behavior between the two time periods extend to her body language, like her walk. She noticed “the length of my steps relative to that of other women in the house” (38). This leads to Kit mocking her “masculine stride” (38). Diana is used to wearing trousers and being a figure of authority in her job as a professor, and her stride shows that. To the Elizabethan eye, this makes her seem “masculine.”

Diana tries to conduct herself as an Elizabethan woman in public. She often asks Matthew for advice on how Elizabethan women act. As Matthew begins to act differently toward Diana, ordering her around, he exploits her desire to fit in by saying if she “really wants to behave like an Elizabethan woman, stop questioning me” (45). Diana wants to embody Elizabethan gender roles to keep them safe, but Matthew uses that desire to try and impose his power.

Given this, Diana is perturbed by how much she is forced to rely on Matthew. She tells him that with “no family and no property, I’m utterly dependent on you” (122). She finds that historians make plenty of mistakes about the past, but one thing they got right was “the structural weaknesses associated with being female, friendless, and without money” (122). Though historians understand the disadvantages of being female, they make many other mistakes regarding the treatment of gender in the early modern period. They dismiss the diary Rima finds because it’s anonymous and seems quotidian. Rima comes to the correct conclusion that a woman wrote it but for the wrong reasons. She thinks that the “shaky and uncertain” handwriting (89), complete with ink stains, mean that a woman wrote it rather than a “learned sixteenth-century man” (89). While a woman did write it, it was not an Elizabethan woman struggling with lack of education and literacy, but Diana practicing her handwriting. Similarly, when Mary’s lab notebook is found, historians incorrectly assume her assistant “DR” is a man. As Mary’s notebook doesn’t elaborate on the gender of her assistant, there is no reason for this mistake besides the assumptions historians carry about gender roles in different historical periods.

The Relationship Between Science and Superstition

The relationship between science and superstition is a blurry one, as people’s ideas on what falls into these categories largely depend on external factors like their views on gender of religion.

Diana experiences the intersection between Gender Roles in Different Historical Periods and the relationship between science and superstition when Kit dismisses Diana’s interests in alchemy. He claims that “[l]ady alchemists are nothing but kitchen philosophers […] more interested in improving their complexions than understanding the secrets of nature” (26). Based on gender, Kit is making an assumption about which kind of practitioners’ work is serious about understanding “the secrets of nature” and whose practice deals more in frivolity and superstition. Since there is no practical difference in alchemical practice between male and female—as Mary’s intensive and serious alchemical practice indicates—these distinctions between a scientific alchemy and a superstitious one are based solely on gender stereotype.

One’s perception of what constitutes science and what constitutes superstition also depends on what subjects one is more familiar with. In Woodstock, the School of Night summon Widow Beaton to teach Diana. Widow Beaton sees magic—which some might consider superstition—almost like a science. She says there are certain “tests to determine whether someone is a witch” (51) and if Diana can make her way through those simple tests, they can definitively prove that she is a witch. This is very similar to the scientific method, where someone develops a hypothesis and engages in experiments to test it. On the other hand, Widow Beaton is unfamiliar with the subjects the School of Night considers scientific and academic, so those seem more like superstition to her than witchcraft does. When she sees a copy of Euclid’s Elements, she takes this as a sign that they are in league with the devil. She said they have “books full of strange sigils and magical incantations” (55). Thomas feebly protests that it “is mathematics, not magic” (55), but to Widow Beaton, unfamiliar mathematical symbols seem like dark magic. These differences show how the line between science and superstition is largely based in one’s perception and familiarity with various subjects.

Further, what society accepts as superstition in a certain historical period might seem like science hundreds of years later, and vice versa. Philippe attests to this. When Matthew says he thinks conceiving a child with Diana is impossible, Philippe says, “I have walked this earth longer than man’s memories and have seen things that later generations discounted as myth” (167). This supports the idea that conceptions of the impossible—including what’s science and what’s superstition—are social constructions rather than unalterable fact.