53 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanThe Rules of Magic
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary: “Remedy”
Thirty years after Vincent’s disappearance, Regina’s daughters, Gillian and Sally, are growing up in Forestville, California. Gillian is daring and whimsical, while Sally is more cautious and responsible. Regina is a successful artist and has married Daniel, a fisherman and guide on the Russian River. Their grandmother, April, recently died of a venomous-spider bite. Regina seems inconsolable, so Daniel takes her out onto the Russian River for a second honeymoon. However, the couple end up dying in a lightning-related fire.
Sally takes charge to ensure that she and Gillian can stay together by calling up Frances and Jet, the women April recommended they call if anything happened. They move to Massachusetts, ill-clad in their light California clothes. At first glance, Aunt Jet seems homely, while aunt Frances appears rude and scary. However, the aunts lead the girls on a journey of discovery, as Frances reveals that she and Sally share the talent for attracting birds, and she tells them about their grandfather Vincent.
Part 6 Analysis
Part 6 links The Rules of Magic to Practical Magic, the chronological sequel written two decades before. We learn that Regina has lived out her shortened life span fully, cramming in a sojourn at Berkeley, farming off the land, mothering two daughters, Sally and Gillian, and falling intensely in love in a manner that evokes the family’s predilection for romantic love as curse and idyll.
These two girls, who are the only progeny of the Burke-Owens family, repeat the pattern of sororal opposition set out with Frances and Jet at the beginning of The Rules of Magic. Indeed, on seeing fair, lighthearted Gillian and dark, taciturn Sally at the airport, Jet cannot help exclaiming that they are so opposed they should be called “Night and Day” (361). On a symbolic level, the presence of sisters with complementary qualities indicates how varied the apparition of magic is in each witch and emphasizes the power that occurs when opposites work together. The arrival of these girls at the ancestral seat to Frances’s repetition of Aunt Isabelle’s lax house rules indicates the continuation of the Owens legacy through another generation and emphasizes the notion of family as a constant in a changing world.
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By Alice Hoffman
