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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Witch
Witches are a key motif in The Rules of Magic and the Practical Magic series as a whole. Not the broomstick-flying, warty crones of popular folklore, Hoffman’s witches echo the standout, eccentric women who might have been tried during the 17th-century Salem trials for flourishing on independent means, being close to nature and animals, and getting involved in healing practices. While the Owens women wear black and sometimes have an unkempt appearance, especially in old age, they are generally strikingly beautiful in their youth. This is important, as it allows them to seduce men with very little effort and therefore adds to the numbers of their victims. Interestingly, Vincent, the only male Owens offspring, is never referred to as a wizard but as a “male witch” (185). This prohibits the traditional, sexist distinction between witches as malign and wizards as benign—an view that reflects a patriarchal society’s suspicion of women in positions of power. Indeed, Hoffman reverses these expectations, as The Magus, which is named after the Latin word for wizard, is full of dark magic, whereas the women’s plant-based spells are geared toward cures.
Hoffman also works against the stereotype that there is a generalized kind of witch with uniform powers and gifts. Instead, every member of the family has their own unique mixture of tendencies and physical properties. For example, Franny can talk to birds and squeeze red water out of her hair when it gets wet, whereas Jet can read thoughts. Still, there are some aspects of being a witch that reflect the popular superstitions present during the Salem trials—for example, the facts that no witch can drown in water and that the silver in a man’s pockets turns black if he kisses a witch, an alchemy that suggests the magic present in her being. Adhering to some of these superstitions is Hoffman’s way of illustrating that the Owenses cannot be fully normal, however much they try.
The Magnolia Street House
The Magnolia Street house, inhabited by Aunt Isabelle at the beginning of the novel and by Frances and Jet at the end, is the Owenses’ ancestral homestead and has been in the family for generations. It is “huge, with tilted chimneys and scores of windows fashioned out of green glass,” and “encircled by [a] wrought-iron fence” though there “[i]sn’t a gate in sight” (20). The house’s size and Gothic appearance, with its vertiginous chimneys and glass windows the traditional color of evil, indicates that it is the place where the Owenses own up to and flaunt their magical identity. Moreover, the surreal feat of having a fence all the way round the house but no gates implies that magic is at work in preventing intruders from entering. Once inside, the rules of the house, which defy traditional parenting in allowing children to set their own bedtimes, choose their own reading, and have boozy chocolate cake for breakfast, are an exercise in autonomy. This accelerates the rate at which the children discover who they really are and learn to accept themselves.
Indeed, the house becomes further symbolic of accepting one’s Owens identity when the Burke-Owenses seek to prevent their offspring from going there at all in the first place, for fear that they will enhance their magical tendencies. Moreover, being in Massachusetts, the state where the Salem witch trials took place and where Maria Owens’s diary sits in the local library, the house is closer to the site of the curse that has afflicted the family for generations. Thus, returning to the homestead induces a reckoning with one’s identity and discovering how the powers that one has taken for granted are linked to a family legacy. Conversely, those who put distance between themselves and the Massachusetts seat are seeking independence from the family’s reputation as outcasts.
Plant Cures
The slow, difficult plant work the Owens women engage in to make their cures is a constant motif throughout the novel and challenges the stereotype that witchcraft comprises spells that result in instant transformations. Instead, the care and attention the plant work requires, including growing or sourcing the correct ingredient at the right time and treating it according to decades-old processes, is a metaphor for the hard work witches engage in and the bonds that are created through participating in age-old traditions. The work connects family members, even as they are distant from each other, and reinforces the bonds of the Owens clan.
The abundant variety of plant cures, which take advantage of flora as diverse as star tulip, bee balm, or myrrh from desert thorn trees, show how the Owens family’s engagement with nature is far more extensive than that of the modernizing society they live in. They thus become custodians of ancient feminine wisdom, and Frances, who forgoes a career in science for one in plant cures, shifts her alliance from the more logical world of her parents to the supernatural one of her ancestors. Jet, too, following the trauma of losing her love in an accident, loses the gift of the sight she was born with but is “more than competent when it [comes] to concocting remedies” (161). Her ability to engage in the latter gives her a sense of purpose and a link to the magical world, even during the years when her sight is dormant.
The plant cures are also the Owens family’s means of connecting with the outside world that is suspicious of them. They are distributed in exchange for objects “as low as half a dozen eggs or as high as a diamond ring” in a sort of old-fashioned barter economy (25). Still, like any good businesswomen, they respond to the demands of their market and fashion the more emotional cures that their clients desire, such as love potions. The wild consequences of a love potion, which will set in motion an event that “takes on a life of its own” (161), contrast with the careful labor of creating an apple-seed amulet in the evening. Echoing the rules of the Magnolia Street home, the Owens sisters make their plant cures, offer a warning about being careful in what you wish for, and then allow the customers to deal with the consequences. This is means of distributing the Owens philosophy to the wider world. It also feels especially inclusive to the reader, who sees their kind welcomed into the Owens world and given the opportunity to share in their magic.
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