If Dahl were alive today, he might be particularly bothered by the fact that the 1990 adaptation of his 1983 novel, The Witches, has had the same (or, more probably, slightly more) cultural staying power than the novel it loosely adapts. Indeed, Dahl is on record as having called the adaptation “utterly appalling,” yet for a disturbing interpretation to his work, the film remains a cultural touchstone. Until now, my only knowledge of The Witches was my early experiences with the film, a product more deeply terrifying than its quirky and twisted literary predecessor. And, so, like many readers of Dahl’s works, I have a different experience of this particular work, moving backwards from adaptation to the original with a clear sense of bias towards the former.
The Witches is a curious work, both quirky and a tad twisted. The novel follows an unnamed English boy who falls under the care of his Norwegian grandmother after the untimely death of his parents. The grandmother regales her newfound charge with all sorts of tales, the favorite of which are her stories about being a retired witch hunter. When his grandmother falls ill, they vacation in a fancy hotel in Southern England to promote her recovery, which turns out to be the location for the annual meeting of witches. The boy, naturally, stumbles upon the witches, discovers their dastardly plot to rid England of all the pesky children, and suffers a tragic fate that drags his grandmother out of retirement. It’s a story of evil witches and myth, children turned into mice, and the unwavering stupidity of English high society.
As a novel, The Witches has the characteristic quirkiness of all Dahl creations, filling its early pages with delightful anecdotes and amusing witch facts. These early chapters are part of a frame narrative that reminds the intended reader — children — that this is a story with a somewhat comical nature — witches are a silly bunch of monsters — and that everything will be alright in the end (sorta). This takes some of the edge off from what otherwise might be an objectively terrifying premise. The witches, after all, despise children with every fiber of their being and have concocted elaborate schemes and costumes to hide their existence from humanity while abducting and killing the world’s children. Witches, like Soviet spies in a Cold War film, could be anywhere! The frame narrative also sets the stage for the kind of story we’re about to receive: a tale about deliberately caricatured witches and a world blissfully unaware of their existence. In retrospect, it’s weird that such a small portion of the novel is actually dedicated to witches as characters rather than witches as stories, but one can be forgiven for not knowing that witches are truly living among us and requiring a little extra prodding to come to that realization.
The novel shines most when it is dedicated to the boy’s interaction with and response to the titular characters. The introduction of the witches as an organization of women concerned with the protection of children both highlights their monstrosity and cleverness in one glorious sequence of chapters. Caricatured though they may be, the witches command a degree of respect even from our hero. As Sean Bean might say: one does not simply walk into a meeting of witches. Yet, our hero isn’t entirely helpless; his attachment to his mice, who he plans to train as part of his very own mice circus, is our first indicator of his abilities: he is tenacious and brilliant, sucking up the information his grandmother gives him to devise his own brand of witch hunting tactics. If anything, I wanted to see more of his collaboration with his grandmother. The witches are a hydra not easily swayed by a few witch deaths, even if witch reproduction is never quite explained. Where might this story go if their collaboration continued? What clever plans might the witches devise under the guise of a different Grand High Witch? I also hope you’ll forgive me if I could not help seeing Anjelica Huston in the role of the Grand High Witch; my childhood was long ago tainted by traumatic experiences with movies meant for kids.
The historical context behind the novel is also worth mentioning here, as it adds a dimension that parents certainly were aware of at the time of release. Published in 1983, Dahl’s book arrives at a time of heightened awareness of child abductions across the West. Just three years prior, the United Kingdom and the United States both signed the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, which was designed to increase cooperation for the return of children between signatory nations. As a child of the late 80s and 90s, I remember the dramatic shift in awareness of child abductions and some of the high profile cases that led to more vocal “stranger danger” campaigns, school assemblies, etc. It’s hard not to see The Witches as in some way an early commentary on the period, one which offers a more disturbing answer to the swirling question of “why.” Likewise, the novel might fit the cautionary tale mold found in fairy tales, a dimension parents might recognize in markedly different ways from the novel’s intended child audience. The witches themselves, after all, effectively rely on the public’s inability to provide answer to the disappearance of children, a fact uttered in almost explicit turns by the Grand High Witch and by the grandmother. These thoughts churned around in my head as I read this book, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect how I thought about the witches or the light tone of the narration. This book is, I’d argue, far more serious than it lets on.
One final curiosity: The Witches has been occasionally banned for perceived misogyny. I find this critique amusing, especially in light of the fact that many classic adult works have remained in those libraries — and if you spend any time among classic works of literature, you’ll find a sea of attacks on women. The Witches, I’d argue, is more complicated than the criticism suggests, as is the case with almost all book challenges. The novel clearly indicates that all of the witches are and can only be women and that real witches are far more dangerous than male specters of similar type. This is a curious essentialism. However, the grandmother serves as a direct counterpoint by being both competent, knowledgeable, and more put together than all of the male characters except her precocious grandson, who is presented to us as an untrained but brilliant tactician. If anything, the novel unintentionally highlights the standards and expectations of English womanhood, something which the witches must adhere to so as not to be found; but given that, again, the witches are villains who merely adopt these standards for their villainy, this is an incomplete commentary.
Perhaps the novel’s greatest flaw is something the film ultimately resolves: the ending is an invitation to a sequel that never materializes. This is made more concerning in light of the fact that the boy repeatedly reminds us and his grandmother that being turned into a mouse isn’t all that bad. I imagine we’re meant to see being a child and being a mouse as relatively similar positions, but they’re obviously not even if the boy’s mousehood offers a temporary advantage when dealing with witches. Ending with only a fraction of the real problem resolved probably won’t bother others as it did me. I am, if anything, a weird reader who occasionally wants ambiguity and occasionally wants closure; here, I wanted closure because the witches really are monstrous baddies.
Overall, The Witches is a fun and generally pleasurable fantasy from a master of the craft. I don’t consider it the pinnacle of Dahl’s work, but it does precisely what a Dahl book should do: delight with silliness and fun without shirking on its responsibility to be just a tad creepy.
