White Is for Witching

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Part 1, Chapters 3-4

Part 1, Chapter 5

Part 2, Chapters 6-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Identity and Xenophobia in England

Content Warning: This section of the guide mentions suicide, self-harm, and disordered eating. It also includes racist and xenophobic content, including offensive terms for Black people and undocumented citizens, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotation of the source material.

National identity in England is continually contested in White Is for Witching, and xenophobia literally haunts the country through the Silver House’s ancestral spirits. Dover, where the Silver House is located, sits on the chalky cliffs of England, standing sentry over the English Channel—serving as both gateway and locked door to the benefits of English citizenship. The housekeeper Sade, a legal immigrant and English citizen, recalls that Dover was historically known as the key to England—a “[k]ey to a locked gate, throughout both world wars, and even before. It’s still fighting” (125).

Sade’s description of Dover alludes to its history of exclusion and fear of foreigners, a characteristic it shares with Anna Good (Anna Silver) and the Silver House. World War II and the death of Anna’s husband, Andrew Silver, in 1943, help create the malevolent personality of the house—but as Sade asserts, England’s history of xenophobia predates these events. Anna sees her granddaughter Lily’s dismissal of patriotism as a consequence of “too many” immigrants. She recalls her own performance as Britannia, the goddess personifying English identity as necessary and honorable, and believes it worth the pain of her peers’ fingers digging into her skin as she sat “at the top of a chariot built of the other girls’ bodies” (134).

Furthermore, Sade recognizes the pervasive pattern of this xenophobia not only in the monstrous house, but in the murders of immigrants and imprisonment of those undocumented at the Immigration Removal Center. The Silver House itself functions as a removal center, imprisoning Silver women who stray from their heritage and harassing those it deems too foreign. However, this hatred also takes the form of people like Eliot, who embodies polite yet pervasive xenophobia. From his accusation that the Kosovan refugees are protecting a killer to his view of Tijana as a fortune teller, Eliot dismisses those who aren’t like him. Despite Ore being an English citizen by adoption, he simply sees her as an attractive, “exotic” woman outside of English identity.

The Manifestation of Trauma

The novel’s examination of trauma as a response to crisis helps make sense of its discussion of time, pica, and the Silver House’s ancestral spirits. Trauma often represents a delayed reaction to moments of great pain, and the latency of this response structures life after a specific pain. Several characters experience trauma and this is reflected in the novel‘s nonlinear structure, as trauma causes a blurring of past and present. These traumas also cause intergenerational conflict, affecting children and grandchildren alike.

Trauma especially affects the less privileged in the novel, those subjected to xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. When Sade takes Miranda to visit those detained at the Immigrant Removal Center, they find themselves “surrounded by grim faces and black print. ‘Another inmate hung themselves’” (133). Faced with harsh conditions, this nameless character faces death rather than live imprisoned. This moment segues into the origin of the Silver House, another removal center of sorts. Anna’s embrace of hatred and whiteness manifests a curse, which is not only a physical representation of her pain but a way to inflict pain on those whom she deems similar to her husband’s killers (during World War II). The Silver House, driven by Anna’s pain, worms its way into each succeeding generation of Silver women, affecting Anna’s descendants even if they themselves love or befriend immigrant characters.

In the novel, trauma is inescapable and repetitive, and often takes on monstrous forms—including those of the soucouyant and the alabaster spirits locked in the house. The soucouyant, a Caribbean legend and myth, is a metaphor for people who police national and ethnic identity, privileging Anglo-Saxon conceptions of English character. According to Ore’s collection of legends, the soucouyant returns each night to feed on the souls of the young; the repetition of these attacks reflects the nature of trauma, especially as it touches the immigrant communities in Dover. Tijana’s cousin Agim is likely attacked by Miranda’s doppelgänger, sent by the Silver House. Although he survives the attack, he remains haunted by it, until he dies by suicide.

Gothic Horror: Houses and Hauntings

As Gothic Horror often includes mysterious or disturbing places, the novel emphasizes the power of space to subjugate the marginalized. The Silver House, with its secret rooms and ancestral spirits, embodies Gothic Horror in this respect. Eliot describes the house as having “steps leading up to the house bulg[ing] with fist-sized lumps of grey-white flint, each piece a knife to cut your knee open should you slip” (18). Opposite the house, there are unmarked graves. Surrounded by bodies, the house overflows with ancestral spirits, alabaster ghosts who threaten anyone who’s different from the Silvers.

Azwer and Ezma’s children, Deme and Suryaz, experience the Silver House’s haunting firsthand, as it harasses them and temporarily imprisons Deme in the elevator. Deme and Suryaz’s letter to Miranda highlights the frightening aspects of the Silver House, asserting that “There are extra floors, with lots of people on them. They are looking people. They look at you, and they never move. We do not like them. We do not like this house, and we are glad to be going away” (66). Ezma’s replacement, Sade, shares the children’s view of the house, calling it a monster as it harasses her with a mannequin and poisoned apples.

Beyond the Silver House, Ore finds Cambridge University haunted by the specters of history. Twice, she mentions the medieval foundation of her college, and both times buildings seem to come alive with nefarious intent: “[B]edrooms ate into the walls of the college buildings, small pockets lined with posters and printed fabric. But from the outside I could see we had made our beds in a tomb” (168). Ore imagines the rooms eating their buildings, just as the Silver House claims Miranda eats plaster within its walls. Cambridge’s buildings, like the Silver House, appear as tombs, markers of the deceased. Ore also frames the college as a prison with walls and windows that forbid her from existing—mirroring both the Silver House and places like the Immigrant Removal Center. Personified as hostile and symbolic of death, these spaces serve as remnants and reminders of the past, and can be especially frightening to those who are cut off from a specific history (like Sade and Ore are from others’ perception of English history).