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Nice, Good, Or Right: Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett's "Witches" Novels

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Nice, Good, Or Right: Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett's Volume 26 Number 3 Article 11 4-15-2008 Nice, Good, or Right: Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett’s "Witches" Novels Janet Brennan Croft University of Oklahoma Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Croft, Janet Brennan (2008) "Nice, Good, or Right: Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett’s "Witches" Novels," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 26 : No. 3 , Article 11. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol26/iss3/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Examines the moral system that guides the use of magic by the witches of Discworld. Considers the definitions of Nice, Good, and Right under this system, and demonstrates how mature witches strive do what is Right. Additional Keywords Pratchett, Terry—Characters—Witches; Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series—Morality and religion; Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series—“Witches” novels; Witches This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol26/iss3/11 N ice, G ood, or R ight: F aces of the W ise W o m a n in Terry Pratchett's "W itches" Novels Janet Brennan C roft "I just make it up in my head; it's up to you buggers in the universities to tell me what it means." (Pratchett, quoted in Butler 56) Terry Pratchett is one of the most commercially successful fantasy writers of recent decades. It's said that "no British railway train is allowed to depart unless at least one passenger is reading a Pratchett novel" (Hunt 91). One out of every hundred books sold in England in 2002 was written by Pratchett (Richards 1). But "popular" doesn't mean "shallow"; the dust-jacket blurb used on many US editions of his books reveals that he has often been "accused of literature," and even as serious a writer as A.S. Byatt recognizes his brilliance and calls him a writer with "a multifarious genius for strong parody" (Byatt). Pratchett's Discworld series started with the picaresque comic fantasy The Colour of Magic in 1985, which satirized the giants of the genre. Discworld is flat, "like a geological pizza" (Pratchett and Briggs 134), and is supported on the backs of four enormous elephants, which in turn stand on the shell of a vast turtle. It swims through the depths of space attended by a tiny and astronomically improbable sun and moon. Pratchett's work has matured over the years, and he now addresses deeper issues of justice and mercy, religious belief, personal responsibility, racial tolerance, and response to technological and social change. He has developed a classically humanist moral system for his world — "humane, sceptical, and tolerant" (Curry 150)—without, however, losing his ability to make his reader fall off a chair laughing. Pratchett fills his books with allusions to a wide range of sources, including folklore and legend, literature from high-brow to low, and popular music and opera. As Pratchett has said, "If I put a reference in a book I try to pick one that a generally well-read [...] person has a sporting chance of picking up; I call this 'white knowledge', the sort of stuff that fills up your brain without you really knowing where it came from" (Words from the Master). In some respects this is similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's "cauldron of story" metaphor, as described in his seminal essay "O n Fairy-Stories" (26). Most of the Discworld novels fall into distinct series, depending on which cast of recurring characters is featured. The "Witches" series focuses on Mythlore 26:3/4 Spring/Summer 2008 151 Janet Brennan Croft two recurring characters, Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax and Gytha "Nanny" Ogg, and several different apprentice witches: Eskarina Smith, Magrat Garlick, Agnes Nitt, and in the recent young adult novels, Tiffany Aching. Throughout this series, Pratchett explores themes of free will, right and wrong, and the ethics of power, often using the terms "Nice," "Good," and "Right" to express particular moral concepts and outlooks. The "Witches" novels Granny Weatherwax made her debut in Equal Rites, published in 1987. She is a tall, lean, silver-haired old woman, gruff, practical, and iron-willed, an expert at what she calls "headology," and never seen in public without her witch's hat. She has self-control one could bend horseshoes around (Carpe Jugulum 10). "In the opinion of many, not least herself, [she is] the greatest witch on the Discworld" (Pratchett and Briggs 438). In Equal Rites, Granny defines the deep differences between the magic of witches and wizards: It's the wrong kind of magic for women, is wizard magic, it's all books and stars and jommetry. [...] Witches is a different thing altogether. [...] It's magic out of the ground, not out of the sky, and men never could get the hang of it. (8) In Wyrd Sisters, Granny is joined by two other witches, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick. Nanny is a plump and experienced old witch of vast and cheerful appetites, and a ruthless dictator to an enormous clan of descendants. She appears deceptively simple, but can "think her way through a corkscrew in a tornado without touching the sides" (Maskerade 190). M agrat is an apprentice witch, still reliant on talismans and books and other things the older witches see as irrelevant. She can be pictured as "a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale" (Witches Abroad 20). Anyone familiar with lore about witches and goddesses will immediately recognize the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone in this trio. They also echo the three witches in Macbeth, and part of the plot of Wyrd Sisters is drawn from this play. In the end, Granny performs a spectacular feat of magic, spinning the whole kingdom forward in time by fifteen years. Witches Abroad deepens our understanding of Granny's past and character. Pratchett here introduces a key Discworld concept he calls "narrative causality"—that stories develop strength and etch grooves in the world every time they are retold, to the point where, for example, "[i]t is now impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which 152 Mythlore 101/102 Spring/Summer 2008 Nice, Good, or Right: Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett's "Witches" Novels has so far claimed his older brothers, not to succeed" (Witches 8). The witches travel to Genua, where Granny's sister Lily is using mirror magic to direct people's lives. But controlling people in this way is against everything Granny stands for. She may say she wants everybody to do as she says, but on the other hand, "[s]he hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human" (210). She defeats her powerful sister, saying, "You shouldn't turn the world into stories. You shouldn't treat people like they was characters, like they was things" (238). In Lords and Ladies, the three witches return to Lancre to find that to find that it is being invaded by elves. These are not Shakespeare's elves, or even Tolkien's—these are the cruel Fair Folk out of old racial memories, the reason country people hang iron over the door and put out bowls of milk at night. Magrat is engaged to the King of Lancre and plans to give up witchcraft, since she feels she was never a witch "in the bone" like Nanny and Granny (Lords and Ladies 42). When the craftsmen of the town perform a play suspiciously like A Midsummer Night's Dream for the wedding, the barriers between the worlds are weakened and allow the elves to come through. Magrat finds the strength to defend the castle, while Nanny takes the risky path of awakening the ancient Horned King, the estranged consort of the Queen of the Fairies. Granny faces down the Queen herself: I ain't having elves here. You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves. [...] So bugger off. (Lords 281-2) With Magrat finally married to King Verence, Gytha and Esme find that they need a third witch for their coven. In Maskerade, a reworking of The Phantom of the Opera, they decide to ask young Agnes Nitt to join them. Agnes is doomed, like many fat girls, to be the one who is always "calm and capable in a crisis" (Maskerade 19), but she carries a secret inside: a split personality.
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