You know, the world can make you really, really, REALLY angry sometimes. And one of the best ways to gratify said anger is to pick a book about repressed young women giving the people who wronged and infantilized them their comeuppance through witchcraft. Yes, here we are, another book about women using magic to even the playing field against misogynistic and religiously extreme jerks, but I don’t care. When I’m feeling a certain way about the timeline we’re in, it’s better to satisfy those feelings through a good book and not other more bloody, gruesome ways. Just saying.
In 1970 Alabama, Neva Craven is a fifteen-year-old girl who accidentally gets pregnant. To protect her family from embarrassment and shame, her parents ship her off to Wellwood House for Unwed Mothers, a boarding house in Florida where other pregnant teenagers are sent to live in hiding. There, Neva is rechristened as Fern, along with several other girls with floral nicknames (Miss Wellwood’s “garden of girls”), including the rebellious Rose, the shy mute Holly, and the cynical Zinnia. Wellwood House runs on strict rules and the girls’ caretakers are abusive and uncaring. But everything changes when the girls find a book about practicing witchcraft, and for the first time, power lies in their hands.
The story of this book is like if The Book of Spells and Girl, Interrupted had a child. You have a plucky female protagonist who is shipped off to a new place where she meets all sorts of quirky new women, led by a rebellious mean girl who grows from an enemy to a friend. The girls are stuck together because they brought shame and humiliation onto their families by getting pregnant out of wedlock, chafing under a strict regimen of clinic visits, chores, and holy repentance for being a walking, talking sin.
And of course the adults looking after the girls take a sick joy out of shaming them. Miss Wellwood, the home owner, takes every chance to remind the girls how they disgraced their families with their “sin.” Diane, the social worker, pretends to care about the girls’ mental health, but she likes to slyly provoke the girls so they act up and get punished. And Dr. Vincent, the on-site doctor, physically abuses the girls and ignores all other doctors’ orders under the guise of “doing what’s best for them.” There is absolutely zero compassion shown to these girls, whether from their families or the Wellwood House staff. The religious shame put on them is also disgusting and hollow.
The level of detail given to the sensations of pregnant teenage girls was a touch excessive. At one point, one of the girls goes into labor, and every excruciating detail of muscle, blood, tissue, and female anatomy is laid out. It went on so long that I began to skip it and it took another several moments before the baby was born and the snuff film of a fifteen-year-old girl giving birth was finally over. It doesn’t help that the nurses and doctors regard the girl with immense condescension, strapping her to the chair with belts, saying how this girl is saved by the good work of Jesus Christ before the day has even dawned. Not a single adult shows an ounce of compassion for these girls.
Later on, another girl gives birth, only this time away from a hospital, because she was on the run from the man who raped and impregnated her when she went into labor. And did I mention that this girl is only fourteen years old?
Okay, I get the message. If every single adult in these girls’ lives are more concerned with clean self-image and religious purity, then it only makes the comeuppance they receive even more delicious. It also makes the girls’ friendships stronger, and their drive to escape this world of unempathetic and judgmental holier-than-thou adults even greater. But dear Lord.
I guess if there’s any takeaway, it’s that I am deeply disturbed by graphic sexual violence on underage children. I still remember every graphic detail of the crucifix masturbation scene in The Exorcist, and I’m pretty sure the birth scene here will stake its claim too.
While the witchcraft is impressive and the lengths Fern goes to achieve that magic are great, it all ends on a bit of a softer note than I thought this book would go.
The witchcraft in this book is not fluffy. It is bloody, sexual, and violent. Every spell comes with the price of blood, and the things these girls achieve with those spells is gross and violent, but well-deserved by their victims. The way this book was going, after everything these girls went through, you would expect for there to be no survivors of these girls’ wrath. But suddenly, everyone is shown mercy, and there is suddenly compassion for these terrible people who did unforgivable things to these girls?
Look, I know the discussion about who deserves justice and what that justice should look like is very important. But it feels like the book pulled back at the last minute and decided on a happier, less bloody ending. Personally, I was hoping for something like Carrie, where every single terrible person gets a creatively gruesome death, and the girls get bloody retribution.
It’s no secret here how passionate I am about women’s rights and equality, and that women deserve retribution for every wrongdoing they’ve faced. For a book this graphic about those wrongdoings, especially when done onto pregnant teenage girls, it seems kind of silly to not give those girls the retribution they’ve fought with blood, sweat, and tears for. The book takes place a few years before Roe vs. Wade, so show the girls’ bloody fight for their liberation and then hand them a victory that they can celebrate without apology. That if no one, not even the government, was going to save them, then they would damn well do it themselves with blood, fire, and all the magic they could take.
Anyway, the point is that the ending disappointed me in that it didn’t present the revenge fantasy it built up to.
The book also could have been trimmed a little. Some of the spell scenes go on way longer than necessary, with endless chanting and screaming and repetition. After a while, I got bored listening to the girls chant gibberish and wondered when the spell would start working. Same thing with the birth scenes. I understand their significance, but if there had been less screaming and repetitive dialogue, the story could have moved a little faster.
Of course, all this is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. It’s extremely compelling watching these girls deal with the Wellwood House staff, and the way backstories weave themselves into the narrative is very interesting. At one point, the perspective switches to Miss Wellwood, and somehow she becomes both a little sympathetic and even more disgusting all at once. Fern and the other girls all have interesting personalities, although you can’t help but think of Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted during Fern and Rose’s interactions.
I do wish we had spent more time with Holly, the youngest girl at Wellwood House, and her history with the man who impregnated her. Trying to keep Holly safe from that man becomes a huge plot point halfway through, even though we don’t know Holly or her baby’s father that well. In a book full of gross and uncomfortable scenes, I don’t imagine adding more scenes with a sexual predator priest assaulting an underage girl would make things any easier. But it probably would fuel Fern and her friends’ motivations for helping Holly.
If you’re looking for some gratifyingly bloody liberation for oppressed teenage girls, you might find something to like in this book. Be warned that it does take a while to get to the witchcraft, and some things about it don’t make sense. I’d say go for it if you want to spend some time in the early 70s and you just want to feel angry about how they treated women, and frankly, still do today.
The Library Key 