Book #7: The Witches of Eastwick

Book #7: The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

January 8, 2013


Prior to reading this book (which is Updike's best known, but not most lauded), I'd only read one text by the author, the short story "A&P" about a disgruntled young man working at a dead-end job at the grocery store who up and quits after a confrontation between his uptight boss and some scantily-clad girls. One review of the book (printed on the back of the text) describes Updike's writing style as "impressionistic art," and I thought that that was a good way of putting it. That's what I both enjoy and find frustrating about Updike: he just loads the narrative with these fascinating, far-from-cliche descriptions and metaphors and similes, but sometimes it's easy to get lost in those descriptions. That was definitely the case with this book, but once I got used to Updike's style (I can vaguely remember, as an undergraduate, feeling a little disoriented the first time I read "A&P"), I was able to get into the story...so much so that some nights, I literally couldn't put it down, even after I'd met my reading "goal" for the day.

I've been framing a lot of these entries around comparisons between the text itself and other takes on it in popular culture. The Witches... was made into a movie, of course, but I've only seen it once, and the movie was halfway through at that. I felt pretty lost, but I enjoyed Jack Nicholson's performance as Satan personified (Darryl Van Horne), though I thought the special effects were really cheesy. Anyway, from what little I saw, I can say that the movie is very VERY different from the book. That's all I have to say about that, except that throughout my reading, I did imagine Nicholson as the demonic, rambling, charming, awkward character.

The story takes place in the fictional town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, which is a quaint little coastal village. It's the late 1960's (the book was published in the mid-'80s), a time of great change and tension in our country. This was a time of rock-n-roll, war, and women's liberation, and even little New England towns were not immune to these. The three main characters of the text are Alexandra, Sukie, and Jane, three divorcees who are also witches. It's unclear whether they came into their powers as they began rejecting the bonds of marriage, or if their powers came on after their husbands were gone. Alexandra's husband, reduced to dust (by her? by the pressures that marriage put on him?) is in a jar at the top of her kitchen shelf; Sukie's husband became the flat place-mats on her dining table. The three women get together to bond over snacks and alcohol, and also to kind of recharge their powers, the three of them being more powerful as a coven than alone, of course.

All the talk about the women finding their powers after shedding their oppressive marriages (for it seems that their husbands themselves were not the problems, but rather the institution of marriage to which they were bound), and the "cone of power" that they created together, and all of the imagery of dancing by moonlight...it all made me think of the women's empowerment stuff that was popular around that time, getting in touch with Mother Nature, yada yada. If you look or listen to some of that old feminism stuff, it kinda sounds like "witch" talk, and I'd bet that some uptight conservatives at that time even took it as such. What Updike did here was, he merely made it "reality" in the world of these characters, in Eastwick...rather than the metaphorical powers of independence and sexual liberation, these characters have real powers, powers that can strike a create a storm on a sunny day or strike a pesky dog or squirrel (or even a person) dead.

As I read the book, I constantly questioned Updike's stance on feminism. The connection between this book and feminism is not only obvious, it is undeniable. But at times, I almost felt that he took on an anti-feminist stance. I mean, these women are unhappy with their lives at the start of the book. Being single mothers has left them near poverty, in spite of their powers, and when Van Horne arrives in town, they no longer find satisfaction in their once-powerful coven. In spite of their powers, these women are given to the emotions and behavior that are often negative stereotypes of women: worrying about their age and weight (especially Alexandra, a kind of "matriarch" for the group), making crude remarks about the women with whose husbands they are sleeping (I have nothing against a woman "getting hers," but when one partner in a love affair is married, that's messed up...and these women had even slept with each others husbands!), and becoming jealous to the point of homicide when their beloved Van Horne marries young and pretty Jenny.

Van Horne is an interesting character, for sure. At first, he seems like a big-time swindler. He moves into this huge old mansion that hasn't been occupied in years, and he fills it with junk. He doesn't pay any of his bills. He claims to be a chemist, working on some kind of power-producing mix of elements or something. But he successfully charms all three witches...perhaps literally charming them, putting them under a spell. It almost seems as if Van Horne is some kind of demon. Not THE devil...he doesn't seem self-assured enough, but definitely something not-of-this-world (a couple of clues to this: he calls Easter a "depressing day" for him; when he gives the guest sermon at the Unitarian church, he denounces God for putting so much care into creating horrible little insects and parasites, and jokingly claims that he would have done better). He engages in sexual acts with all three women at once, as well as separately. He encourages the women in their respective artistic pursuits (Alexandra, to become a big-time sculptor; Jane, to improve her already-expert cello-playing by challenging her with Bach; Sukie, a journalist, by encouraging her to write novels), which seems nice at first, but ultimately hurts all three women in various degrees (probably Jane the most, as she becomes obsessed with the music, neglecting her children, and is heartbroken when her cello is destroyed by her dog).

Jenny comes into the picture as the grown orphan of the Gabriels. Sukie had been sleeping with her boss Clyde, who went off on his blabbermouth wife one night and beat her to death with a fire poker before hanging himself. The witches like Jenny, who is younger (but seriously, not much younger...what is with the obsession with age?), and innocent, and eager-to-please. But they turn on her when she first moves in with, then marries Van Horne, whom they all three loved and wanted for themselves. They curse her to get cancer and die, which she does...after which, her husband flees with her brother, for they were carrying on an affair practically right in front of her, in that dilapidated mansion. In the end, the witches, no longer satisfied and feeling that their powers are individually fading, conjure up new husbands, and that's the end of the book.

I felt like that right there, the ending, was almost anti-feminist itself. I feel like it says more about the state of the world today than about the characters themselves. These women wanted marriage when they didn't have it, and wanted to be rid of its shackles once they were in place. Marriage isn't sacred to them, just as it isn't sacred to really anybody anymore. Alexandra especially reflects on how her marriage with Ozzy (whom she remembers more with affection than bitterness) shaped her in ways that she resented. I believe in monogamous love between two people, and I believe in marriage. Of course being with someone that long will affect the kind of person that you evolve into...your life, your personality, is always shaped by the people you encounter on a day-to-day basis. That's what you sign on for with marriage, and I don't think enough people understand that going in. You're going to change...your partner is going to change, too. The point of marriage is to change together, and to get through the hard times.

As I watched a wedding on a TV show today, I began to tear up. I'm a sucker for weddings. I love weddings. But I don't think I'd ever have a traditional one myself...in a white dress, in a church, with the vows, yada yada. The traditional wedding ceremony no longer reflects the values of our society. The white dress...come on, most brides aren't virgins, so who are we trying to fool? 'Til death parts us...how many people follow that one? Not many anymore. So while I love the romantic fantasy of a wedding, I simply don't feel that it's an appropriate ceremony to commemorate a marriage today. There's no clear connection between a wedding and a marriage.

Even though I didn't particularly like any of the characters in this book (I do like Alexandra, though I found her obsessing about her weight and her age to be annoying; Sukie seems like she'd be fun to hang out with, but not very trustworthy, especially to any married woman), I really enjoyed the book itself. I love books that make me think, and this book definitely gave me a lot to think about. My favorite bit of the whole book was a piece of advice that Alexandra gave to Jane. Jane, even in her mid-thirties, is somewhat insecure about herself as a lover, calling herself a "boring lay." Alexandra advised that she not worry about it from the man's perspective, but to consider her own needs, telling her friend to look at her partner as being a tool for her pleasure, kind of like a vibrator. This dehumanization of men might be offensive to some, but I found it a refreshing view of sex. I mean, a man's gonna get his pleasure as long as he comes...which he will, it's so easy for them. But for a woman, it's much harder, especially if she is insecure. As I said, I'm no conservative...I definitely thought that the witches were justified in their (mostly) harmless spells against the obnoxious, holier-than-thou women in their town. But to do those things on top of sleeping with their husbands...that's just adding insult to injury, pettiness, not something that I would want to associate with being a strong, independent woman.

(To the left) Jack Nicholson, who is an amazing actor in almost everything he's in. This picture was just too bad-ass to pass up. 

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(To the left) A cello. Updike includes a lot of descriptions of Jane playing Bach on her cello in the book. When I was an undergrad I lived with a woman who played the cello. She didn't play it very often, though. I put on a couple of Bach cello suites as I wrote this entry. It's actually really beautiful stuff.