“Two little witches without scruples or ulterior motives, I said to myself, divided between fear and delight.”

First published in French 30 years ago as La Sorcière, Marie NDiaye’s novel has been translated into English as The Witch by Jordan Stump. The story of a woman trapped in a bad marriage is still as fresh today as it was a generation ago. This year, it is competing for the International Booker Prize.

Bloody business

Lucie, a housewife and a mediocre witch, initiates her 13-year-old twin daughters, Maud and Lise, to the power to see the future. They’ll cry tears of blood, but it will not be painful. The women in Lucie’s family are the ones with the power, and her mother, she believes, is a witch extraordinaire. However, her father’s indifference has prevented her mother from really putting her powers to use and she claims she prefers it this way. As for Lucie, who can only manage blurry visions, she is further cowed down by her husband’s open contempt for her talents.

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There is no strict limitation on who can be initiated – which makes Lucie share her powers with her neighbour, Isabelle, who harbours an ambition for money and status, and loathes how being a mother has sabotaged it. The powers have been squandered, but Lucie believes that if her daughters use them well and wisely, she will finally have something to show for being a dutiful, if not a good, witch.

As her daughters show uncharacteristic spunk and severity, another side of Lucie’s life begins to unravel. Her brutish husband flees with her money, and though she has no desire to win him back, she will not let him get away with the handsome sum of 120,000 francs. Moreover, the money has strings attached to it – it has been gifted by her father, but he asks for it to be returned when he ends up deep in debt. To add to the mess is her parents’ impending divorce after what she believes was a lifetime of happiness. She races against time, making elaborate plans to reunite her parents. Her mother has moved on, while her father is committed to his new bachelorhood. On the other hand, the more reclusive her husband becomes, the more her distraught mother-in-law comes to rely on Lucie.

No exit

It is not often that fiction addresses the impact of divorce on adult children, and it is even rarer to observe how the break-up of one’s parents affects one’s own marriage. Lucie makes no secret of her desperation, stating very clearly that she would not be able to “survive” the termination of her parents’ marriage. The childhood misassumption that one is capable of fixing a parent is not dispelled in adulthood – Lucie holds on to the belief that she can be a good daughter if she can pull her father out of his financial troubles and remind her mother of her marital vows.

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In many ways, this preoccupation with bringing her parents back together – a project each one of us takes up enthusiastically at some point in our lives – makes her blind to the failings of her own marriage. The tragedy of her own life pales in comparison. The separation was inevitable – a natural step after playing their parts of husband/wife and father/mother. And if Lucie is timid and withdrawn, her husband is hulking and hateful.

The Witch also deserves a broader conversation on a woman’s ambition and personhood in a marriage. Isabelle, imposing and resourceful, is forced into motherhood even though she clearly hates it. She resents her son for cutting her life short. Lucie, too, is doomed to a life of boredom and second-guessing, never daring to venture out on her own. Her husband, meanwhile, not only successfully shakes up his life but also manages to start a new family – and he is certainly no more remarkable than his wife. Lucie’s mother’s brilliance is doused by her father’s apathy, and after marriage, she witnesses her mother-in-law being consumed by the incompetence of her grown children. The success of each marriage might vary, but the subjugation of women is uniform.

The novel may be read as an indictment of marriage, especially by women, who stand to lose more than they gain as they assume the more difficult roles of mother and of caregiver to the elderly. Lucie’s troubled roles as an anxious mother, fretful daughter, and regretful daughter-in-law take her further and further away from her own desires and freedom, even as she transitions into a single woman. There is always the scope for the man to opt out – to return to singlehood or start anew – but a woman, once married, is trapped for life.

Also read:

The Witch, Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump, Quercus Books.