48 pages • 1 hour read
Melissa AlbertThe Hazel Wood
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Complexity of Mother-Child Relationships
A strong and consistent theme exploring complex mother–child relationships runs through the novel. Alice, for all her anger, toughness, and streetwise demeanor, is rocked to her core when Ella is taken; once Harold shows Alice in no uncertain terms that he wants nothing to do with Ella’s rescue, Alice knows she must be the one responsible for finding her. Ella is so important to Alice that she seeks Finch’s help (an act that, in another situation, would have chafed her pride) and pointedly ignores Ella’s own instruction via Audrey to avoid the Hinterland. Rescuing Ella quickly becomes Alice’s driving force and objective in the story. Even when Finch and later Althea state that the Hinterland is really after her, Alice feels the Hinterland’s objective doesn’t really matter; it does not change the fact that Ella must be saved. Foreshadowing this strong feeling in Alice is the scene in which she yells at Harold for treating Ella badly.
Ella raises Alice in a nomad-like existence that contributes to Alice’s resourcefulness and sense of independence. When it comes to Ella, though, Alice is sometimes as dependent as a child. She likes when Ella sleeps in her bed to comfort her and needs Ella’s soothing words when she ultimately returns to New York. Alice recognizes and appreciates that Ella is straight with her and treats her like a mature person almost all the time; for example, when Ella catches Alice reading Hinterland fan boards online, she erupts over Althea: “You think she wants to be your grandma? […] Not a chance. Althea doesn’t want you. So stop torturing yourself about what could be. In this life, it’s you. […] And me” (69). Alice refers to this moment as the “first and last time” Ella was ever “cruel” to her (69). Another example is the moment when Ella takes away the book Alice is reading and refers to her a child who shouldn’t read it. Alice is shocked because Ella generally treats her as if she is very mature. Despite these few times when conflict erupts between them, Ella and Alice are the tightest and most loving mother/daughter pair—although it turns out they are not blood-related.
Compared to the closeness between Ella and Alice, Ella and Althea grew further and further apart as Ella grew—ironically, considering the two were locked away in the Hazel Wood together for so long. When Althea’s death is announced by letter, Ella is briefly shaken but immediately hopeful: “It means we’re free” (5). Alice knows to some extent that Ella’s and Althea’s relationship grew dysfunctional but only discovers to what extent when Althea reveals Alice’s true identity, and by extension, Ella’s: “That girl is nobody’s mother” (248). Althea tells Alice that she (Althea) tried to return Alice to the Hinterland herself when Ella took her, but “Ella hated me for it, and she took you away. Far from them, far from me. Like I was a boogeyman too” (251).
Alice-Three-Times and her mother the queen in the Hinterland story have the most dysfunctional relationship of all: The queen does not nurse Alice, nurture her, nor love her; she does not even name her until Alice wakes as a seven-year-old one morning. The queen shows no involvement in Alice’s growth and no concern when the ice freezes Alice solid; she is only eager to see Alice go: “[…] it was as if that sliver of ice that had lodged in her heart the day the girl was born melted away” (92). Readers don’t know what became of Alice and her Story mother, but the last bit of story we hear of “Alice-Three-Times” as retold by Finch is filled with Alice’s murderous intentions.
Betrayal and Deception
Another strong theme in The Hazel Wood is that of betrayal—exemplified by Finch’s duplicity but echoed in the actions of several Stories—and deception, seen in several main and secondary characters.
Finch, eager for a doorway to the realm of something make-believe, makes a deal with Twice-Killed Katherine and the cab driver to deliver Alice to Birch, New York, the doorstep of the Hinterland. After a lifetime of unsuccessful attempts to fetch Alice back to her roots, the Hinterland characters try something different: They bribe Alice’s traveling partner. The betrayal Finch exacts here is ironic in a few ways. First, Alice remains steadfast in her goal to get to the Hazel Wood, so Finch’s help probably was not even necessary; perhaps the Hinterland characters did not want to risk Finch’s influence on Alice if he at some point in the journey changed his mind and tried to get her to go home. He does indeed attempt to do this, but it is once they’ve finally arrived in Birch, and only because he suddenly feels doubt, regret, and guilt for agreeing to fall in with Alice’s would-be captors. Second, Finch has long held a fascination for Althea and seems to have a genuine interest in Alice, so it is surprising he would toss his respect for them both to pursue what he might have perceived was an easier route between worlds. Finally, Alice seems to intuitively feel the irony of Finch’s betrayal once she understands it; after all, she only grudgingly appealed to him for help, was hesitant to allow Finch along, and fully intended to ditch him at some point along the way before the Hazel Wood so that he would not suffer the same fate as Ness’s friend Martin. Finch’s betrayal is clearly foreshadowed when he and Alice arrive at his friend’s house to crash for the night: “A line of moonlight ran like a thin white road from the crown of his head down his back. The longer I stared at it the more it made him look like he was splitting in two, revealing something shining beneath his skin” (113).
Other examples of betrayal include Anya’s betrayal of her stepbrother when she tricks him into the land of Death and Althea’s betrayal of both the Story Spinner and Janet when she leaves the Hinterland, taking the stories for publication.
Deception peppers the novel as well. Althea sends the letter to Ella claiming she is dead in an effort to get Alice back. Anya deceives her sister Lisbet when she lies about whose blood must spill. There is a thread of deception that runs through Ella’s and Alice’s relationship, despite their closeness; Alice tries to hide her interest in Althea and the Hinterland fan sites and chat rooms, closing the laptop when Ella arrives home: “She believed me, because we didn’t lie to each other. Except when we did” (67). The irony here is notable because when Alice reflects on her deception with the fan sites, she still has no idea that Ella has deceived her since she was a baby. Ella deceives Alice throughout their lives together, never revealing the truth to Alice about Alice’s identity or their quick moves and constant resettling.
Authority and Control Over One’s Actions
The novel uses the ideas of authority and control to heighten conflict and achieve a consistent and full character arc for Alice. Alice initially presents as a streetwise, no-nonsense individual with a toughened outer shell resulting from varied, sometimes stressful experiences on the road all her life. She is quick to anger and bold in her comebacks to Harold, Audrey, Finch, and the policeman and has no qualms about physically attacking Twice-Killed Katherine in Birch. Perhaps intuitively, she wants to fashion an identity of her own by taking the last name Crewe. These indicators point to a need within Alice for control; she seeks total authority over her own actions, making bold moves in the early stages of the search for Ella (looking in the apartment alone, investigating the empty parking garage alone) and making big decisions somewhat rashly, exemplified when she tells Finch she will never return to Harold’s apartment and when she throws out her school uniform. She rejects warnings from Ness and Ella to stay away from the Hazel Wood; the idea of giving up the search for the estate never enters her head.
For all her bold behavior and her impulsive, insistent search for Ella, Alice loses control over her own actions once Finch almost dies in front of her and she is pulled into the Halfway Wood. Foreshadowing this notion early in the book, Alice’s interior monologue hints that she is less confident than her demeanor suggests; compared to Audrey, she feels like “an awkward breadstick” (29). Later, in another moment of foreshadowing, her angry temper causes her to steer intentionally off the road, almost wrecking the rental and injuring them both. Once in the Halfway Wood, she uses the magical objects to advance her journey but is compelled by them; when she kills the aviatrix, it is as if someone else drives the bone dagger home, and though she doggedly pesters Hansa the Traveler for information, she gets little. The outside of the Hazel Wood manor is a tricky construct fashioned from the image built by her imagination, but inside the home, she has no control over where she ends up next. Althea grabs her and sends her to the Hinterland; in a similar way, the Story Spinner later sends her into her story at the moment of her birth.
Alice’s time in the Story is the ultimate example of her inability to control any actions; in terms of her character arc, she reaches the point of least control when she and the redhaired brother want to change the story but remain under the authority of the Spinner. Alice needs non-Story help in the form of Finch and Janet. Finally, she realizes that retelling the story will take control of it. Once back in New York, she must find ways to take control of her “real world” life that don’t involve anger-induced comments or actions. Thus, Alice’s character arc involves a transition from harsh and rash decisions to a complete loss of authority and control in the Hinterland to a return to independent thinking in her ex-Story frame of mind.
