The Witching Hour

“Deirdre was a beautiful girl now, beautiful as Antha and Stella had been. Beautiful they said as Miss Mary Beth.”

Rice has a fascination with beauty in many of her novels. This is most evident in her Sleeping Beauty series, but many of her characters in other works are also depicted as exceptionally beautiful. In this quote, beauty as part of the Mayfair legacy can be seen in the repetition of the word “beautiful,” which emphasizes the importance of beauty as an outward feature. The physical similarities between different generations of Mayfairs are partly due to the extensive incest in their family.

“Vivaldi and Dickens.”

Michael says he can’t fly without these two things—a recording of the Italian composer and violinist Vivaldi and a book by the English novelist Charles Dickens. Rowan finds this exceptionally attractive. The line is repeated on Page 222; Rice frequently uses repetition and rumination to create a feeling of being haunted by one’s own thoughts.

“Oh, I’ve been in hell, buddy, and let me tell you something about hell. It’s not hot. It’s cold.”

Michael says this quote to a cab driver when he arrives in New Orleans. He is referencing the cold climate of San Francisco—where he used to live. This quote is also a subtle allusion to Dante’s Inferno; Dante describes the center of hell as Satan frozen in ice.

“Almost all of this material is in the form of epistles, as this was, and still is, the primary form in which reports to the archives of the Talamasca are made.”

This passage is from the beginning of the File on the Mayfair Witches, written by Aaron. Using an epistolary structure allows Rice to utilize the first and second person (I/my and you/your pronouns), which hearkens back to the epistolary roots of the Gothic genre in classics like Frankenstein and Dracula.

“You may not remember Roelant, Stefan, but let me tell you now he was a fine painter, whose portraits have always evinced the happiness of Caravaggio, and had it not been for the malady which struck his bones and crippled him before his time, he might have been better regarded than he was.”

In this quote, Rice alludes to the Dutch painter Roelant Savery, as well as the Italian painter Caravaggio. In Conversations with Anne Rice, she says that “the allusions are there, I think to painting more than anything else. It’s a very rich source of inspiration” (Riley, Michael. Conversations with Anne Rice. Random House, 1996). Rice traveled to Amsterdam to see paintings, and the above passage from The Witching Hour takes place in Amsterdam.

“Seems he taught them a poem every time he came down; and they recited three or four of the past lessons for him, one a Shakespeare sonnet. The new one was from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

This passage is from the Talamasca’s interview with Richard Llewellyn. Here, he describes Julien’s interactions with the children of a sex worker. Julien gives them access to literature that they might not have otherwise encountered. This also borders on pedophilia, which is a controversial topic of Rice’s novel Belinda.

“‘Dust thou art,’ I whispered, thinking of the biblical phrase.”

This is another passage in the Mayfair file by Petyr, who writes about Lasher tormenting him. The Biblical allusion is to the Fall, when God made Adam and Eve mortal and cast them out of the Garden of Eden. To be “dust” is to be physically mortal and capable of dying or returning to dust. Lasher desires this mortality, or at least physicality, in the same way that Eve desired the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

“The French Quarter of New Orleans had been undergoing something of a revival since the early 1920s. Indeed, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson, and other famous writers lived there at various times.”

This quote is a description of the era of Stella Mayfair, the flapper, and reflects Rice’s own pride in being from New Orleans. Rice’s repetition, rumination, and gothic style are often reminiscent of the American writer William Faulkner, whom she references directly here.

“I’ve seen ‘the man.’ I’ve seen ‘the man’ for myself. I’ve seen what Petyr saw and what Arthur saw. I’ve seen Lasher with my own eyes.”

In this passage, Aaron describes the difference between reading the Mayfair file in the Talamasca motherhouse and personally investigating the case in New Orleans. He is able to verify what others recorded using his sensory perception. Rice’s stylistic use of anaphora—the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive clauses—highlights Aaron’s intensity as he insists that he has “seen ‘the man.’” The phrase “I’ve seen” is repeated four times in this passage; this choice also delays the name of the man and “what” Petyr and Arthur saw—Lasher—which creates a dramatic effect upon the reveal.

“Why, this is like another country, this.”

Rowan thinks this after arriving in New Orleans for her mother’s funeral. New Orleans’s Mardi Gras celebrations can be compared to Carnival overseas, such as the massive celebrations in Rio de Janeiro. Most cities in California, where Rowan lives for most of her life, do not follow the Catholic calendar of Mardi Gras and lent.

“He had finished the Mayfair history, and he felt raw and exhilarated and filled with quiet excitement. He knew that he and Rowan were now the new chapter yet unwritten, he and Rowan who had been characters in this narrative for some time.”

This quote reflects how much of The Witching Hour is taken up by the Talamasca’s file. The reader might feel as Michael does when Rice finally returns to the narrative in 1989 that began in Part 1. The unwritten nature of their future points to Michael’s belief in free will.

“And I don’t fear your ghost, even if he sports the cock of an archangel.”

Rowan says this when Carlotta shows her around the First Street house for the first time and tells her about Lasher. The sexual language here is common in Rice’s novels. Since there are many references to Michael as an archangel, this sexual content is about both Lasher and Michael. While the quote characterizes Rowan as confident and brave, it still adds a sense of fear and mystery to the characters.

“This house will be here when you and I are gone.”

Michael says this to Rowan after being able to examine the First Street house up close. His statement emphasizes the mortality between them and suggests a certain immortality surrounding gothic architecture and its legacy. This passage develops the theme of Houses and Homes. It is also ironic in a post-Katrina world; the hurricane destroyed many New Orleans houses that residents thought would outlive them.

“These rooms are like shrines.”

This is another quote that develops the theme of houses and homes. Rowan compares the First Street house with the shrines of saints, which are often found in houses of God, or churches. It shows how important the rooms are to Rowan, as she regards them as both sacred and holy.

“Now it seemed a living thing, with a tale to tell of its own, and she found herself hesitant to remove it from the soiled velvet.”

This passage is about the Mayfair emerald, which is an important symbol of Lasher’s pact with the Mayfair witches and the family legacy. Rice personifies the emerald in this passage, connecting it with all of the people who had stories to tell the Talamasca.

“Just a miracle, the way the creation of Mayfair Medical was a miracle, and that Rowan wanted a baby was a miracle, and that the house would soon be theirs was a miracle…and like seeing a ghost was a miracle—a ghost beaming at you from the sanctuary of a church, or from under a bare crepe myrtle tree on a cold night.”

Early in the novel, Rowan is described as a miracle worker in her profession as a neurosurgeon. In this quote, Rice uses the same diction to connect Rowan’s gift with Michael’s thoughts about the miracle of seeing Lasher in the church and in the garden when he was a child. This develops the theme of The Presence of the Dead and Spirits by associating being a child and having a child with death.

“He’s as real as lightning; as real as the wind is real.”

An elder Mayfair, Peter, says this about Lasher at Rowan and Michael’s engagement party. Peter asserts that intangible things, like Lasher and wind, exist in reality. Rice uses repetition of the word “real” to emphasize his point about the presence of the dead and spirits.

“It’s the witching hour, darlin’, and we have it all to ourselves.”

Michael says the title of the novel at midnight on his wedding night. The diction of “darlin’”—which is repeated throughout the novel—is one way Rice portrays Michael’s Southern charm. This quote is also ironic because Lasher appears to Rowan that night; Michael and Rowan are never alone in the house.

“And all she had to do was call him, like Prospero calling to Ariel.”

This is an allusion to The Tempest by Shakespeare. Rice casts the spirit Ariel as Lasher, and Rowan as Prospero, the magician. The genderbending here is interesting because there is a 2010 adaptation of The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor, that features a female Prospero played by Helen Mirren.

“Go away, Aaron. Go far away. Go hide in the Motherhouse in Amsterdam or London.”

There are several letters in the Talamasca file that ask members to come home to the motherhouse. This quote from Rowan can be contrasted with those moments, as she is threatening Aaron rather than offering him sanctuary. Rice’s repeated mentions of the motherhouses develop the theme of houses and homes, as Rowan becomes the doorway for Lasher by giving birth to him.

“Maybe we undergo a metamorphosis, rather than a physical death. And all the age-old words—etheric body, astral body, spirit—are just terms for this fine cellular structure that persists when the flesh is gone.”

This is Aaron’s speculation about Rowan’s assertion that Lasher is made up of tiny cells. It causes him to reconsider what happens to humans after death. Rice is interested in redefining spiritual and supernatural elements; in later books, Lasher is defined as a taltos, or part of a mythical race created by witches.

“The witching hour is at hand, Rowan, when Christ was born into this world, when the Word was finally made flesh, and I would be born, too, my beautiful witch, I am done with waiting.”

These are Lasher’s words as he violently possesses the baby in Rowan’s womb. He wants to emulate Jesus Christ in being born as human. This recalls how Rowan and Michael planned to call the baby Chris, and how Rice named her son Chris.

“Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de Winter at Manderley.”

In this passage, Michael marvels at being the kind of person who wears “a dark satin smoking jacket, with velvet lapels” (1028). He is working class, unlike the character he references. Rice alludes to Rebecca, the novel by Daphne du Maurier and Hitchcock’s film adaptation of it. Maxim de Winter murdered the titular character in Rebecca.