66 pages • 2 hours read
Anne RiceThe Witching Hour
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Presence of the Dead and Spirits
In The Witching Hour, Rice frequently focuses on hauntology, or the feeling of being haunted. Hauntology features prominently in funerals, occult communication with the deceased, and the spirit Lasher. Rowan’s childhood in California did not include the kind of jazz funerals that New Orleans is famous for. When she attends the funeral of her mother, Deirdre, Rowan is moved by how everyone kisses the corpse. When the same Mayfairs kiss her, she thinks that “They kissed the dead people here the way they kissed the living” (715). Both the dead and the living are important—and present—to the residents of New Orleans. During the funeral, Rowan thinks, “The dead are so close they can hear us […] ‘Ah, but you see,’ said the tall white-haired Ryan, as if he’d read her mind, ‘in New Orleans, we never really leave them out’” (672). The dead are considered a part of life. Aaron helps Rowan through her mother’s funeral and attends the funerals of other Mayfair family members. This can be contrasted with Petyr’s fear of cemeteries: “For me, the places of the dead have always held terror” (390). Members of the Mayfair family, and residents of New Orleans, are more comfortable being around the dead than 17th century scholars in Amsterdam, as well as 20th century Californians.
During and after his drowning in the San Francisco Bay, Michael communicates with the dead. At the time of his death, he has visions that include a woman who looks like Deborah, an emerald, a doorway, and the number 13. After Rowan rescues him, Michael develops an occult gift of psychometry, including being able to see images of the dead by touching objects that the dead touched. He believes that death is “perhaps the only genuine supernatural event we ever experience” (199). This opinion comes from his upbringing in New Orleans, including being familiar with the funeral parlor used by the Mayfairs. Michael also has visions of the dead when he is not touching objects with his bare hands. When he packs up his old store in San Francisco, he has a vision of Julien telling him to return to New Orleans. When Michael drowns a second time, in the pool of the First Street house, he has visions of various Mayfairs, but these visions are likely created by Lasher. Lasher is separate from humans and their ghosts. He is a spirit who doesn’t communicate with the dead like Michael or the Mayfairs. Yet, he haunts the Mayfairs like several of Rowan’s ancestors. Hauntology encompasses both spirits like Lasher and dead humans in Rice’s novel.
Houses and Homes
The Mayfair’s house in New Orleans and the Talamasca motherhouses play vital roles in The Witching Hour. The second line of the novel is about the Mayfair house on First Street: “He had been dreaming of the old house in New Orleans again” (3). This dream occurs after Dr. Petrie talks to Aaron about caring for Deirdre. The First Street house haunts Petrie, as well as other characters. It becomes a gothic presence after Carlotta neglects it and closes it off for many years: the “First Street house had taken on an air of perpetual gloom. [...] Its violet-gray paint began to peel, and its garden grew wild” (561). Gothic literature and film often include haunted houses with similar descriptions. Here, Rice alludes to the house from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Hitchcock’s film adaptation of it (called Manderley), which is haunted by the murdered titular character throughout the novel. In Rebecca and The Witching Hour, houses become characters with living presences. Rice describes the First Street house as “something alive [...] the place had absorbed the personalities of all the Mayfairs, hadn’t it, as old houses are supposed to do” (818). It is not simply a building—it is haunted by its inhabitants and is therefore a part of them.
The First Street house can be compared and contrasted with the Talamasca motherhouses in London and Amsterdam. Deborah calls the Talamasca motherhouse in Amsterdam “the devil’s house” (302). However, most of the Talamasca have found a home—a place to belong—in the motherhouses. Many members come to them as orphans or children with gifts that alienate them from their parents. Before meeting Deborah, Petyr is completely loyal to the Talamasca, which took him in as an orphan with psychic powers. When Petyr writes about his intention to go to Port-au-Prince, the head of the Talamasca, Stefan, begs him to come back to the motherhouse. In the only letter from Stefan in the Mayfair File (as opposed to Petyr’s many letters to him), Stefan writes, “Come home, Petyr!!!!” (337). The motherhouses are places filled with living scholars and research materials. The Talamasca’s properties can be contrasted with how the First Street house becomes Deirdre’s “tomb” (681) and Stuart’s tomb.
There are a few other houses featured in The Witching Hour. These include Cortland’s house in Metairie, on “Country Club Lane” (590), which is “pure elite suburbia” (866)—modern and chic. Like many other suburban homes, the positive atmosphere is only superficial. Underneath the facade is Cortland’s sexual abuse of Deirdre. While Michael and Rowan sell their San Francisco homes and feel no connection to them, they buy a vacation house in Florida, which they love. The house on the beach in Destin is a “Spartan modern affair” (839). This is the opposite of the old house on First Street that Michael renovates. He ends up being the one who remains in the First Street house when Rowan runs away with Lasher. Overall, Rice uses the houses in The Witching Hour to highlight “her love of architecture” (Ramsland, Katherine. The Witches Companion. Ballantine Books, 1996) and to show how intertwined one’s life can be with the place they call home.
Matrilineal Legacy and Female Desire
The Mayfair legacy and name are passed down through women, who indulge their high libidos. The first Mayfair to begin accumulating wealth is the second generation witch, Deborah. She has Lasher fetch jewels and coins, including the famous Mayfair emerald necklace. The third generation witch, Charlotte, uses slave labor on a plantation in Port-au-Prince to amass a large portion of the Mayfair fortune. Several subsequent generations continue the practice of slavery on the same plantation. Because of the Haitian Revolution, Marie Claudette moves to a new plantation in Louisiana. She is the Mayfair who legally establishes the legacy in 1789. The first witch to expand the fortune through a wide variety of investments is Mary Beth. During her lifetime, in New Orleans in the early 1900s, she buys properties, stocks, and other assets instead of slaves. Mary Beth uses her psychic powers to accurately predict profitable investments. However, the Mayfairs continue to employ Black servants in the house. The foundation of the legacy is slave labor, and their racist attitudes continue into the 20th century.
In order to inherit the Mayfair billions, Rowan must keep her last name and wear the emerald at her wedding. For many generations, it was common for brides to take the names of their husbands; however, the size of the legacy allows Mayfair women to pass down their wealth and name through the women of the family. The stipulations of the legacy are largely dictated by Lasher, who played a key role in the older generations gaining wealth. Lasher, like a family ghost, is also part of the legacy. The designee of the legacy is the one who sees him.
The size of the legacy also allows many Mayfair women to explore their sexuality. Both Mary Beth and Rowan seek out working-class lovers, and several Mayfairs, like Stella, are bisexual. Mary Beth, Katherine, and Stella all wear men’s clothing and go to Storyville with Julien. Their escapades occurred when sex work was legal in New Orleans, and they experimented with sex workers. Rowan’s thoughts about Michael illustrate her high libido: “a woman could find the smallest things about a man violently erotic” (793). Rowan wants to have more sex than Michael, who is much older than her and limited by his physical weaknesses, such as a heart condition. The high libidos of the Mayfair women cause them to desire sex with a supernatural being who cannot tire like a human. Deborah is called “the devil’s bride” (289); this foreshadows Part 4, which uses that phrase as a title (897).
After she marries Michael, Rowan begins “Lusting after the devil like a witch” (826). Lasher is able to give more orgasms than a human. His sexual appeal is the reason Rowan abandons both Michael and her dream of running a Mayfair Medical Center. Her lust is more powerful than her logic, suggesting that the sexual libido of the Mayfair women is directly tied to their supernatural magic. The power of matrilineal legacies and the world-shaping powers of the witches are embodied in their sexual liberation.
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