Age and rage in Terry Pratchett’s ‘witches’ novels

Abstract

Focusing on Terry Pratchett’s two ‘witches’ series, the Lancre Coven novels and the Tiffany Aching series for young adults, this article analyses how Pratchett counters the traditional vision of the witch as an old and evil hag and presents an image of old femininity as valuable, admirable and even heroic. However, there is more to Pratchett’s works than just exposure and subversion of negative stereotypes. He also weaves an ethics into his novels and presents anger and responsible action as essential in order to react against situations of injustice or neglect affecting the elderly. Situating Pratchett’s works within the framework of cultural gerontology and gender studies, this article will demonstrate that his ‘witches’ novels both subvert given beliefs about old age and articulate a call for individual and communal responsibility towards the elderly.

Keywords:

• Terry Pratchett
• Lancre Coven novels
• Tiffany Aching novels
• fantasy
• witches
• old age
• anger
• death

Notes

1. Medusa in Greek mythology, Grendel’s mother from Beowulf, Baba Yaga in Slavic folklore or Ayesha after her age-reversal experience in H. Rider Haggard’s She (1887) are some other frightening examples in myth, folklore and popular fiction. All flesh-eating ghouls from folklore and popular horror look corpse-like. The film The Witches (1990) and the recent Tale of Tales (2015) offer frightening images of elderly witches. Saruman, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1955), is old and evil. Underneath his mask, Darth Vader is elderly and deformed in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983). Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in David Lynch’s Dune (1984) is old, flatulent and covered in black pustules. Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and its eight sequels has a horribly burnt, old face. In Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep (2013), The True Knot, a group of extremely old supernatural beings, keep their youthful appearances and maintain their energy by feeding on the steam (or essence) of extremely talented young people.

2. Even though this echoes the contemporary representations of witches whose over-confidence is punished, Pratchett does not condemn power in a witch. He only punishes those witches who forget their power is attached to responsibilities towards others.

3. Pratchett also focuses on the experiences of old age for men, especially their feeling of being useless after retirement. In The Shepherd’s Crown, for example, men complain that women ‘[hold] all the power indoors – as they had for the years their men had been out working – and they [have] no intention of giving any of it away’ (2016: 164). Now, men sit uselessly at home, where their ‘job is to lift [their] feet while [their wives sweep] around [them]’ (167) or go to the pub, which is ‘both an entertainment and a refuge for the old boys’ (165).