White is for Witching

What is horror? The movie business made millions on horror films that reduced the
genre to the on-screen depiction of outlandish monsters. But a handful of literary works
have explored an alternative conception of horror—one that resides in our own hearts
and minds. When Colonel Kurtz, at a key juncture in Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of
Darkness, shouts out "The horror! The horror!" he isn’t confronting a vampire or
werewolf, merely his own personal capitulation to evil. He is the beast, and it dwells
within.

Helen Oyeyemi focuses on precisely this kind of terror in her 2009 novel White is for
Witching. Here the narrator, a troubled young woman named Miranda Silver, might be
haunting herself. She hears voices and sees ghosts, but is this a visitation from the
afterlife, or just a sign of psychological turmoil and impending mental collapse?

She resides in a bed-and-breakfast run by her father Luc,
and at certain moments the building steps forward as
narrator in Oyeyemi’s novel. The house has plans of its
own, and they reflect dark, destructive desires. But, here
too, Miranda shares some of the guilt—at times she seems
like an extension of the haunted house, and it channels its
maleficent energies through her. Yet, from another
perspective, Miranda is little more than a victim, the
plaything of forces beyond her capability to comprehend
or control.

Some have compared Helen Oyeyemi to Henry James, and
at first glance this seems a strange connection. White is for
Witching is an unconventional novel, less a structured story
than an extended mood piece, a rumination on horror as
personified in a disintegrating personality. Even so, White
is for Witching captures some of the characteristic Jamesian
ambiguity, the openness to multiple interpretations that has
kept literary scholars debating, more than a century after it
was written, whether The Turn of the Screw is really a ghost story, or just a
metaphorical haunting that reminds us of the dark corners of everyday existence.

This kind of existential dread of the horror within is perfectly suited for realization via
the techniques of literary fiction. Even so, only a few authors have plumbed its depths.
Women authors have played a significant role in developing this theme, and we can
trace its evolution from the Bronte sisters all the way to "The Lottery" (Susan Jackson),
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), and works by contemporary writers such as Housekeeping
(Marilynne Robinson) and The Orange Eats Creeps (Grace Krilanovich). In these
books, horror doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in terms of ghosts and haunted
mansions, but might appear in the form of an eating disorder or obsessive-compulsive
behavior.

White is for Witching begins with Miranda Silver returning to her home in Dover
after a lengthy period of institutionalization. Her mental state is precarious, perhaps
even psychotic, and she suffers from pica, a dangerous disorder marked by a craving
for non-nutritional objects. In Miranda’s case, she eats chalk. The recent death of
her mother Lily has aggravated her compulsions, but after a long stint under medical
supervision she is ready to resume normal life. In a moment of atypical ambition, she
even applies to Cambridge—although perhaps less because of her academic aspiration
and more because her twin brother Eliot is doing the same. Eliot’s application is
rejected, but Miranda is accepted, and she now must control her self-destructive
impulses, and adapt to the demands of university life.

In the hands of another novelist, this story might have resulted in a triumphal
reintegration into society, a returning from the brink for our troubled protagonist.
But White is for Witching is not that kind of book. Miranda not only fails to find her
way back to normalcy at Cambridge, but even manages to drag her intimate friend Ore
into her psychic malaise. Before long, Miranda has returned to her haunted home in
Dover, and has even convinced Ore to pay a long visit.

But the evil building is hostile to outsiders. Sometimes it traps people in its confines
—in magical areas where they are held captive. The building’s elevator is especially
dangerous, always threatening to take people to floors that they never knew existed,
and from which they might never return. Miranda is conflicted between loyalty to the
house and horror at the danger it represents. Or perhaps I could describe her dilemma
as a choice between seeing herself as part of the deadly tradition the home represents,
or as a victim that must escape from its clutches.

Readers will probably find this vacillation unsettling, and perhaps ultimately
unsatisfying. Even at the conclusion of the novel, they won’t be sure who did
what to whom. The plot leaves behind a tangle of loose ends and unresolved
conflicts, and some of them were hardly developed before getting abandoned. For
example, we learn early in the book that Miranda’s mother died during a violent
incident in Haiti, and I kept expecting that the circumstances would be explained.
Yet Oyeyemi skips over this, as if were hardly worth discussing—although the
mother's death appears to precipitate everything that happens subsequently in the
book. The same is true of the incidents that resulted in Miranda’s institutionalization
at the start of the novel. The reader is told that Miranda can’t remember what happened
in the moments leading up to her collapse, and though we eventually are given a few
hints, the sequence of events remains confusing. Again and again, the link between
cause and effect is tenuous.

This compression of key incidents that seem loaded with tragedy into a tiny number
of facts undercuts the emotional impact of the novel. But the poetic qualities in the
book compensate, in some degree, for the looseness in plot and structure. At times,
White is for Witching, moves away from the constraints of the novel, and instead
operates as a richly imaginative—if slightly feverish—journal. We continue to read
on, despite gaps in the narrative that a more conventional author would have filled.

And, to some extent, Oyeyemi earns my praise for infusing even the most outlandish
details in this story with a plausible psychological resonance. I may walk away from
this book wondering whether it isn’t more a hallucination than a structured narrative.
But I could imagine reading accounts of just this sort in collection of psychiatric case
studies. And this is more than just the chronicle of a medical condition. It is a legit
horror novel. After all, what could be scarier than a ghost story where you can’t
escape…because you are the ghost?

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from
Basic Books.

Publication Date: August 14, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King

Week 31
O ur Lady of Darkness
by Fritz Leiber

Week 32
G rendel
by John Gardner

Week 33
W hite is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi