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Unveiling Curses: Margaret Drabble's The Witch of Exmoor

© Pamela St. Clair

The characters of Margaret Drabble’s The Witch of Exmoor have been accused of being caricatures (see James Wood’s review in the New York Times Book Review of October 17, 1997) rather than fully conceived portraits. This criticism stems, in part, from an intrusive unnamed narrator who reveals the characters' traits without permitting us to share the characters' inner thoughts. As if offering stage directions, the narrator opens the novel: “Begin on a summer evening. Let them have everything that is pleasant.” The narrator returns often to change scenes with directives such as, let’s leave so and so behind and turn to this person instead. Another example: “Now we may return to Lily McNab. You remember the name of Lily McNab, child psychotherapist? We have not yet been introduced.” Hence, characters’ inner lives are sacrificed for this unnamed storyteller's unfiltered opinions. I will admit up front that I dislike such intrusions, which tell the story rather than show it. I don’t necessarily need a lot of plot, but I do want a world and the people in it to come alive without my being told that it is coming alive.

Having conceded this bias, I’m now going to suggest why such intrusions work here, or at least why I think Drabble chose to employ them. Because the novel ridicules contemporary British society (including literary criticism, corporate greed, politics, and the arts, among other subjects), I think the characters are deliberately flat. They lack substance because society lacks substance. We’re vegetarians because we’re supposed to be vegetarians. Or, we don’t inhale because we’re not supposed to inhale or we do inhale because we’re supposed to inhale. And, like their fellow ladder climbing North-American counterparts, the British want more, more, more. But the Witch of Exmoor (Frieda Haxby Palmer, mother of Daniel, Rosemary, and Gogo) has decided that she wants a bit less (ex-mo[o]re?). So, she abandons her family and her comfortable life to live in seclusion in a dilapidated mansion by the sea. Her family thinks she’s nuts. Their concerns, however, when they are not concerned with themselves or with their own immediate family, center upon money (Frieda’s will and how it will be distributed) and upon reputation (what will people think?).

The Palmers reflect contemporary society’s mores and values (as the narrator proceeds to explain) and its ethnic diversity. Rosemary is married to the Jewish Nathan Herz and Gogo to the Guyanese David D’Anger. By making them caricatures, Drabble pokes fun at the very caricatures themselves.