With the death of John Updike (1932-2009) in January it seems apropos to reflect on the work for which – though not his most celebrated – he will perhaps be best remembered: The Witches of Eastwick. Eastwick, the sleepy middleclass outpost on Rhode Island (itself “the Fag end of creation” according to the author), provides rich pickings for Updike’s appraisal of bourgeoisie mores and sixties feminism. Middle class, protestant (Lutheran) and moribund, Eastwick describes the provincial loci with which the author had most truck.
Rhode Island: The Non-Conformist State
Despite the apparent pedestrian provincialism that obtains in Eastwick, the state that dissenter Roger Williams established after his exile and to which religious contrarian Anne Hutchinson fled after her expulsion from the Massachusetts Bay Colony retains an air of its erstwhile non-conformity.
The triumvirate of titular witches – the matriarchal Alexandra, gamine gossip columnist Sukie, and cellist and avowedly “dirty” Jane – are very much renegades in the local community. While the autos-da-fé of yore may be no more, the town is presided over by an Inquisitorial cadre of women who are ready to immolate the witches in the name of good taste.
The relicts have offended Eastwick’s sensibilities by taking (married) lovers subsequent to the demise of their husbands. Their husbands’ deaths have been the women’s liberation. Within the first few pages this is artfully conveyed – not explicitly but in the somewhat macabre ends to which they have put their mates’ earthly remains.
Alexandra’s has become “some polychrome dust swept up and kept in a jar as a souvenir.” While Jane’s Sam “hangs in the cellar…among dried herbs and simples and occasionally sprinkled into a philtre.” And Sukie has fashioned her Monty into plastic place settings. Moreover, the three have grown third teats and are able to harness the powers of forgotten female totems – Ceres, Demeter and Cybil are more at home in Eastwick than Santa Maria. Their Thursday nights are reserved for magical soirées where they solicit preternatural powers and incant the town’s menfolk from their marital beds.
The Devilish Daryl van Horne & The Lenox Mansion
That is, until Old Nick, in the shape of Darryl van Horne, comes to town. Van Horne is the New York socialite come to Eastwick to seek refuge from city life and take up residence of the dilapidated Lenox mansion. Amateur of Pop Art and convinced he’s the man to reconcile what he terms “the Big Interface between solar and electrical energy”, this devilishly enigmatic stranger quickly becomes the cynosure of the town’s and the coven’s attentions.
The three’s Thursday night are exchanged for visits to the renovated Lenox house. Here, the four play magical games of tennis with balls that are wont to transmogrify into bats and frogs before they are returned. Sessions of long drinks and orgiastic bathing that would put the Romans to shame complete their evenings and finally prove the outré straw that breaks the camel’s back of propriety for Eastwickians.
The Devil Has All The Best Lines
William Blake wrote of fellow poet John Milton that he was 'A true Poet of the Devil's Party without knowing it'. Updike understands perfectly that he has given his antichrist the best lines. Always ready with a bon mot while at the same time obliged to rearrange his unaccustomed facial features after he has delivered it, Updike’s devil in human form is pitched perfectly between suavity and gaucheness.
His final monologue – a sermon delivered at the local church – he has entitled “This Is A Terrible Creation”. It is perhaps the finest piece of bedevilled polemic and Dark Side political persuasion since Milton. His closing coup de grâce – “So vote for me next time, OK? Amen.” – introduces a note of humour into a novel that takes a decidedly dark twist in its final third.
Witchcraft As The Venture Of Women Into The Realm Of Power?
The novel’s finale and the suspicion of misogyny it leaves with reader disturbed and continues to disturb its audience. It is, indeed, somewhat disquieting to find that a novel which contains the archfiend himself casts its female characters as the most malignant players of the piece. The witches’ black arts and jealous hearts wreak cancer and death.
Lucifer, however, betakes himself from Eastwick benignly – with just a whiff of sulphur and an unexpected air of complaisance. The women only rediscover their scruples too late. It suggests that matriarchy and female camaraderie lend themselves to sexual license and excess. Updike writes in the afterword to his novel: “Witchcraft is the venture, one could say, of women into the realm of power.” The sentiment is perhaps not to be commended, but the three hundred pages he ekes from it certainly are.
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike can be purchased here.
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