Inspiring Older Readers
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
The first thing I need to say is that if you’ve watched the hugely enjoyable piece of nonsense movie-making that also goes by the name of The Witches of Eastwick, please set aside whatever impression you’ve gained from that. The film is big, glossy fun with plenty of larger than life performances but it really only comes into contact with Updike’s book at tangents.
Published in 1984, this is Updike’s playful and essentially reactionary take on the counter-culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s and a fantasy that puts women at the centre of the action for the first time in his career as a writer of fiction.
Updike’s reputation was built on a surgical dissection of suburban America which his richly textured style explores in sumptuous, acidic detail. The fact that he’s chosen to write a fantasy – perhaps even an allegory – doesn’t mean that he gives up on all those qualities that make him formidable when it comes to style. His ability to use a fecund density of prose to conjure-up three-dimensional detail is, for me at least, a hallmark of all his writing.
Set in a fictional Rhode Island town, Eastwick, Updike conjures-up a sensuous group of modern-day witches. These are not the witches of Hammer Horror vintage but three divorcees and now lone parents in their late thirties—Jane Smart, a cellist; Alexandra Spofford, a sculptor and creator of touristy knick-knacks and Sukie Rougemont, who writes for the local rag. The three of them, bound together by a sort of simmering sexuality, have become a coven of sorts with, Updike suggests, real powers:
"In the right mood and into their third drinks they could erect a cone of power above them like a tent to the zenith, and know at the base of their bellies who was sick, who was sinking into debt, who Was loved, who was frantic, who was burning, who was asleep in a remission of life's bad luck. . . ."
They spend their time rather aimlessly seducing any married man in town who either crosses their path or becomes the target of a ‘restorative project’ to protect them from their more conventional and cartoonishly oppressive wives.
Tucked away in this quiet little town it’s all very cosy in its own way but it’s also becoming just a tiny bit boring for the three women. That is until the unlikely figure of New York mystery man, Darryl Van Horne shows up, buys a local pile and turns it into the hub of everything shiny, pop-art modern. But Darryl’s no ordinary playboy looking for sanctuary from the big city – he’s by turns physically desirable and repulsive, he seeds expectation and ambition into the three friends, opens a smorgasbord of sexual perversion and eventually begins to subtly divide and alienate them. It’s never made explicit whether Darryl is a bit of a devil or The Devil but it really doesn’t matter too much. What counts is what he uncorks in the women as they leave white magic behind and embrace the dark side.
It would be negligent of me to say how that plays out but suffice it to say it’s absolutely nothing like the ending of the movie – so you’ll need to read that for yourself.
It’s all good rollicking fun and I think it’s fair to say that for most critics this is Updike indulging himself without over-extending his talents but I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Always a social conservative, Updike takes this chance to stick it to the liberal counterculture in what he sees as all its shallowness. I think it’s entirely fair to see Van Horne as the embodiment of those hippyish counter-cultural values that so many conservatives have characterised as so socially corrosive.
It’s also interesting that Updike goes back to 17th century notions of the witch – a power embodied in a fundamental fear of the power of a woman’s uncontrolled sexuality. The power these women have needs another man to marry if their destructive abilities are to be circumscribed.
Christopher Tayler writing for The Guardian put it this way:
"The idea of sexuality as a kind of witchcraft is pitched as an ironic exaggeration of a small town's fear of liberated women. Yet the tongues wagging against the central characters emerge from a post-60s backdrop that's imagined in a distinctly small-town way. The witches' most bitter enemies are self-righteous liberals, and we hear a fair bit about drug-addled hippies, bomb-throwing war protesters and scary black people."
But I think the final word must go to Margaret Atwood who is also quoted by Tayler in his piece. Atwood correctly warns against over-analysis:
"…any attempt to analyse further would be like taking an elephant gun to a puff pastry: an Updike should not mean but be."
So the message is, read it don’t analyse it and you’ll enjoy yourself. You’ll find hard and paperback copies of the book at very affordable prices online if you can’t pick up a copy in your local bookshop.
Terry Potter
April 2020
Updike elsewhere on Letterpress: