The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump (Vintage Books/Penguin Random House) opens with a mother’s musings on the apathies her daughters wield, dismissing their inherited powers generationally passed from mothers to daughters: “When my daughters turned twelve I initiated them into the mysterious powers. Mysterious not so much in that they didn’t know those…
OPENINGS by Rae Cline
The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump (Vintage Books/Penguin Random House) opens with a mother’s musings on the apathies her daughters wield, dismissing their inherited powers generationally passed from mothers to daughters:
“When my daughters turned twelve I initiated them into the mysterious powers. Mysterious not so much in that they didn’t know those powers existed, or in that I’d kept them secret (I hid nothing from my daughters, since we were of the same sex), but rather in that, having grown up dimly and apathetically aware of that reality, they no more understood the need to care about it or suddenly somehow master it than they saw the interest in learning to cook the dishes I served them, the product of a domain just as remote and unenticing. Nonetheless, they never thought of rebelling against the tedious instruction involved. Not once, some sunny afternoon, did they try to invent a pretext to get out of it. I liked to think that this docility in my undocile daughters, my unruly, impulsive twins, was born of a recognition that in spite of everything they had a sacred obligation to uphold….”
Mothering daughters has its own set of obligations and silences that are different than mothering sons. With our daughters, we quickly learn to teach as silently as we can, as softly as we can so to avoid as long as possible the inevitable moment when our daughters have demonstrated to themselves a mastery of life to which no mother—no matter her talents or skills or wisdoms—can possibly add value, because we, as mothers, are the artifacts of a time already past. This, you might say, is not so different than mothering sons. True. But our daughters navigate a special circumstance and positionality within the patriarchal system that we, as women, neglected to fix before bringing them into this world, the very same system in which we are obligated to navigate and survive alongside them.
We lost credibility the day our daughters were born, we just didn’t know it yet. And our daughters do not have the language to express their complete disappointment, the same disappointment we felt with our own mothers, for several years, though they feel it, as we did with our mothers. Once our daughters recognize, as do the narrator’s daughters, Maud and Lise, that the systems in which they were born—country, community, family—are rigged specifically to keep them subservient to the father, brother, bully, predator and so on who dismiss them in much the same way they dismiss their mother, they lose all faith in the mother daughter relationship. Too often, they do not see their mother as leader but rather victim, enabler, instigator, all of which might or might not be true, but that doesn’t matter, the truth of it, because the system in which mothers and daughters must function has already identified them as all of these things at once as is convenient to whatever narrative serves the patriarch at any given time at home, work, school…. Through a magic realist lens (or fabulist, if you like), NDiaye pushes this conversation into generational depths of female connectivity through wisdom, education and, wait for it, the magic and power of being a woman, if she recognizes that this magic and power does indeed exist. NDiaye’s heroine and daughters manifest this magic and power with tears of blood, with elegant prose and immersive characterizations.
The Witch is shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. It is highly recommended. A fantastic Mother’s Day gift for mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.
About Marie NDiaye
Marie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France. She is the author of Rosie Carpe, winner of the Prix Femina, and of Three Strong Women, winner of the Prix Goncourt. Her most recent novel in English translation, Vengeance Is Mine, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. She lives in Paris.
About Vintage Books
About Openings
Openings is a weekly recommendations column by Rae Cline, published at Eckleburg. Openings features literary musings, culture and book recommendations, focusing on beautiful books with memorable openings, where readers meet intriguing characters, settings and moments in which the mind can explore what is, what might be and how this opens the reader’s imagination. Read more on Instagram @raeclineauthor and at the new raecline.substack, where you can submit recent titles of adult literary fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry for consideration.
