The Witches in Aunt Maria

Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones was a pretty interesting book. As I was reading it, I could totally see it being made into movies. The first half of the book felt like it could be a Miyazaki movie. It had all the Miyazaki trademarks: wind, cats, kids, old people, beige houses by the ocean, goblin-reminiscent forests, spirits, shopkeepers, people saying "Good afternoon!", and a wolf, particularly one that was originally a human but then turned into its animal state. It had a mixture of parts that were calm, thrilling, mysterious, supernatural, and quirky. To me, the writing style was reminiscent of the early Harry Potter books. It was kind of children's book-ish and whimsical, but still exciting. Towards the end of the book, the pace of the story picked up and it got weirder. It wasn't until almost halfway through the book that we found out Aunt Maria was a witch. It was here where things got a bit suspenseful, because Mig knew that Aunt Maria had turned Chris into a wolf, but she wasn't supposed to know, and if Aunt Maria realized that Mig knew, Mig would probably receive an equally bad fate and then she wouldn't be able to help herself or anyone else. While the first half of the book felt like a Miyazaki movie, the second half felt like it could be a Laika movie. It dealt with the supernatural a lot and had a wide cast of peculiar characters and circumstances, with an epic, mostly-happy ending. I really liked this book overall; I liked the tone of the story and the diction of the writer. It felt a bit nostalgic and innocent, like a breath of fresh air. I think I remember getting this feeling from Diana's book Howl's Moving Castle, although I read it so long ago that I don't totally remember. I guess from the diction of the writing, I got the sense that the author cared a lot about the feelings and processes that Mig went through, and that made me care too.

The witches in Aunt Maria weren't exactly straight-up witch stereotypes, but I did feel like I'd seen similar characters in the past. One that came to mind was Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. Like Aunt Maria and the Mrs. Urs, she was bitchy despite appearing to be a sweet old lady at a distant first glance. She would shroud herself in pink and cuteness, which seem like something a helpless, nice little old lady would do, but she had a power complex and was sometimes cruel. Aunt Maria was very similar in this way. She didn't seem to be strongly guided by morals. She mostly just bossed people around and bothered them. For example, even though she was capable of buttoning her corset, she made other people do it for her. She also made Mig's mother buy and cook food for her. When Mig's mother bought a cake instead of making one herself, Aunt Maria was really mean and snotty about it. The other Mrs. Urs were too, to varying degrees. From the start, one could see that Aunt Maria was mean and frumpy and lazy and obnoxious. However, she seemed more like a stereotypical old lady with dementia than a stereotypical witch who is thin and warty with a black hat. She would often invite a group of friends over for tea and dessert, and her friends were pretty similar, some nicer, some meaner, and some crazier and some saner, but all were kind of similar. Elaine was the meanest one, and came over the most frequently. As the story went on, it turned out that Aunt Maria had more power than we knew about originally. On page 72, Aunt Maria turned Chris into a wolf because he was badmouthing her and accusing her of murder. This was the first time that Aunt Maria actually showed her magic, and it was revealed that all her friends could also do magic. They weren't like stereotypical witches who were constantly doing magic in their day to day lives. It seemed like something that was only done out of necessity, and generally was kind of a weird roundabout way of solving the problem. I wasn't quite sure, for example, why Aunt Maria made it impossible for Mig's mother to realize that Chris hadn't been home, but she didn't make it impossible for Mig to realize. Either she was really smart and knew that even if Mig did notice, she wouldn't be able to do anything about it, or Aunt Maria was just being her weird self. I guess the biggest non-stereotypical thing is that generally there's not a group of crazy old stuffy ladies running a town.

Favorite quotes:

"Oh dear. I think Hester Bayley may be as dotty as Zoe Green
underneath. Or she doesn’t know better. Mostly the pictures were
of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but
there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did
things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if
their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the
trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare, twiggy hands.
And there was one called ‘A naughty little girl is punished’ that was
worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn’t quite
see what was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being
pushed underground by something on top of her, and something
else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were
these black whippy things too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.
‘Charming!’ Chris said."

"Really it is difficult having a martyred crusading saint for a
mother sometimes. "