Such Unnatural Stuff! Catherine Morland’s Bookshelf

This post originally appeared on The Austen Connection for the Great Jane Austen Read-Along, in which we read all Austen’s novels this year to celebrate her 250th birthday.

Few stories are as wonderful or as often overlooked as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1803). The only exception to this is the 2007 film which is, sadly enough, frequently forgotten in the canon of Austen screen adaptations.  

I suspect much of this is due to the fact that this is one of Austen’s earlier works and very much a story about stories, or more aptly, how we turn to novels, especially “horrid” ones, to make sense of our own lives. It also represents some of her earliest work in which she was still finding her voice. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a satire. It’s something a young author might write as she figures out her place in the writing world. It’s a little frivolous and could be easily blown off as silly, just like its heroine, Catherine Morland.  

The very first lines of the novel reveal everything we need to know about Catherine: 

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her…the Morlands…were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any (Ch. 1).

What’s more, she is positively unaccomplished and lacking in the desire to improve her mind through study. She is most certainly not a supposed orphan with a mysterious and noble heritage. She is not the beneficiary of a large inheritance. She is not so beautiful that duels would be fought over her. Catherine is, in other words, just like the rest of us: Basic. Restless. Romantic. Hopeful. And, at her age, ready to invoke some serious Main Character energy, as the book community would say today. And that is precisely her charm. 

Austen’s tongue-in-cheek opening reminds us that, no matter how ordinary things seem on the surface, no matter how ordinary we seem, we are always the protagonists of our own stories and that they are a good deal more epic than we realize. That’s the beauty of (horrid) novels. They help us put our woes and victories into perspective. Learn from the heroines in those books and forge bravely ahead in our own lives with hope, gumption, and, of course, a novel tucked under our arm.

In fact, Austen goes out of her way in this book to assert the importance of novels and novel readers. In her famous defense of novels, Austen proclaims:

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it (Ch. 5).

Austen’s intentions are obvious here. Her heroine will read novels. Her heroine will learn from them. Her heroine will be a good deal more sensible than the novel writers who trash the very genre in which they write.

That’s what makes Northanger Abbey a surprisingly thoughtful look at how the books we read shape our understanding of the world and a playful exploration of our own foibles as readers—something any bibliophile can relate to. Even contemporary readers both recognize how fictional worlds can transform our real ones and laugh at our own fanciful imaginations as we fawn over book boyfriends, telenovela-worthy plots (some of which have dragons), and morally grey protagonists, even as we know that’s not what we necessarily want in real life. 

In Praise of Horrid Novels

What makes Northanger Abbey all the more engaging, of course, is that the young Catherine Morland isn’t just reading any kind of novels. She’s reading “horrid” novels, as we see in the exchange between our young heroine and her new frenemy, Isabella Thorpe, in Chapter 6:

Isabella states, “[W]hen you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”

“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?”

“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”

“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”

“Yes, quite sure[.]” 

The more Catherine reads of these titillating tales, the more she begins to (over)identify with the gothic heroines therein and compare her own daily struggles with the over-the-top dilemmas of those novel heroines. It’s easy to poke fun at Catherine, but as an introvert and total book nerd, I completely understand where she is coming from. Even though I am now no longer the young woman making her proverbial debut in society, I still often go to novels—the more horrid, the better—for comfort, advice, and, yes, adventure and scandal. This is why I always look at Catherine and her overactive imagination with fondness and more than a little appreciation. Austen, on some level, approves, too, as her defense of novels is also a call for us heroines to support our fellow heroines.

It is almost too easy to see this novel as a critique of reading gothic novels and to favor sense over sensibility. But this is Austen, and things are never that simple with her. Her tongue-in-cheek tone allows her to get away with a more nuanced critique not of novel readers, but of those who judge them. As Bridget Read points out in her praise of horrid gothic novels, these books are often dismissed by Serious Readers because of their predictable plots. But she rightly points out that "instead of a mark of low quality, that rigid structure, especially for female authors, makes for a powerful exploration of themes of oppression, repression, obedience and sexual rebellion.” Austen, as a female author, understands this. So, too, does any woman living within the rigid structure of society with all the rules and restrictions that entails (read: all women of any era). We find our way, our freedom, our potential to transgress by pushing against and playing with these narrative structures.

Here’s the thing that’s easy to overlook in the midst of Catherine’s comical antics: In many cases, she is right in what she is feeling. Her instincts are spot on, even if she does stir herself into a frenzy wondering what terrible secrets Northanger Abbey—in the novel, a very ordinary-looking building—might hold, or feel conflicted about the Thorpe siblings’ seemingly sincere words that inevitably contrast with their bad behavior. She likes Tilney over Thorpe, even if she can’t explain why at first. She senses that General Tilney is an overbearing, likely emotionally abusive patriarch. And though she can’t quite admit it to herself, she knows Isabella isn’t always sincere, or rather, she feels conflicted when Isabella’s words don’t match with her actions. Catherine’s growth comes not from giving up reading horrid tales, as the book burning scene at the end of the film adaptation might imply, but in learning to trust her instincts and temper her imagination—but only a little on that last one. In fact, she would have never come into her own as a woman without those books.

He Must Have Her…

The 2007 film adaptation takes this exploration to the next level, illustrating for a modern audience just how truly horrid the “horrid” tales Catherine reads are through her increasingly salacious fantasies. Although the novel is seemingly a good deal more chaste than the film adaptation, Austen is clearly drawing on titillating tales that she has read and using them to explore a young woman’s agency in courtship, including her sexual agency. For as much as these books exaggerate the ordinary horrors of daily life, most notably for a woman of marriageable age making her societal debut, these gothic novels also magnify all the sins a proper young lady should not associate herself with: Lust. Passion. Seduction. Ravishment.

These gothic novels are, in other words, irresistible—both to Catherine and the viewer. They offer her (and by extension, us) not only a lens through which she can process her world and enjoy centering herself as the heroine of her own life, but also a vehicle through which she can explore her budding sexuality. 

In fact, part of the excitement of traveling to Bath and reading these horrid novels is that Catherine, for the first time, is exploring her sexual agency and the delights of her desirability. She is so easily carried away by the excitement of the novels because this is her first time away from home. As the movie so expertly explores, Catherine is also having a sexual awakening. She is of marriageable age. And for the first time, she is exposed to a world of balls, dancing, soirees, and many an eligible bachelor. She is literally swept off her feet by the sheer novelty of everything she encounters in Bath. It is a world of possibilities—including romantic possibilities—and it is impossible for her not to conflate the excitement of the novels she reads with the excitement of this new world before her. 

These horrid novels then become the vehicle not only through which she explores her world, but also where she can safely explore her budding sexuality. As any romance reader will tell you, much can be safely explored in the pages of a book. The 2007 film expertly illustrates that sexuality is a barely contained force within the seemingly prim and proper Catherine as her ravishment fantasies get more and more detailed and lurid. 

Catherine indulges in increasingly salacious fantasies that center her as an object of desire to the men in her life. It would be easy to dismiss these fantasies as representations of Catherine’s oppressed state in a marriage market designed to disempower her, or to see these fantasies as Andrew Davies’ and his audience’s, not Catherine’s. But to do so would be reductive and ignore how these fantasies empower Catherine so that she can not only find a relationship of equals, but a passionate romance without sexual shaming.  

The more Catherine reads and experiences in her life, the more titillating her fantasies become. First, she is kidnapped by highwaymen who no doubt intend to ravish her—a fact which she seems infinitely pleased by, given her coy smile at the end of her daydream. She then finds herself the subject of a deadly duel between Thorpe and Tilney. There is much moaning and swooning in this one. At the height of her yearnings, her fantasies are right out of The Monk. Tilney, as a man of the cloth, uses a magical branch to spy on her bathing. The walls of the bathroom melt away, and she is out in nature. Suddenly, she finds Tilney looking at her and shrinks down into her murky bathwater, as any virtuous heroine must. Tilney, however, insists that there is ““nothing to be ashamed of” (00:37:48-00:38:37). Here we see a clear tension between the naked, free, innocent Catherine surrounded by nature, and the rigid social and religious norms that want her as both a nubile woman and a respectable lady.

As Bridget Read argues, “The act of reading a salacious, illicit scene is a powerful thing, though it might masquerade as ambivalent.” So, too, is a ravishment fantasy—it’s taboo, it's subversive, it’s empowering. It's also shocking, in the film, to see an innocent young woman like Catherine lost in a series of sexual fantasies in which she takes enjoyment and power from the male gaze, instead of being reduced by it. Moreover, as we find at the end of the film adaptation, Catherine no longer feels the need to be the passive damsel in these fantasies, but an active agent in her sexual desires. She kisses Tilney. With vigor. She even pushes him into a shady grove for more privacy. Thanks to these books, she finds “nothing to be ashamed of” in her desires.

Real Life Gothic

By the end of the story, the boundaries between the horrid novels and her life collapse when Catherine is put in a truly horrific situation of having to travel home, alone, at night, with borrowed money. Suddenly, rough highway men aren’t so sexy, and there are the very real dangers facing a woman on her own. This perilous situation is, moreover, brought on by a true villain worthy of a gothic novel and one Catherine has suspected of misdeeds for quite some time: General Tilney.

Catherine thinks he’s throwing her out because Henry has discovered Catherine getting too carried away with her gothic fantasies and accusing his father of murdering his mother (it is perhaps one of the most classic cases of second-hand embarrassment a reader can experience, seconded only by the Box Hill picnic scene in Emma). But it isn’t Catherine’s foolishness that causes this disaster—it’s General Tilney’s cruelty, as he casts her out immediately once he realizes she is not the rich heiress she was rumored to be in Bath. So murder accusations aside, Catherine wasn’t wrong about the Tilney patriarch’s character.  

In this moment, two things happen: First, the gothic, however ordinary and unshaped by supernatural elements, is made real. Second, Catherine (and, by extension, the reader) demonstrates a clear sense of boundaries for what might be fun and titillating within the safety of a novel, and what is truly terrifying in real life. Being a damsel in distress in a gothic novel is not the same thing as being one in real life. Book highwaymen might be sexy. Real highwaymen are not. Both truths exist. Catherine cannot ignore the gothic underpinnings of the marriage market any more than she can’t ignore the burdens of sexual awakening or the pain of being called out for blithely accusing the father of the man you’re crushing on of murder.  

Still, this being Austen, our heroine gets her HEA. This is not, in my reading, a story that tempers Catherine’s sexuality or her reading habits—notice how the two are inextricably linked. Instead, this is a novel about becoming the heroine of your own life. Owning your mistakes, trusting your gut, and figuring out your way through a messy world full of intrigue, deceit, and artifice. 

Heroes Who Read

Tilney, too, is an avid reader, and, as the seemingly more sensible of the two, understands the power of a good book. In the often-quoted line, he explains, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid” (Ch. 14). What is more, he unabashedly admits to devouring the work of Anne Radcliffe as eagerly as any reader. He is not, in other words, too good to enjoy a gothic story. 

Tilney is set up in strong contrast to John Thorpe who first denies that he reads novels because he always “ha[s] something else to do” (Ch. 7). Thorpe then goes on to prove himself to be intolerably stupid by not being able to tell which novels were written by which authors. He is not, in other words, a reader. Tilney’s enjoyment of novels is another point in his favor, whereas Thorpe’s lack of knowledge and his feigned interest in them reflect his lack of character. 

In fact, the book ends with Tilney’s rather romantic flight to Catherine’s house to—gasp!—apologize for his father’s behavior and admit that, despite the way Catherine went about things, she was right about his father. It is assumed that much kissing ensues here, as the series adaptation depicts, even if Austen herself couldn’t respectably write it. This is true Romance Hero Behavior and all the more romantic because it comes from the sensible Tilney.

His grand gesture is, of course, one of the many reasons why we love Henry Tilney (again, so often overlooked in the Austen hero canon that it is shameful). In the end, our Catherine could NEVER be with a man who didn’t enjoy novels as much as she does.

The message is clear: Readers, if you do nothing else, marry another reader. What other recipe for happiness is there?

As for everything else, to borrow a line from Austen, “I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” In my case, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be to altogether recommend horrid novels, or reward those who fancy themselves gothic heroines.

Catherine’s Horrid Novels

However you might answer the above conundrum, no examination of Northanger Abbey is complete without a look at the Gothic novels that shaped Catherine’s journey. Below are the plot summaries with each novel, along with their thorough wiki page, because these are actually quite good and can tell you even more about these books than I can squeeze in here. But you should really just do yourself a favor and watch this wonderful lecture by Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic, on the horrid novels that inspired Austen’s novel.

Eliza Parsons’s The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793):

Matilda Weimar is an orphan (because of course she is) raised by her creepy uncle who has less-than-paternal designs on her. She is obviously beautiful, innocent, and noble of heart. That cannot be said for her uncle, whom she flees and finds refuge in the haunted Castle of Wolfenbach. There, she learns the terrible history of the Countess of Wolfenback and finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Count de Bouville. Will Matilda escape the clutches of her evil uncle? Will she under the mysteries hidden in the walls of the castle? Will she find true love with Count de Bouville? 

Eliza Parson’s The Mysterious Warning (1796):

A dying Count Renaud disinherits young Ferdinand. Why? Because Ferdinand marries Claudia against his father’s wishes. Although Rhodophil, now the sole beneficiary, promises to share his wealth with his brother, something is off. At least that’s what a mysterious ghost implies when it reaches out to Ferdinand from the Great Beyond—and so our noble hero flees and begins a terrifying journey of intrigue, secrets, and the supernatural! Will he uncover the dastardly family secrets that bind Rhodophil and his own wife, Claudia? 

Regina Maria Roche’s Clermont (1798):

This novel features another reclusive heroine named Madeline. She lives with her father, Clermont, who has a Mysterious Past. One dark and stormy night, a countess and friend of Clermont arrives at their doorstep and whisks Madeline away to give her a proper education. And by “proper education,” we naturally mean uncovering her father’s shady history and unearthing the long-buried secrets which may or may not reveal Madeline’s noble lineage (spoiler alert: it does). 

Lawrence Flammenger’s The Necromancer; or The Tale of the Black Forest (1794):

There is murder. There is violence. There are terrible, terrible goings on in the middle of the black forest. And there are absolutely horrid hauntings. Oh, and a necromancer! This book is a series of interconnected tales of the most shocking variety.

Francis Lathom’s The Midnight Bell (1798):

In which our fearless hero, Alphonsus Cohenburg, fights to reclaim his estate and, yes, STOLEN IDENTITY, after his villainous uncle (yes, we have another one) murders his family and takes everything from him. Along the way, he finds true love in Lauretta, who, unfortunately, gets kidnapped by bandits, because what is a gothic novel without BANDITS? Also included in this horrid novel are ghosts, an evil priest, and the haunting toll of the midnight bell.

Eleanor Sleath’s The Orphan of the Rhine (1798):

Readers, we have ourselves another noble orphan in Julie de Rubine, who is seduced and left with child by an Evil Rake, the Marchese de Montferrat. Julie raises their son, Enrico, and a mysterious orphan, Laurette, at the behest of her seducer with the promise that he will provide for her and the children. Laurette, yes, ANOTHER orphan, grows up, at which point four things happen: she falls in love with Enrico, she resolves to figure out the mystery of her past, Julie kidnapped by bandits (seriously, they are everywhere in these books), and Laurette is sent to live in a gloomy castle with SECRETS.

Carl Grosse’s Horrid Mysteries (1796):

The Marquis of Grosse trips and falls into a secret society. There is murder. There is mayhem. There is…an early form of communism? Oh, and lurid descriptions of sex and violence. Shocking!

Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk: A Romance (1796):

This one is a DOOZY. It’s about a pious monk, Ambrose, who, seduced by the devil in angel’s garb, succumbs to his lusty desires, unleashing a torrent of violence and mayhem. There is an inquisition. Bleeding nuns. Evil nuns. Kidnapping. Sorcery. Torture. Graphic violence and scenes of a sexual nature. And, eventually, an HEA for the luckier youths in this tale. But certainly not for Ambrose!

Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794):

Emily St. Aubert, another orphan (yawn), lives with her evil aunt and her evil husband, Signor Montoni. They want control of her inheritance, and so, do what any evil relatives would do: imprison her in a gloomy, possibly haunted, castle. Mysteries and supposed supernatural occurrences abound until she is eventually able to reunite with her true love, Valancourt. 

Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797):

Vincentio di Vivaldi falls in love with another orphan, Ellena di Rosalba, but his mother forbids the match because of Ellena’s orphan status. Vivaldi’s mother gets another evil monk to help her keep these two love birds apart. This book has vibes for days—creepy, suspenseful moments, dark secrets, and even darker castles, and the hint of the supernatural.

Catherine Morland reads a book by candlelight, with text "Catherine Morland’s Bookshelf" and "The Bruja Professor."

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Why We All Want To Go To Magic School

I admit that I’ve often struggled with my role as an educator, even as I’ve felt it to be my calling, specifically because of what I’ve come to call The State of Things in Higher Education. It’s enough to suck the magic right out of learning. And yet, every time fall rolls around, I feel the bone-deep nostalgia for the start of the school year. No. Nostalgia is not quite the right word. It is the tireless and eternal sense of wonder and magic that new classes promise.

At their best, the classroom, the college campus, and even the school library are all nourishing spaces for imagination, innovation, and pure potential. And that’s what makes them so magical. It’s no surprise to me then, as an absolute nerd who has always found her home in these spaces, that a wealth of magic school stories would spring up in fantasy fiction…and speculative fiction, science fiction, horror…all the good genres have their version of magic schools. And why not? They’re fun and hold a mirror to both the wonder and difficulties inherent in any learning environment. 

What We Love About Magic School

Like the elevated aesthetic and affluence of a teen rom-com that somehow makes those wretched teen years feel more glamorous than they actually are, magic schools make our mundane learning experiences feel more exciting with higher stakes, bigger opportunities, and more than a few mysteries to uncover or enchantments to cast.

Perhaps the most well-known version of the magic school is Hogwarts by an Author Who Shall Not Be Named, given her terrible and well-documented transphobia and the fact that she funds Voldemort-worthy hate groups. Authorial BS aside, I agree with the actors who played her iconic characters on screen when they came out against her: It’s okay to separate the art from the artist, value the stories, the progressive values they champion, and the world they have given us while also not wanting to contribute to her bank account or endorse her hateful beliefs. I say all this because it is IMPOSSIBLE to talk about stories involving magical schools without talking about Hogwarts.

And you can see why…it has everything we want in a magic school! Mysterious and changing passageways, dark secrets (whole chambers of them), magical artifacts tucked away in nooks and crannies, resident ghosts, and, perhaps my favorite, a magical library, not to mention generations of lore built into its very bones. It is a sanctuary, a place of learning, a place of magic-making. 

In later books, it becomes a dangerous place of propaganda and indoctrination. Although those days of literal torture didn’t last long, thanks to the previously well-rounded education of the young wizards by actual Quality Educators (and all Quality Educators are Wizards, believe me), that storyline also points to the classroom as what we call pedagogical contact zones or spaces where people from disparate groups come together to learn. The very nature of a contact zone, however, is inherently unstable. With a good educator, it’s a safe space to explore and learn. With a bad educator, it becomes a space that emphasizes difference, strife, and xenophobia. 

That’s the thing with magic: It’s a neutral energy, and depending on who wields it, it can be used for good or ill. So, too, can the classroom, this liminal space, this contact zone, be a sight of innovation and collaboration…or isolation and rigidity. 

At the end of the day, the education you receive is only as good as what you do with it. In other words, personal agency matters. When defense against the dark arts is no longer theoretical information in a textbook or facts to be memorized for a final, but suddenly the practice you actually need to defeat the dark lord, well, it’s easy to see how education has a real-world impact on us all.

But Hogwarts is not the first school of magic and certainly not the only one. In fact, The Author Who Shall Not Be Named participated in a very long tradition of boarding school fiction, more generally, and magic school specifically, in Britain. And it just goes to show you that sometimes the most well-known example of a sub-genre isn’t necessarily the best.

A Brief History of Magic School

As with most things on the Bruja Professor, I am now, to loosely quote Jane Austen, about to embark on a biased, prejudiced, and impartial history of magic schools in fantasy fiction. Okay, as far as I know, Austen never went to or studied magic school, but you never know, given how many magic schools and worlds must remain hidden from the regular human gaze. But she was partial to biased, prejudiced, and ignorant histories, and so am I, as they are great starting points to any lively discussion or mode of inquiry. Sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know until we get the conversation started. All by way of saying, I’m sure I won’t manage to include all the examples of magic school fiction out there, so if I’ve left out an important one or your favorite, do let me know, and I would be happy to learn more about it and include it here. 

Depending on how far back you want to go, you can find the concept of magic schools going all the way back to 1800s with rumors of Scholomance, a Romanian school where you could legit learn the dark arts. And yes, it was purported to be located in THE Transylvania and run by THE Devil. The legend writes itself, am I right? It was, in fact, a big inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This myth also became the inspiration behind Naomi Novik’s Scholomance Trilogy (2020-2022), but more on that in a second.

In fiction, Ursula K. LeGuin is often credited with one of the first depictions of a wizarding school in her Earthsea Trilogy (1968-1972). Although the school wasn’t a core feature of these books, it still left its impact. I hesitate to loudly claim she was, in fact, the first author to write about a magic school because the collective unconscious is real and knows no bounds of time or space. That means that even if you have never read something before, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

Multiple people can have similar ideas or inspirations at the same time—just look at the explosion of witchy romances in the past few years. I doubt all those writers got together and said, “Let’s write a bunch of books that all sound very similar!” No, they were tapping into a moment, consciously or unconsciously, where the collective unconscious spoke to them of a need for more magical stories during a time of social and political upheaval. So, too, do magic school narratives come in and out of vogue, but always center on the very human experience of navigating the privileged space of the classroom, the power—and danger—of knowledge, and the difficulties of figuring out one of life’s greatest mysteries: other people.

Perhaps my favorite magic school stories are thanks to Jill Murphy and her series The Worst Witch, which debuted in 1974 and ran through 2018. There is a well-known 1986 film adaptation of the first book in the series and an adorable Netflix series that ran from 2017-2020, among other adaptations. The series was inspired by Murphy’s own experience in school, including the fact that she never quite fit in. She recalls that she came home with her friends one day. They had wild hair and uniforms all askew at the sight of which her mother exclaimed, “You look like the three witches caught in the rain!” 

Thus, an idea was born.

The Worst Witch series explores both the fun and difficulties of school, including bullies and besties, teachers who see your potential, and those who undermine you at every turn. It’s also a series about agency and empowerment, which are important things for young children, especially girls. The young heroine in the series, Mildred Hubble, is set up as a misfit from the start, as she is the only witch not to get a black cat, but a tabby cat who she later names Tabby. From there, she gets into her fair share of mischief, from bungling spells to dodging dodgy hexes from her nemesis, the snooty privileged Ethel Hallow, to saving the teachers from a villainous plot that would turn them all into frogs. Mildred, in other words, is your average kid who, with the help of her friends, uses her creativity, smarts, and compassion to figure her way through life. 

How magical is that?

From there, we have Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series and a myriad of other magic school books that have blossomed from a love of the sub-genre. Still, we can see that magic schools have always been around, even if they don’t always look like Hogwarts. For example, we have the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning in the X-Men comics since the 1960s, Camp Half-Blood in the Percy Jackson series (2005-2009), The Aes Sedai’s White Tower in The Wheel of Time series (1990-2013)…I could go on and on, but you get the idea. We even get glimpses of the darker side of magical education in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000), where a central struggle in the alternate-world Oxford is between the fundamental empathy that any seeker of knowledge should nourish and the diabolical drive for answers to big cosmic questions at the expense of our humanity.

Truth be told, it’s the same struggle you see on a mundane college campus as well, and it begs the question: At what point does our desire for knowledge turn into an unquenchable thirst that threatens our very humanity so that we are nothing but talking heads? It's a fine balance between loving learning and getting so lost in ideas that you forget that you are a living, breathing human being. But the one thing that keeps me grounded, and, dare I say, on the right path, is knowing that books and education are only truly magical if we use them to become more empathetic, understanding, and compassionate human beings. 

Okay, stepping down from the soap box now.

Streaming services like Netflix capitalize on this love of magic schools, picking up shows like SyFy’s The Magicians, based on the book trilogy (2015-2020), Fate: The Winx Saga (2021-2022), and Wednesday (2022-present), a whimsigoth spin-off of the Addams Family franchise. What do these shows have in common? Vibes for DAYS. These are worlds we want to spend time in, however strange and dangerous.

I could go on and on with my examples, but I won’t. At the end of the day, these stories conjure an adolescent experience fraught with wonder and darkness. So, you know, just like the average school experience, only cooler. 

Genre Conventions of Magic School Books

You can see why it’s a winning genre. Like a small town in a cozy mystery, the magic school genre provides a fertile, contained setting for storytelling. It’s easy to set up the context, a cast of reoccurring characters, and conflict. Adolescent drama and social hierarchies write themselves…and, okay, the only thing that really changes as you age is your, well, age.

The setting itself becomes one of the best parts of the stories, as it embodies a place away from the ordinary world and the promise of excitement, knowledge, and hidden magics, just as any classroom does for avid life-long learners.

Magic vs the Mundane

Most magic school books exist as a secret alternate reality if the book isn’t set in a world that openly acknowledges magic. The magical people who populate those groups sometimes coexist alongside mundane students in a seemingly mundane university, like the students in the Netflix series The Order (2019-2020), or the magic school is hidden within the local university in Erin Sterling’s The Ex Hex (2021). More often, a whole other magical world lives just under the surface of The Real (Read: Non-Magical) World. Magical beings can move fluidly in and out of magic and mundane worlds, but it is usually VERY DANGEROUS to do so as they might risk DISCOVERY and, naturally, the pitchforks and fearful mobs that might follow as a result.

Let’s be real: finding people who like to nerd out about the things you want to nerd out about can feel like belonging to a super cool, super secret club. There might even be secret handshakes involved. It’s even more special when you are assigned to study it or, like me, teach it. Again, this is total catnip for anyone who knows the magic of a good book, a library sanctuary, or an energized classroom. When our lives can feel chaotic and messy, magic schools are there to bring a sense of order and, dare I say, joy. And they make us feel welcomed in our strange studies when it seems the rest of the world has no idea what we’re talking about. 

Learning as a Spiritual Practice

My favorite trope taps into the ephemeral, spiritual part of learning, that numinous flash when pure insight happens in a classroom. It can’t be forced. It only occurs seemingly when the stars align, and we all have that collective “Ah-ha!” moment. I’ve felt it before as a student and more times than I can count as a professor. I’ve felt it amidst a pile of library books in study halls and as I carefully turn the pages of books in the bowls of special collections, even when I’m not using them to cast spells. I’ve even felt it going down a cyber rabbit hole, where one reference leads to another and, after a few clicks and more open tabs on my web browser than I can count, I suddenly have a story, an article, a beautiful collection of hidden histories.  

It’s the kind of spark that only ignites when you’ve spent enough time researching that your sources begin to reveal themselves to you. Or you’ve built such a warm, curious learning community that it takes on an energy of its own. It’s not something you learn how to do from a textbook or even in pedagogy classes. It’s a lived feeling, a pervasive sense that magic is in the air. And it only shows up when you’re doing the work—in the classroom, on the computer, in the library.

Knowledge is Magic

Knowledge is magic, but it is also a neutral force, as I said earlier, which is why that energy can be used for good or bad. One of the most important themes of magic school books is that magic—and knowledge—can be dangerous. It gets you questioning, after all. Wondering and growing and broadening your perspective. You can never be the same person you were at the start of a class as you were at the end of it, nor the same before and after you read a book. 

Knowledge changes a person. And it’s up to the individual to decide how they want to wield that knowledge. Having worked over 17 years in higher education and been a student long before, I have seen people devote themselves to making their corners of the world better by following their path, inspiring people to expand their worldview, and always striving to use their power for good. But I’ve also seen people feed the darkness, using their education to gate-keep, reinforce systemic oppression, and become more and more rigid and self-righteous in their beliefs. 

It is my belief and practice that those of us who see even the most mundane of schools as magical can find agency and hope in these spaces in a world where we might otherwise feel disempowered.

Magic School Graduates to Dark Academia

One of the interesting trends I’ve noticed in this genre is the recent emphasis on dark academia. Believe me, it’s not just dark, moody vibes and Oxford University aesthetics. It’s also white supremacy, elitism, and pseudo-liberalism. But readers more often look to dark academia for vibes so rich and cozy they can make things like the slow turning wheels of bureaucracy look romantic and rigid social hierarchies seem as glamorous and fantastical as Regency high society in a historical romance…unless, of course, you work in academia like me, and can see all the cracked plaster and lack of funding behind the dim lighting and petty pecking orders.

Naomi Novick’s Scholomancy trilogy (2020-2022), inspired by yea old Scholomance myths, takes the idea of an elite magic school and turns it into a dark and deadly place. Her story follows the daughter of a healer as she navigates this school of devilry and deceit. Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches series (2012-2014) dips into this vibe, looking at the dark, hidden magics in special collections and ancient texts. Refreshingly, R.F. Kuang doesn’t waste time on the niceties of dark academic vibes in Babel (2022) and, instead, cuts directly to the heart of what darkness in academia actually is: violent cultural assimilation and social conditioning. 

As we head into spooky season, I’ve come across more reading lists for dark academia that look both intriguing and divine, like this one from the She Wore Black Podcast and this cozy one from The Fairytale Magazine. I will freely admit, however, that I haven’t read all the books they’ve listed because TRIGGERING. I honestly have to be in the right mood for these books because they can send me down a dark and twisted path of ugly thoughts in regard to The State of Things Higher Education. (Seriously, if anyone wants to know how to torture me, all they have to do is duct tape me to a chair and force me to watch Netflix’s The Chair (2021) until I tell them whatever they want to hear. It’s got all of the dark academia without the glamorous vibes, which somehow makes things worse.)

What this more grown-up iteration of this sub-genre makes me want more of, in truth, is magic school stories that focus on the educators: the personas we present to our students, the administrative struggles, the personal entanglements, and telenovela-worthy dramas that only a bunch of highly educated fools can stir up…only cooler, because, you know, magic and enchanted libraries and sometimes more agency and autonomy being an educator, instead of a student…and sometimes not. It seems to me that we often overlook the “secret” lives of teachers and, at least to an educator like myself, forget that we are always conjuring enchantments for our classrooms, our students, ourselves, often with little support from the bureaucracy, which can often feel like nothing short of a miracle. 

In the end, magic school stories hold up an enchanted mirror to our educational lives (or jobs for those of us who work in education). They reflect the evils of the system and the numinous energy inherent in any learning space, the academic wounds that scar us for life, and the powerful revelations that fundamentally change who we are as human beings and set us on our life’s path. As with all things, a college campus, a school, or a library is never just one thing. Yet, as I ease into my own conjurings and rituals for the fall term, I can’t help but think that the classroom is, and always will be, magic. 

Image of a magic school with the words, “The Bruja Professor: Why We All Want to Go to Magic School.”

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

How to Survive Happy Ever After with Lissa Sloan

I’ve been thinking a lot about what fairy tale characters go through.

When I was little, my favorite tales were about a quest. I loved the adventure and excitement of it all. I think my favorite part was the coziness of going on a long journey (on horseback, please—I loved horses!), getting wet and cold and possibly wounded, and then taking refuge at an inn or friendly castle where my companions and I would be given hot baths and food and new clothes and warm fires and soft beds.

I think it was the safety after the danger that appealed so much, though I only thought about the danger abstractly then. It was only a story, after all. And yet, when I think about it now, fairy tale characters deal with some serious trauma. Cinderella is abused by her family. Hansel and Gretel are purposefully abandoned by theirs, then kidnapped, imprisoned, and nearly eaten. Little Red Riding Hood IS eaten, in some versions at least. There is betrayal and murder, dismemberment and blinding, and that’s just for the protagonists. It’s heavy stuff.

And yet, for the most part, those protagonists keep going, somehow. They sometimes make unwise choices—they use that key they’re warned not to, they stray from the path or make a bad bargain. But in the end, they fight off the witches, make their way through the wood, escape parents who want to kill them, or worse, marry them. And at last, they arrive at a well-deserved Happy Ever After.

That makes for a satisfying story, but when you think about it, how can it be? How can these characters go through what they do and come out unscathed? My guess is only because fairy tale characters are fairly one-dimensional, and the stories are very simple. But if these characters and their stories were fleshed out, surely there would be some long-term consequences from all those grim experiences.

It’s an idea that’s long been working in my subconscious. Not being able to admit to (let alone know how to process or even articulate) some of my own experiences, I began exploring them in the context of fairy tales. For quite a while, I only knew I was writing things I needed to write and that writing provided relief from something I couldn’t name.

When I began writing about a Cinderella whose glass slippers no longer fit her, I knew I was digging into my past experiences of searching for a purpose and a place to belong. But I later realized there was far more going on. I was examining the consequences of trauma. In the case of the narrator of my book, Glass and Feathers, these consequences are things like anxiety, withdrawal, and making choices that harm not only her, but also the person she loves most. Writing a journey of healing for my girl in the glass slippers provided me a map for how I might face these consequences in my own life.

In the last couple of years prior to my own book coming out, I’ve been excited to discover other authors exploring the effects of trauma in their fairy tale writing. While more fairy tale adjacent, Wendy, Darling continues Peter Pan from the point of view of an adult Wendy who has been in denial of the harm done to her by the eternal boy. Weep, Woman, Weep examines the tale of La Llorona through the lens of intergenerational trauma passed from mother to daughter and tells the story of a woman determined to break the cycle. After the Forest asks what internal scars Hansel and Gretel would truly bear after escaping the witch.

It seems to me fairy tales are perfectly suited to explore the consequences of real-world trauma. Because their protagonists aren’t elves, fairies, or shape-shifters. They’re very often ordinary mortals, and not terribly powerful ones at that. Perhaps they are wealthy or even royal, but they are just as likely to be despised youngest children, dispossessed soldiers, or babies traded away for a handful of greens. And yet, when they or their loved ones are in trouble, they possess and wield an instinctual power. The princes in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White awaken (or even resurrect) their princesses with a kiss, Rapunzel cures her love’s blindness with her tears, the Handless Maiden even spontaneously grows her hands back—not because she wants to have hands again, but so she can save her child from drowning. This power comes from their very human emotions like love, grief, and compassion.

It is a very hopeful idea. Because if these characters are able to heal their own and others’ hurts by virtue of their very humanity, perhaps we can too.

 Guest Contributor Bio

Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a dark continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com, or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan.

Glass and Feathers serial cover is by Amanda Bergloff.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

Smut is Political by The Smut Report

We all started out simply reading what felt fun and engaging. Reading for school or work is one thing, but we never stopped there; we were always reading for pleasure as well. The thing is, when simply reading for pleasure, it’s easy to think of our genre fiction as “junk food” reading. Whatever angst may or may not be leading to the climactic moment, we can be assured that everything will turn out alright in the end, we get the dopamine hit of a story well ended, and we turn the last page feeling good about our reading experience. 

Then we started analyzing.

To be fair, Ingrid and Holly started this way earlier than Erin. They both studied English and writing and are happy to nerd out about the technical components of writing and literary analysis. Erin was a history nerd, so she also read and analyzed text, but in a much different format. And yet, here we all are, decades later, thinking critically about a genre that is often derided as not much more than fluff. 

Part of our journey as romance readers—especially once we began blogging and therefore reading and thinking more intentionally about genre romance—was noting patterns. It started with simply tracking tropes and archetypes: What is the deal with Christmas specials? Where are we seeing a governess/nanny-style story arc? But as we continued to read (and read more widely), we also noticed substantive changing patterns over time. 

This is probably not surprising. It makes sense that as cultural practices and expectations shift, the relationships we see portrayed in fiction also shift. Genre romance on the whole, but especially contemporary romance (that is to say, romance set concurrently with its publication) provides a unique lens into tracking changes in social mores for one simple reason: romance speaks to feelings. This is very clear in the relationship between the protagonists in the story itself: the characters demonstrate that they love each other by seeing and choosing the whole person of their partner, in spite of their own struggles. But beyond that, the reader experiences emotions from following the protagonists on their journey to that uplifting moment of “I choose you.” Romance provides a mirror to the reader, reflecting back the deep desire to be seen and chosen and valued. 

Furthermore, we argue that this shift is not only apparent in the romances that are “doing something”: those stand-out romances lauded by romance readers and critics alike for breaking ground in new and innovative ways. Rather, societal shifts are also apparent when reading romances generally seen as “fluff:” those romances that are pure escapism, exemplified by the category romance.

A Note on Terminology

We called our blog The Smut Report because when we started reading and sharing romance with each other (back when we were in high school, eep!), we just thought it was funny to refer to these books as “smuts.” At the time, we may have acknowledged that “smut” was not a particularly complimentary term for our reading, but we also didn’t care because we were in high school. 

Now, we are aware of the degree to which disparaging or deprecatory terms continue to foster negative ideas about romance, sex, and the combination thereof. We want to be clear when we talk about genre romance as “smut” or “fluff” or even “filth,” we do so not to denigrate these books. To an extent, we use the term “smut” as we have always done: to reclaim without apology a genre that is rooted in intimacy, both emotional and physical. Beyond that, we acknowledge that words have meaning and there is power in the meaning of specific words. If we describe a book as “fluff” an expectation is set: this story will be low angst, will be easy to read and understand, will primarily seek to offer joy to the reader. If we are talking about something that is “absolutely filthy” we’re probably tapping into ideas about taboos, lustful appetites (think sweat and spit and messy sheets), and titillation. We (and others) might choose words intentionally to evoke specific ideas, but we have to acknowledge that at the same time those specific ideas might be holding on to, for example, shame about sex or apologies/excuses for our reading choices.

Sometimes, we may feel like we’re overthinking language or our interpretations of what’s happening in our smutty books. After all, these books are meant to entertain—something to read, enjoy, and forget—but they are still worthy of critical engagement, in no small part because there is so much to consider in the ways they are presented to us. 

Romance Teaches Us About Desire

Some may think that we’re seeking to use romance novels as sex manuals, and we have found that thanks to our blog’s name, people expect us to be really into high heat books (an extremely subjective metric). And honestly, one thing we’ve learned from inviting romance readers (and writers!) to talk about their formative romance reading experiences with us is that many people have, in fact, used romance novels to recognize, name, and communicate what they’re looking for in a sexual experience. 

But we’re also talking about something a lot deeper: at their core, romance novels are about relationships between people as they negotiate their deepest desires and their greatest fears. Romances are a space where our lived experiences converge with our fantasies. They tackle the questions of what it means to be human—and what we as humans want. 

If we take as given the Romance Writers’ Association’s (RWA) definition of genre romance, it includes the following two things: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending (also known as the happily ever after, or HEA). The HEA is a critical component of genre romance not because we’re a bunch of unrealistic cat ladies who can’t get a man of our own and have to live vicariously through the superficial ramblings of other cat ladies who also can’t get a man; rather, the HEA is critical to a romance because it creates a space of emotional optimism. No romance enthusiast is going to say that love stories (with sad endings a la Romeo and Juliet) shouldn’t be written or aren’t love stories with possibly sweeping romances. But we will say that they don’t belong in the genre romance space, and that is because the genre’s contract with the reader is that the protagonists will overcome their greatest fears and obstacles in order to achieve their greatest desires. 

Over time, these greatest desires have shifted in the genre. Where once our social expectations were rooted in marriage and family and probably a single-income household in which the man was the breadwinner and the woman was chosen by him (think 1970s romance), now we see the main characters in (most) romance expecting an equal partnership based on mutual support and good communication (with a high EQ).

When we began our “Categorically 80s” contemporary category romance reading project, we didn’t know exactly what to expect, but we also weren’t optimistic about what we’d see. After all, we were reading the fluffiest of the fluffy romances, frequently derided in cheeky tales about those secret stashes of books under grandma’s bed. Category romances—a publishing term denoting books that are sold as part of a series or line—are known for their shorter length, descriptive titles, and adherence to generic tropes. (You know, like Marrying Her Greek Billionaire Baby Daddy, which we made up just now. This book does not yet exist, but both Marrying Her Greek Billionaire and The Greek Billionaire’s Baby Revenge are real books.) Category romance publishers release books at a fast pace of several per month in every line, which means that such books are ubiquitous—and largely derided. Because these lines also tend to follow expected generic formats and tropes, they are both a stand-out within the greater genre (there’s a lot more going on in romance than what you see in traditionally published category lines) and also a barometer for what is socially desirable to readers at a given moment in time.

What we found while delving into our 1980s category romances was a slight shift from that older “he chose me and now I can settle down to my wifely calling” narrative to a career woman who still gets chosen by the deeply desirable man. He might be a misogynist, but so is she (from a modern lens), and he’ll let her have her career (especially because it can never compete with his!), and she can have it all! Honestly, the mix of progressive, feminist thoughts (she deserves to have the career she wants and has worked hard for, and she deserves a partner who supports her) combined with plenty of internalized misogyny (she’s not that kind of girl to just jump into bed with a man, you know? So don’t read into this current behavior the wrong way! Plus his…everything…will still take priority over hers) was a strange, uncomfortable combination.

This tug between feminist ideas around women’s work and ingrained societal misogyny reflects the social milieu of the 1980s (in the UK and the US). Romance readers desired recognition for the work they were doing, and wanted to see women like them in the fiction they read. But at the same time, the dream of a stable nuclear family with husband and father as primary breadwinner was not only desirable, but seemed within reach. Readers were caught between the gains of Second Wave feminism, and the huge backlash against them (epitomized by the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment).

When we read contemporary category romances published in the 2020s, we see new desires. Some contemporary category romance lines focus much more heavily on escapism with those Greek billionaires, reflecting the changing economic reality and greater precarity of romance readers today. But while we’ve got those specific category romance lines (Harlequin Presents, anyone?) that tap into those good old caveman hero vibes, there are more lines that have come to reflect other current desires—meaning not just desire in reading material, but reflecting the desire for personal fulfillment—and that is, broadly speaking, more sincere equality. Why does the heroine have to be the one who has the full-time career of her dreams but also manages all the mental labor for everyone around her? Well, her love interest will show up to pick up that load and balance things out. 

The Social Movement of Romance Novels

Holly noted, after reading The Sleeping Soldier by Aster Glenn Gray, that historical romance reflects not history as it occurred but history projected by our current beliefs and desires. This is true not only of historical romance, but also of romance over time. Dukes and billionaires have the same power problem, and you’ll see both archetypes being played with in current publications in similar ways, which is to say authors are trying to make these guys ethical. So for every Greek billionaire who is steamrolling the assistant he impregnated with a bullied engagement and a life of ease on Santorini beaches, there is also an ethical billionaire who might be grumpy but who would never take advantage of wage laws and tax loopholes in order to maintain his status! 

Actually, that 1:1 ratio isn’t true. There are more emotionally constipated, caveman billionaires (and dukes!) than any others, and not only because we have the publications over time to delve into for reading material. It’s because, in addition to attempting to portray the ethical billionaire/duke, many modern authors are avoiding those archetypes in the first place. Just as there are category romance lines that tap into the same pathos as crime dramas (such as Harlequin Intrigue), there are also authors who are looking at contemporary social movements and refusing to write a law enforcement romantic main character. Regardless of what anyone says, smut is political, and even if it’s not explicitly verbalized, politics are inherently present in the narratives that present themselves over time. It is, therefore, important to see the social moment in romance novels as we read.

This has been particularly apparent in the past decade—or even just the past five years—as readers, writers, and publishers have actively worked to highlight romances written by and about diverse people. Now it’s not just the by women for women (which, it must be noted, has never actually been true; Steve Ammidown’s work highlighting men who write romance at Romance Fiction Has a History underscores this point)—now it’s people with other marginalized identities having a voice in the conversation of what it means to desire and be desired. If the promise of the happy ending is extended to everyone, then every life is valuable. Different ways of loving are shown to be worth celebrating. 

If we take LGBTQ romance as an example here, there’s nothing more thrilling than seeing Harlequin romances featuring queer leads in their mainstream lines, with titles like Tempted by the Bollywood Star or Secret Heir for Christmas that—unless you looked at the cover—you would assume feature standard, Harlequin, cis het protagonists. Remember: these Harlequin lines are not setting out to make a political statement with their books. These books are therefore a signal that LGBTQ love stories have proven to sell. These love stories aren’t trendy, but rather are simply a reflection of the world we live in.

Another example of romance presenting us with a narrative of historical change is in how sex is portrayed on the page. Now, not all romance includes explicit sex on page, but even acknowledging that, we are given specific cues to understand how to interpret our main characters based on how they present themselves, interact with others, and think about intimacy. (And yes, we mean that in all its senses, not only the physical.) Frankly, category romance is one space where the physical technicalities of sex are often obscured with purple prose or emotional language or other euphemisms (unless it’s a deliberately explicit line like Harlequin Blaze or Harlequin Dare). And yet there are plenty of opportunities to observe how authors presented sex, sexual interest, desire, and so on in order to cater to readers.

Going back to those 80s category romances we read, most of them did include on-page sex, though that euphemistic language was definitely heavily apparent. Many heroines were virgins. Non-virgin heroines often had sad romantic relationships in their pasts, where they have given up the goods thinking it was love, only to have been sadly deceived. Even the “maneater” heroines (and yes, there were a few of those) didn’t have a ton of notches on their bedposts, nor had they particularly enjoyed sex in the past. The heroes, on the other hand, were not sexual novices, but crucially, experienced their horniness for the heroine as a sign of love, rather than lust. For all parties, desire for sex is linked inextricably with the love story.

One element of romance that is often flagged is that it includes women experiencing sexual pleasure and not being punished for it (there’s that HEA again). While those older romances might have circumvented the—ahem—”problematic” issue of female desire by including rapey narratives (and we think that’s probably more evident in single-title romance like The Flame and the Flower and Whitney, My Love than in category romance, though to be fair we haven’t read a ton of 1970s categories), even in those 1980s category romances in which the heroines admit physical desire internally, there’s still a fair bit of coercion on the part of the romantic heroes (that pesky lust/love, you’ll recall), and there’s also plenty of worrying after the fact that he’ll think of her as one of those women. (Which is to say, one of those loose women.) Therefore, our early heroines, even those virgins, had to excuse their sexual attraction as an indicator of true love, even as sexual promiscuity was a hallmark of masculinity for our heroes.

Now, we’re not saying that’s changed in all romances, because it definitely hasn’t. Many, many contemporary romances written in the 2020s continue to link True Love and Fabulous Sex. One shift, however, is when that connection is made. In the 80s, it was horniness that showed love; now, it’s the romantic lead showing enough care and interest to ensure multiple orgasms. When we buddy read Judith McNaught’s Night Whispers, Holly noted that we would read the heroine’s lack of interest in men and sex in a 2022 publication as demisexuality or asexuality, but in the 1990s it indicated to the reader that her feelings for the hero were true love, and that is exactly the vibe in the vast majority of these older romances. Without the true love aspect, her desire for sex would be inappropriate. In current releases, we see sex positivity coming through in multiple components of the storytelling. The unashamed non-virgin characters. The romances built on tropes of fooling around (or: sex first, feelings second). The sex deals. The one night stands with Greek billionaires that result in all those secret babies. 

It really doesn’t matter where you look at the narrative—it can be found in any aspect of the characterizations and the characters’ values—you will find a reflection of contemporary social expectations and values. 

So, What DO Readers Want?

The question “what are we reading for?” is one that we frequently raise during our discussions about romance books. When we’re asking the question, we’re usually thinking about the literary merits of monster sex (or similar), but the question is much broader and more basic than “are we reading for fluff or are we reading for literary merit?” Especially when the primary purpose of most romance novels is simply to be enjoyed by a reader, it is easy to blow past the underlying significance of the stories being told. 

The promise of the happy ending encompasses so much more than romantic love. Characters with disabilities, mental health struggles, challenging families, histories of trauma, and so on are seen as desirable and valued. Characters from almost any cultural background are represented. Just about any sexual identity you can imagine is represented in a romance somewhere (perhaps not yet all in a category line, but it’ll come). Every one of these characters embodies the promise of the happily ever after. And because of this promise, genre romance is a place where readers can enact their desires. Instead of answering the question, “What do I have in life that society is willing to give me?” romance allows us to share what we want…if only we take the time to listen.

Guest Contributor Bios

We are three thirty-somethings who have been swapping smut books for twenty years. So… we’ve read a lot of smut and love the genre. We’re (mostly) normal and (mostly) healthy, though we admit that there may be a cat or two lurking around our lives. Read more about us at The Smut Report.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

Which Witch Are You? : Finding Your Magical Self Through Storytelling & Pop Culture Keynote Transcript

Last summer, I had the honor of being one of the keynote speakers for Romancing the Gothic Conference 2023 – The Supernatural and Witchcraft in belief, practice and depiction. Below is the full transcript of the talk, including slides. Video recording coming soon…

Thank you for joining us today, and thank you, Sam [Hirst], for organizing this fantastic conference. This lecture, “Which Witch Are You? : Finding Your Magical Self Through Storytelling and Pop Culture,” will explore how witches in popular culture influence real-world practicing witches like myself, both inviting us to celebrate the counter-culture joy of the craft and to engage with the problematics of making an othered archetype more mainstream. So we’ll be looking at the delights, the horrors, and the delightful horrors of all things witchy in popular culture. 

It would be easy to say that witches are having a moment. You would just have to point to the influx of witchy romance novels and magical paranormal shows or look at the broader conversation surrounding “witch-hunts” (heavy on the air quotes) in our current political landscape. 

But I’m going to let you in on a little not-so-secret secret: Witches might be having a moment, true, but we’ve always been here. And we’ve had other moments. In fact, we owe much of pop culture’s current resurgence in all things witchy to streaming. Thanks to online media, a whole new generation has been exposed to iconic shows like Charmed and Bewitched and films like Practical Magic and The Craft. Now, whimsigoth, a style made iconic by shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among others, is taking over TikTok and Instagram. We have WitchTok, Witches of Instagram, and more mainstream publications, like Cosmopolitan magazine, writing about astrology, witchcraft, and natural spirituality. 

So the images I have on this slide are, starting in the upper left-hand corner: a photo of The Hoodwitch, a big name for Witches of Instagram. Next to it is a poster for the iconic show Charmed and Sephora’s controversial witch kit that got pulled from the market for a variety of issues, including cultural appropriation.  In the second row, there is an image of Donald Trump calling attacks against him “witch hunts,” which completely turns the phrase inside-out. Then we have an article about whimsigoth fashion on social media, and a selection of witchy romance novels.

And yet, as mainstream as witchy business has become, there are those of us who have always been immersed in natural spirituality and, quite frankly, often eschew the more commodified representations of our practices. There are those of us, in other words, that always felt a little witchy. To quote a meme that’s often passed around witchy social media, “Some of you did not spend your childhoods making potions out of random leaves, berries, and twigs tossed into a tub of water and stirred with a stick you found…and it shows.” 

Seriously though? Half the joy of witchy pop culture is the memes.

Anyway, some of us, like myself, grew up in what I call “hippy woo-woo homes,” where mysticism and everyday magic were normalized. We have roots in conjure folk practices and healing folk practices as well as influences in the modern new age movement. Others are leaving behind mainstream religion and exploring their spirituality in other ways. So we have witchy folk—some of whom gladly take on the term witch, others who have that term applied to them to mark their difference—who have embraced the path as something that has been passed down to us through the generations or found the path through their own search for connection and meaning. Both paths are valid.

All this by way of saying that it’s important to remember here, when we talk about pop culture witches, that there are, in fact, real-world witches. These are lived experiences. Some choose the name witch voluntarily. Others, including conjure folk practitioners and healers, have had the term applied to them. Still others take back the term, choosing to transform the negative connotations into a celebration of hidden or suppressed histories (I am one of these witches).

As a mestiza, a woman of mixed Indigenous, European, and Latine heritage, it’s impossible for the history of colonization in my blood not to shape my spiritual practice. Embracing the term bruja, or witch, is my way of acknowledging how my family history of curanderismo, or folk healing practice, was seen as a transgressive practice, an evil art by the Spanish church at various times throughout history. So I offer up two definitions of witch, though they are by no means the only definitions, just the ones I feel are most suited to this presentation.

The first is from Kristen J. Sollee’s Witches, Sluts, Feminists, which says, "The Witch is at once female divinity, female ferocity, and female transgression." For the purposes of this lecture, I use the term “female” in a gender-inclusive way, as witchy business is often considered anti-patriarchal, queer, and more centered on traditionally feminine attributes, attributes which, regardless of our gender, we can all embody. 

The second definition is from my own blog, Enchantment Learning & Living, and specifically defines the term bruja, or witch, as “an archetype that reclaims the once negative term witch and finds power in her otherness. Brujeria is about taking our power back and honoring our divine right to joy, pleasure, hope, and happiness.” I include this definition here to emphasize the importance of acknowledging that witches of color are often working through layers of reconnecting to our heritage, working through histories of colonization, and reclaiming our right to joy. It’s a narrative that reads a little differently than the white witchcraft that’s most often centered in popular culture.

And while it would be easy to turn this lecture into a celebration of witchcraft, the community isn’t without its dark side. No community is.

I would love to say that all witches are good. But we do, indeed, have our bad witches, the gingerbread-house-living, children-eating, poison-apple-making dark magic practitioners. Only in real life, we call them spiritual gatekeepers (or those who keep others out of the community by saying they’re not pure of blood or enlightened enough), spiritual bypasses (or those who perform feel-good rituals while bypassing serious mental health issues), and, of course, old-fashioned white supremacists…and basically the typical baddies you find in most communities. 

These issues—the difference between good witches and bad witches—remind me of the question Glenda the Good Witch poses to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

This is a question worth asking of ourselves. The answer is not as simple as stating you are a Glittery Glenda or a green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. The heart of the question for real witches is in knowing if you are a transgressive free spirit committed to honoring the wild spirit in others…or if you are a witch who, intentionally or unintentionally, upholds white supremacy, spiritual gatekeeping, spiritual bypassing, cultural appropriation…I could go on, but you get the idea.

Good witches honor their heritage, cultural traditions, and sometimes, the need to cultivate new ones when we are disconnected from our pasts for various reasons stemming from generational trauma to lost histories due to cultural assimilation. Good witches also respect the heritages of others without inappropriately taking from them. Bad witches indulge in cultural appropriation and reinforce the very social norms that they are trying to escape. 

I could complicate this analogy further. I mean, how "good" is Glenda if she's celebrating the fact that Dorothy dropped a house on another witch? If we've learned anything from Wicked, it's that the villain's story is never clean-cut, a theme reinforced by the story arc of Regina, the Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time's reimagining of Snow White. As they often say in that series, evil isn't born, it's made. 

See? Explorations of witchcraft in popular culture are never simple. But they do give us jumping-off points for exploring our own light and dark sides. Our magical sides, too. In fact, The Wizard of Oz lays the groundwork for the idea that witches could, in fact, be cool, pretty, and benevolent, thanks to Glenda the Good Witch, giving us permission, in turn, to be both powerful AND good, even if we don't want to wear a glittery bubble-gum pink ballgown (confession: I do).

We also have the Dorothys, or basic witches like myself, who are everyday folk looking for a little more magic in our lives. For the purposes of this lecture, I want to focus on these basic pop culture witches as figures that can help us heal. They show us that you don’t have to have “pure blood” to be a witch or know what you’re doing. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you just have to take that first step on the yellow brick road, and, with luck, community, and maybe a little song and dance, you’ll discover that you’ve had the power in you all along.

This is an especially important concept for those of us with complicated relationships to our heritage. As we search for our sense of self and empowerment, pop culture witches serve as a reminder that we are magic and can conjure our own path.

You could say I’ve found myself in stories. Now I’m going to give you some very personal examples of how pop culture witches can help us reclaim our sense of self as magical beings so we can see just how powerful seemingly “fun” or “frivolous” stories can be.

The first series I want to discuss is Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries, featuring the natural witch Lily Ivory. She is currently a vintage clothing shop owner in San Francisco, using her magical abilities to solve paranormal crimes in her adopted city. She grew up in a small town in Texas and, because of her abilities, was chased out at an early age. As a result, she never finished her witchy education with her grandmother Graciela or the curandera her grandmother sent her to when they realized the town was no longer safe for the young witch. 

Although Blackwell didn’t intend for her protagonist to be Latina or Indigenous, it’s impossible not to read Lily Ivory as mestizaje-coded. She reads as having a mixed background with cultural lines that aren’t always easy to untangle, especially in her use of the Spanish language and certain conjure folk practices. Even when I teach the first book in this series in my Witchcraft and Pop Culture class, my students, who are largely Latine, Hispanic, Indigenous, and Mestizaje, also read her as Latina or mestiza. What’s more, they love it! They are always pleasantly surprised to see themselves represented in stories that artfully explore complicated mixed-raced legacies and conjure folk practices—and that are fun and joyful! It's a big departure from the many trauma porn narratives we’re used to seeing ourselves in.

As for me, I found this series when I was a baby witch, away from the Land of Enchantment for the first time, coming to terms with the fact that not everyone grew up in mystically inclined households and grappling with very real cultural differences in a big white city. Blackwell’s series first drew me in because of the glitter on the cover, but it kept me reading because it was perhaps the first time I’d read a mestizaje narrative that grappled with the difficulty of finding a way forward with a fractured heritage and limited cultural education. What’s more, as the series develops, we see Lily finding a wonderful found family, a home, and love—an absolutely magical story for anyone wanting to feel like they, too, can conjure those things.

My second example is a more recent one. Isabel Canas’s The Hacienda is a magnificent gothic romance set in turn-of-the-century Mexico and deftly explores the complexity of our violent colonial history where nothing is romanticized. This gothic romance centers on a mestizo priest who is also a brujo. It is unclear in the story if this man is a curandero, or healer, and a brujo in the eyes of the church only, that is, if his witchy identity is different from this folk healer practice. And that is the beauty of it. Those labels and identities become mixed, so much so that we often can't separate them. There are parts of his cultural history that are lost to him, parts that he must keep hidden, and parts that he intuitively knows. Not going to lie: I felt SEEN.

These stories tell us that we aren’t alone in trying to heal from a tangled past or find ourselves in the present. They remind us that despite the history of trauma in our blood, we can conjure a future full of healing and hope.

We learn to take what we can of our past or heritage—what is nourishing and life-giving—and let go of what is toxic or oppressive. There are things in our backgrounds, family pain, generational trauma, and ancestral hauntings—yes, I said ancestral hauntings, I’ve got to get a little woo-woo, or else what am I doing here? What it all boils down to is that we can’t always go back. Some things are lost to us. Some things are too risky to return to. This is an important reality for many of us and worth emphasizing in a cultural moment that focuses mostly on reclaiming the past and reclaiming our heritage as a form of empowerment. That’s not something many of us can safely do. This leaves us with a burning question:

Where do we go from here?

The answer is simple. We turn to pop culture witches to show us a different way of being. I’m making some sweeping generalizations here—and there’s a lot I’m leaving out—but I want to walk you through the journey of magical selfhood through some of the most iconic witchy archetypes in pop culture. 

For many of us, the journey into the wild woods of witchcraft can be terrifying. That’s where we get the archetype of the scary witches like Baba Yaga, La Huesera, or the Bone Woman, and the witch in the hut in the middle of the forest. But there’s a duality to these figures. Baba Yaga is both the malevolent child-eater and the benevolent savior. 

La Loba, sometimes known as La Huesera, is a benevolent life-giver, collecting the bones of endangered animals to give them new life. She is also a terrifying figure at home in the world of wounded or dying things. Although not technically considered a witch in folklore, La Huesera is definitely treated as such in my novella, Weep, Woman, Weep. Like the more helpful incarnation of Baba Yaga, La Loba or La Huesera in my book is who you go to when you need the kind of help only a witch who means business can give.

The images here are a still of Emma Caufield as the witch in Hansel and Gretel from the TV show Once Upon a Time, a 19th-century Russian illustration of Baba Yaga, and fan art of the Bone Woman by steeringfornorhart.

This terror of the unknown, the fear of leaving the safety of traditional communities, however stifling they are, is best exemplified in 2016 film The Witch, about the horrors of Puritan America. We are as afraid as Thomasin of the menacing figures hidden in the woods and yet, by the end of the film, are eager for her to align with Black Phillip. After all, living deliciously in the woods sounds a lot better than living with a repressed, hypocritical, borderline incestuous family. We want her to go be the witch of the wood!

These scary witches, in other words, represent duality—the darkness and the light of the craft, our hope and fear of the unknown.

And speaking of The Craft…we see these same themes playing out in iconic films. In The Craft (1996), we get the transgressive counter-culture gothiness of a group of teen girls reclaiming their power through the craft AND we get a cautionary tale, reminding us not to recreate oppressive structures once we’re the ones with power. Empowerment is terrifying—and it comes with a certain amount of responsibility, namely ensuring you aren't getting your empowerment at the expense of someone else’s autonomy.

The message is clear: Always magic responsibly. 

This terror of transgression and the unknown is all part of the process, the first step in moving beyond mainstream religion or even conventional norms—it's scary! Even if you are a basic witch like me. And for some of us, we’re always walking the fine line of being terrified of our own agency and autonomy and empowered by it. We’re also always negotiating being viewed as the child-eating demon or the benevolent fairy godmother.

It’s once we get past the terrors of this archetype, things get really interesting.

Thanks to the silver screen, we enter an era in which witches aren’t just terrifying. They’re sexy…and kind of fun! And while there are issues with inappropriately sexualizing othered bodies, the sexy witch, to my mind, is a bold transgressive figure, especially when that witch is Veronica Lake. In I Married a Witch (1942), she’s seductive, she’s fun, and she’s…harmless. 

I won’t bother going into the plot of this film since it is nonsensical and quickly unravels. Do we care? No! All we care about is Veronica Lake as a sexy witch running circles around the basic bitch politician love interest. She dazzles! She delights! She makes us feel playful and magical. More: She gives us permission to be empowered by our sexuality. 

Veronica Lake also ushers in an era of witches who aren’t terrifying creatures of the wild wood or green-skinned monsters. Witches, we learn, look just like ordinary people. Only very, very sexy ordinary people.

These are just some examples of the legacy of the sexy witch in popular culture, like Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle (1958), the polyamorous coven in The Witches of Eastwick (1987), cursed family in the soapy The Witches of East End (2013), and witches in paranormal and urban fantasy books—they get to be sexy AND badass in Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking and Yasmine Galenorn’s Witchling.

Significantly here, with the exception of Bell, Book and Candle, these narratives show that witches are allowed to be empowered sexual beings, magical beings, and human beings. So, too, are we.

And yeah, I know we can’t always be at our sexy witchy best 100% of the time, and the idea of sexiness is so fraught for many of us, which brings us to the most dynamic and relatable witch of pop culture: The Basic Witch. This figure goes all the way back to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the iconic every girl (I use this term gender inclusively). 

As Glenda tells Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, “You've always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” This is now a common Basic Witch trope in witchy narratives--the average person realizing they are magic--and, I think, it's so popular because sometimes we need to remember our profound capacity for magic-making.

This figure gets reborn with Samantha in Bewitched. The witch is not just evil or sexy. She’s now the girl next door. Her casserole will put a spell on you!

By the 90s, we can’t escape the meta parts of witch media. Charmed was made possible by The Craft, both of which were made possible by The Witches of Eastwick, all of which were made possible by Bewitched. Lastly, all of them look at modern witches as everyday women.

So much of what we think of when we think of modern witches, however, are rooted in two iconic texts: The original Charmed series and the film Practical Magic. When Charmed first aired in 1998 it did a radical thing by making witches normal (white) women struggling to pay the rent, get a job that makes them happy, figure out how to date when you have powers, and learning how to have a relationship with your adult siblings that isn’t rooted in childhood spats. They explored issues of childbirth, breastfeeding in public, and working parenthood. So relatable! While the show wasn't without its problems, primarily with representation, it made the witch a fun, flirty, SAFE figure in mainstream media.

The sisters in Practical Magic took that one step further by opening up the magical sisterhood to anyone who is magically inclined, not just natural witches. And thus, a new era of witches supporting witches was born. Just make sure you’re on their phone tree. In addition to Charmed and Practical Magic, I have a few other examples here like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, witchy romances, and a few witchy cozy mysteries that all emphasize being basic (sexy) witches to illustrate how common this archetype becomes in media.

There are some legitimate issues associated with being a basic witch, however, most of which were already outlined in my Wicked Witch spiel at the start of this lecture—cultural appropriation, spiritual gatekeeping, and so much more, especially when the Basic Witch is so often a skinny white het-cis able-bodied young woman.

These issues beg the question: Who is safe being othered? 

In recent romance novel discourse, an important question arose: Should you write a witchy story set in a small town today that doesn’t meaningfully address the suppression of conjure folk practices, violence against people with historically marginalized identities, or America’s violent history? That is, is it offensive to leave those histories out of our feel-good cozy witch stories?

My hot take? It’s complicated. We do need to expand the narrative beyond white feminism, I mean white witches, I mean white feminism. But many creators writing these stories, to my mind, aren’t being malicious—they aren’t Wicked Witches silencing othered voices. I think they’re writing love letters to stories like Practical Magic, Charmed, and other whimsigoth narratives that defined a generation. While many of these texts were transgressive and transformative for their time, they are also dated now, which illustrates how these proverbial love letters to these texts might also feel dated even though they were more recently written. 

These writers, in short, are writing stories with the understanding that witches are fictional characters—not real people with lived experiences. That is, their stories are pure fantasy that, like any fantasy, can (un)intentionally reinforce the status quo. The more we understand that witches are real and not mythological beings, the more magical—and powerful—we can make witchy stories. Still, I totally get wanting to read a low-stakes story about magical stuff that feels like an escape from real-world traumas, which is what I think a lot of these romantasy and cozy paranormal mysteries are trying to do.

Still, I’m forever grateful for stories like Celestine Martin’s Witchful Thinking, which celebrates BIPOC joy and whimsy within a cozy paranormal small-town setting. It goes a long way to normalizing BIPOC magic and reminds us that we deserve to be centered in enchanting stories with HEAs where the stakes are not surviving genocide or dismantling systemic oppression but in finding love and learning to be brave.

I’ve included a few other examples of books that explore witchcraft through the lens of intersectional identities: A Spell for Trouble (a black witchy mermaid cozy mystery series), Cemetery Boys (a trans-Latinx story), Labyrinth Lost (a series about brujas), and Black Witch Magic (a BIPOC interracial romance). 

Even shows like The Witches of East End, a soapy paranormal drama, do an important thing by elevating domestic life and reminding us that our day-in, day-out is nothing short of a magical, maybe even telenovela-worthy, narrative. This is an image of the kitchen in The Witches of East End. It is FABULOUS. I've paired it with a meme that says, “girls only want one thing and it's the Practical Magic house.” These stories remind us just how gorgeous witchy houses are and, in turn, that we should treat our homes as sacred sanctuaries. They are so magical, in fact, they have a fandom separate from the texts that birthed them. But, I digress…

Yes, it’s a problem when witches are seen through a lens of white feminism. But guess what? Many of these texts are also celebratory—if in a coded way—for people with historically marginalized identities.

At the time, Bewitched (1964) was a radical and subversive look at interracial relationships via the story of a witch married to a mortal. That said, white witches as stand-ins for other races is incredibly dated now, and borderline offensive, but at the time the original series aired? Revolutionary. And who can forget the iconic line in Practical Magic, “Good news, Sally just came out!” So many witchy stories are queer-coded though I'd like to see more queer witchy stories that are text and not subtext, like the series The Bastard Son and The Devil Himself.

But most significantly…these figures give us permission to conjure a way forward when we are unable to make a home in our ancestral or familial past. What’s more, they show us that our basic lives are basically magical, thanks to gorgeous settings, iconic styles, and a general belief that the best magic is in finding your people, the ones who will help you be your best magical self.

Which leads us to my final, and most important of questions: Which witch are you? Are you a good witch or a bad witch—and how would you define those terms? Are you a wicked witch or a sexy witch or basic witch? Or does it depend on the day? Do you freely take on the term of witch or has the term been applied to you? Or do you prefer another word for your magical self? Mermaids, too, are having a moment. 

Pop culture is so in love with witches, in fact, that we even have Buzzfeed quizzes to help us figure out the kind of witch we are and helpful social media-friendly infographics explaining “definitively” (heave on the air quotes) what types of witches exist in the world. 

Regardless of your answer, if you showed up today, one thing is likely clear: You are a witch. As they say in Practical Magic, “there’s a little witch in all of us.” Pop culture witches help us find that spark within ourselves and nourish it.

As for me, I’ve started thinking of myself as a story witch. A story witch is a fantastical being who knows that stories are some of the deepest forms of magic, and the narratives we tell about ourselves are spells. We find ourselves in stories as we are drawn to the books, shows, and movies that help us work through the plot twists in our lives. We use them to nourish and heal—and to craft enchanting stories of our own. See what I mean? Magic!

Under my story witch image here are books I’ve written about magical living and story magic. I can safely say that everything I’ve written is a spell, a conjuring to help me reimagine my life as something abundant and joyful. 

Thank you so much for coming to my lecture. As I wrap things up, I leave you with this final spell: I encourage each and every one of you to explore your witchy side, even if it makes you a little nervous. It’s worth the journey, I promise you. I mean…who doesn’t want to live deliciously?

Thank you, again.

Here is the short list of works I consulted for this presentation. 

Any questions?

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

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Designing the Rook and Rose Pattern Deck with Marie Brennan

This is your past, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .

The Rook and Rose Triology

It seemed like a good idea at the time: since the fantasy series my co-writer Alyc Helms and I were writing (the Rook and Rose trilogy, under the name M.A. Carrick) is set in an invented world, we shouldn’t use the familiar tarot for the divinatory cards that appear in the story. No, this called for an original deck, one that would reflect the culture and history of the setting.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple.

Designing our own deck immediately opened up countless questions: how many suits should the deck have? Should it have suits? Numbered (like the pip cards of a normal playing deck or the Minor Arcana of the tarot), uniquely named (like the cards of the Faerie Oracle or Lenormand deck), or a mix of both kinds? How many cards should there be in total? What concepts would be represented, and what concepts left out? And how are the cards read -- what layouts do the people in this world use? Do the cards have reversed significance as well? What would we call the deck? Because both Alyc and I are anthropologists and folklorists by academic training, we even went beyond the deck itself to ask ourselves questions like what games people might play with the cards and what in-world folklore the various names and images might be referencing.

It was a ton of work. And worst of all, we had to know the answers to many of these questions before we started writing the series. Not all of them -- the cards languished under placeholder names for a good long while -- but the fundamental structure and significance of the deck, yes. Because our main protagonist, Ren, uses these cards . . . and what’s more, we didn’t want to go the route I’ve used in one of my own solo series, deciding what a given spread needs to say and reverse-engineering a selection of cards that will convey that message. Instead I took a blank deck, wrote the names on the cards in Sharpie, and any time we needed a layout in the story, I shuffled and dealt and we wrote what we got.

The results were eerily on point.

Sometimes too much so! There’s one scene in the first book, The Mask of Mirrors (whose title comes from the card of secrets and lies), where we had to lean on the existence of certain magical defenses to stop Ren from seeing a piece of information we really needed her not to gain until the second book (The Liar’s Knot, the card of trust and betrayal). But every time a card or a whole spread played perfectly into our plot, we gained more confidence that we’d designed the deck right. It fit with our characters, our world, and had just the right balance of specificity and flexibility, enabling a variety of interpretations. On occasion -- one chapter in The Mask of Mirrors, one in Labyrinth’s Heart (the third and final novel, the card of stillness), and the entire plot of the related novelette “Pearl’s Price” -- we even used the deck to structure the narrative, building our scenes around what the cards evoked.

This is your present, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .

So what does the deck look like?

The back image of the Oracle deck.

The first decision was one of nomenclature: we named it the pattern deck. That word calls to mind the connection between textiles and fate, and point one seven seconds later, textile imagery had spread all across the culture of the Vraszenians, the people who created the pattern deck. Because of that, we also termed the suits “threads” -- and because Alyc and I are the aforementioned anthropologists, this wound up connecting to Vraszenian religion and beliefs about the multi-part nature of the soul. But the rest of our worldbuilding is another story . . .

We opted for three suits, initially for very pragmatic reasons. Four would call to mind the tarot and the regular playing cards of the West; five felt like too many. But three wound up being perfect, because the series has another magical tradition (developed by a different ethnic group) which is all about numerology and sacred geometry, and thanks to that corner of our worldbuilding, the number three wound up as a recurrent and significant motif in the story. We also decided to name every card individually, rather than numbering them -- partly because it just felt more flavorful for the narrative, but also because making the deck unnumbered would help distinguish it from that foreign, mathematical tradition. (A decision we regretted at times, as we struggled through the long process of naming every single card. Some were easy; some . . . weren’t. One, which fortunately hadn’t been mentioned during The Mask of Mirrors, didn’t get its final name until after we’d finished drafting The Liar’s Knot. Another, which is a special case, dragged out all the way to the revisions on Labyrinth’s Heart.)

The oracles cards: The Mask of Mirrors, The Liar’s Knot, and Labyrinth’s Heart.

The suits -- or rather, the threads -- aren’t arbitrary divisions. Like the suits of the tarot, each one has a theme. The spinning thread, represented by a spindle, is focused on the “inner self,” which is to say matters of the mind and the spirit. The woven thread, represented by a shuttle, addresses the “outer self,” concepts that have to do with relationships and social institutions. And the cut thread, represented by shears, deals with the “physical self,” the body and the material world. In addition to these, there’s a much smaller set of cards (seven instead of twenty) for the Vraszenian clans, though for in-story reasons those have largely fallen out of use by the time of the trilogy.

Although the cards are named instead of numbered, we do have something reminiscent of the court cards: the Faces and the Masks. These again link to the Vraszenian religion, wherein all deities are believed to have two aspects, one benevolent, the other wrathful. Each thread has four pairs of Faces and Masks, and the theme of duality they bring in extends to the interpretation of all the cards in the deck. Placement within a layout, not orientation, determines whether a card should be read as positive or negative . . . and everything, no matter how seemingly good or bad, contains its opposing aspect. Drowning Breath may be the card of fear, but doesn’t fear exist to warn us of danger? The Face of Song may be the card of peace, but isn’t peace sometimes a facade achieved at the cost of ignoring problems?

Layouts are one aspect that evolved quite a bit as we wrote the series. At the outset, our only plan was for a nine-card spread, three rows of three -- a grid whose rows are introduced with the phrases I’ve been using in this post, This is your past/present/future, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither. But, well, it takes a lot of words to write through the interpretation of that many cards; we weren’t sure our readers would sit still for it over and over again, and besides, sometimes that felt like overkill. So we introduced both a single-card draw for immediate inspiration and a three-card line for guidance on a problem, with the first card representing your current situation, the second the path you should follow, and the third where you may wind up.

That was all in place early in drafting the first book. But seven is another number of significance in the series, for example with the seven Vraszenian clans, and it felt to us like there would be a layout built on that framework. Thus, while working on The Liar’s Knot, we invented the seven-card wheel: one position for each of the clans, offering more in-depth insight on subjects like allies and obstacles, the question you must ask and the wisdom you should remember. And with that in place, well, the number five was sitting right there, conspicuously empty among the one, three, seven, and nine-card options. In Labyrinth’s Heart we reveal that this is used, very rarely, for cursing other people -- not a step to be taken lightly!

This is your future, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .

Even before we started writing the series, Alyc and I dreamt of making the pattern deck for real. Not my blank cards scribbled on with Sharpie -- precious though they are to me, given the role they played in shaping the series -- but a proper deck, illustrated and printed in a form we could share with the world. We’re delighted beyond words to say that dream recently became reality: thanks to the support of over four hundred backers on Kickstarter, we now have the money to pay three amazing artists, A.C. Esguerra, Avery Liell-Kok, and H. Emiko Ogasawara, to bring our vision to life.

We made the pattern deck for the world of our story, but we hope its particular structure and set of concepts can be of use to other people, whether for divination, personal reflection, card games, or storytelling. On our website there is a simplified widget -- which will have the card art once that’s completed! -- where you can lay a three-card line or a nine-card spread, and if you want to explore the full list of cards with their significances, we’ve made those available as well. And if all of this sounds like something you’d enjoy exploring, you can pre-order the pattern deck on BackerKit right now, along with several add-ons like the full-size guidebook, a cloth bag for the deck, or dice for playing a pattern-related game.

May you see the Face and not the Mask!

Guest Contributor Bio

Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly leans on her academic fields for inspiration. She recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to The Game of 100 Candles and the short novel Driftwood. She is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent along with several other series, over eighty short stories, several poems, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written the epic Rook and Rose trilogy, beginning with The Mask of Mirrors. For more information and social media, visit linktr.ee/swan_tower.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

Life is a Dream: Sueño, Romance & the Importance of BIPOC Joy

This year, for National Hispanic Heritage Month, I’d like to take some time here on The Bruja Professor to talk about the importance of BIPOC Joy.

In all of my classes and all of my online conversations about romantic comedies, and the romance genre more broadly, we inevitably circle around an important question: Who gets to be centered in stories of joy? Who gets to have an HEA?

As we push for more inclusive narratives and genuine ones—none of those obligatory “progressive” stories here, thank you or you will be hexed!—we have to celebrate the importance of these uplifting stories for those of us with historically marginalized identities. That is, for those of us used to being the subject of trauma porn, it’s a big deal to read stories that focus on our joy, empowerment, and PLEASURE.

As several students put it when we focused more on BIPOC and queer joy during my romantic comedy course one term: They were in THE BEST MOOD those weeks. Why? Not because college life suddenly stopped being stressful or everything suddenly fell into place, but because they consumed stories that reminded them their lives were about more than oppression and suffering. They could also be about success, affluence, happiness…and all the romcom tropes that we love.

And that feeling—that hope, that joy—is a real kind of magic.

Life is a Dream

It’s certainly one I greedily gobbled up the first time I watched the little-known film Sueño (2005) and the reason why I teach it in my romantic comedy course today. While this film isn’t a traditional romantic comedy, it does fall under the rom-com umbrella if we look at the broader definition of the genre: It is a lighthearted, uplifting film that wouldn’t hold up (at least to my mind) without the romantic plots, even if it isn’t always laugh-out-loud funny.

The movie is about Antonio (John Leguizamo) and his journey from Mexico to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of being a musician. His opportunity comes when a radio station sponsors a contest and he meets Mirabela (Elizabeth Peña), a down-and-out singer and single mom, trying to find her magic again after being dumped by her musician husband. Together, they put together a band that celebrates the classic tunes that shaped their love of music. As this unfolds, Antonio also courts Nina, a  young woman torn between fulfilling her own dreams and caring for family.

What unfolds is a joyful story about what it means to be human. What it means to lose your spark and find it again. What it means to find the balance between being there for family and nourishing your own passions. What it means to find your place in a world that doesn’t always have your best interest in mind. And, most importantly, this movie is about brown joy, something I had rarely ever seen depicted in media before.

In fact, I don’t think it’s a leap to say that this film was a novel experience for me in its depiction of brown joy and, while the ending is open, the one thing that is definitive is that everyone gets an HEA.

A Note on Cultural and Racial Identity

I loved seeing BIPOC characters living their best lives and figuring stuff out, especially when they are brown like me. That said, since those of us in the Hispanic, Latine, and mestizaje communities are so often treated as a monolith, I feel like it’s important to first point out our differences before I continue to swoon over this movie.

Antonio is Mexican and he comes to the United States to fulfill his dreams of becoming a musician. As someone who newly immigrated to the US, he soon realizes the “American Dream” is not what he thought it was as he struggles to find meaningful work and develop a life here. In many ways, the story is about him trying to keep a hold of his dreams and the magic that inspired him to come here, while negotiating the unromantic realities of daily life.

Antonio’s experiences are very different from mine. I’m a native New Mexican mestiza (my family on both sides have been in New Mexico for centuries). I come from a higher socio-economic background. My Spanish ranges from mediocre to adequate. So I’ve never had to grapple with many of the issues he does in the film. I stress this, because, again, we are not a monolith!

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that I love seeing stories that feature brown people magic and brown people joy, even if their experiences don’t completely mirror my own. And this movie continues to stand out to me in the recent push for more inclusive romantic narratives. While there are more Latine romantic comedies out there, many of them feel like they cater to a whiter audience. This film, in contrast, feels so deeply at home in its Latine roots, pushing back against the kind of stories our communities are allowed to tell about ourselves.

Here are a few other reasons this film is so delightful (some spoilers ahead)…

Antonio is One of the Original Cinnamon Roll Heroes

Antonio was my first experience with a cinnamon roll hero before I even knew the term cinnamon roll, which, for the record, refers to a romance hero who is gooey sweet, just like a…cinnamon roll. He’s kind, sensitive, and self-aware.

He doesn’t feel the need to be macho to prove how manly he is, nor does he put his desires at the expense of his friends or his romantic interest. He can express his feelings, isn’t afraid to talk through things, and is sensitive to what others are going through. This, in case you didn’t realize it, is a BIG DEAL in how Hispanic and Latine men are often depicted in media. I see a lot of kind Latine men like Antonio in real life but seldom depicted in stories.

When it comes to romance, he is assertive but also sensitive, putting friendship with Nina over a budding romance when her life gets complicated. Better still, he doesn’t deny that they have more than friendly feelings for one another or use their friendship to push for more. He’s not, in other words, the creeper nice guy hanging around the heroine until she finally sees him as a romantic partner—and is resentful when she doesn’t. Instead, he recognizes that what she needs right now is a friend who can understand what she’s going through with her family. So that’s what he gives her.

Swoon.

Women Supporting Women

Mirabela (Elizabeth Peña) is a gifted singer and single mom trying to get her spark back after being abandoned by her performer ex. She’s older. She’s been through stuff and been dealt some hard blows in life. When Antonio breezes into her life, she begins to open herself to life again. She also wonders if this younger man is into her. She is not used to being around genuinely kind men, so she can’t tell if his behavior is because he not only admires her but also desires her.

As she grapples with what their relationship might be—A romance? A musical partnership?—she meets Nina, the younger woman Antonio is truly romantically interested in. Instead of devolving into a petty plot of two women fighting over a man, Mirabela and Nina become friends and confidants. Nina admits she admires Mirabela’s curves and life experience. Mirabela compliments the younger woman’s own figure and gives Nina romantic advice about Antonio.

It’s a beautiful, poignant development as Mirabela realizes she’s confused her new zest for life with romantic feelings for Antonio. Instead of making an issue of it, she appreciates her relationships for what they are and, with wisdom that only comes with age, acknowledges that she’s had to figure out healthy relationship boundaries after her messy breakup. Nina, too, realizes she can both care for her family and develop her own life, including romance, outside of it.

Mirabela’s story is at its sweetest when she learns to appreciate herself outside of a romantic relationship and reclaims her voice—literally as a singer and metaphorically as a woman. And, since this is a romance, after all, she discovers that love was right under her nose all along, in the form of the band manager, who, we suspect, has quietly pined for her for some time. Her story shows that life doesn’t stop at a certain age, and neither does romance.

Not So Big Misunderstandings

The most delightful part of this film is that it doesn’t rely on Big Misunderstandings, or issues that could easily be resolved with a conversation, to drive the plot. In fact, Antonio and his friends talk through things.

For example, when his band thinks Antonio is signing a solo record deal after a series of miscommunications via the rumor mill, they…talk to him about it. What’s more, they say they support him but are hurt because he did it behind their back. They want him to succeed, even if he has to go his own way. They just wanted to be told up front that that’s what is happening.

Antonio, in turn, quickly explains that while he met with an agent, he actually turned down the deal because he is committed to his band and the music they create together. The whole scene is less than a few minutes and clears up an issue that would be a 30-minute drama fest in another movie.

If you get people who talk through their issues, are emotionally mature, and are committed to bringing out the best in one another, you might wonder where the conflict comes in. Simple: All the drama in this story comes from being human.

Nina’s struggle to be both there for her family and develop her life is real. Mirabela recovering from a toxic relationship and finding her feet again is real. Antonio’s dream is real, as are all the bumps in the road he’s gone through to get there. The story feels all the sweeter for leaning into our daily struggles and desires for more than just getting through life, not manufactured conflicts necessary.

Magical Realism

Lastly, this movie is infused with magical realism in a way that shows everyday magic as a lived experience, not as a fantasy. When you are spiritually inclined and a little witchy, your life reads like a magical realism story, or as we like to call it, REALISM. This is especially true for those of us in Hispanic, Latine, and mestizaje communities, where the spirit realms are closer to us than many realize, and unexpected enchantments are a part of our daily lives.

Mirabela has her fortune read by a friend which promises true love. It is what propels her into a friendship with Antonio and, later, love…just not with him. Her fortune comes true, yes, but not in the way she expected. For anyone who has ever had their cards read or even consulted their horoscope, this feels so laughably accurate. The cards and the stars never lie, but things never play out like you think they will.

Antonio sees life as a waking dream, as many of us do, and, as a result, can imagine a better world for himself. He imagines passionate dance sequences with Nina when they can’t be together, a sultry reminder that, while their friendship comes first, there’s no denying their passion for one another. Mirabela, too, gets her dreamy dance sequence as she considers what a romance with Antonio might look like…and realizes, as her fantasy devolves into a hostile dance, that she doesn’t want to recreate what she had with her ex with her new bandmate, even if he were interested.

Even the ending is something like a dream, leaving the viewer to wonder if they won the contest and got the record deal. Maybe they did. Maybe the end is just another part of the sueño of life. But guess what?

IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Because they have everything else they need: They have friendship. They have love. They have music. They have romance. And they have the magic of life.

See why I love this movie so much?

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Re-Enchant Your Life with the Tarot

This post originally appeared on The Carterhuagh School of Folklore & the Fantastic’s blog. And can I just say I’m swooning at the magical cuteness of the graphic they made and let me steal away?

Last week, Sara and Brittany asked those of us taking the Everyday Magic Challenge an important question: What fairy tale are you?

Being a tarot-inclined bruja, my eyes went directly to the divination deck sitting on my writing desk before they even finished asking the question. The tarot, you see, is its own folktale. It’s a timeless story and an ever-evolving one that starts with the Fool and follows him as he journeys into the great wide world, much like Joseph Campbell’s traditional hero’s journey… only waaaaayyyyy cooler.

Here’s the fun part about the Fool’s journey: It plays with the staid template of the hero’s journey. The tarot, at its heart, has a lot of trickster energy in it and resists anything too literal, always pushing you to think creatively, poetically, magically rather than in stifling narrative boxes.

For one thing, the Fool is not about completing A Journey but A Series of Journeys. We are always beginning and ending phases of our lives, leaving something behind to embrace something new. We don’t just stop when the chapter ends.

And we don’t always have to leave home to go on an adventure!

That was a comforting thought for me during the pandemic when we literally couldn’t leave our homes during lockdown. My journey had to be an internal one and, thank the powers that be, an online one—where would I be without my internet friends? Or the tarot, for that matter?

I am grateful to have many quiet, soul-nourishing conversations with the deck each morning as I enjoy my first cup of coffee and bask in the early-dawn hush of a day full of possibility. And I always love it when my familiars join me. They are two black cats that represent the duality of the tarot: Smoke (aloof and mysterious) and Juniper (playful and mischievous). Together, we explore the next chapter in our story, at home in both the sage advice and puckish riddles the cards reveal to us. The beauty of this ritual is in knowing that as soon as I finish one journey, either out in the world or in my inner dreamscape, there is always another calling to me to bring me a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me.

Here is the other delightful secret of the Fool’s Journey: We are always in a state of unknowing AND a state of familiarity. We take comfort in the magical items that protect and heal us, like beloved amulets or soothing pots of tea. We feel a thrill of excitement in the unexpected enchantments that come our way—an invitation, a chance meeting, the first apples of fall. And yes, sometimes we feel fear when we take a wrong turn and find ourselves in a dark, haunted wood. But the cards are there to talk with you. To help you find your way back into the light and sometimes make your home in the darkness, as much wisdom can be found there.

Then we wind our way home, either to our literal sanctuary or sense of self or both, content to have completed an important journey… and the cycle begins again.

We are not stagnant beings. We do not stop growing. Each new milestone, each new curve in the path, in fact, only reveals how little we know. Now that might sound like a terrible fate—being in a constant state of unknowing—but I assure you, it’s delightful. Consider the wild woods of folklore or the enchanted treasure troves of myth. Half the fun of them is in the fundamental understanding that we will never know the whole of them. Think of all the mysteries hidden in the heart of the woods! Imagine all the treasures buried at the bottom of the sea! We will never know the whole of life’s wonders and so we are always able to be delighted and awe-inspired by what we find. And when the world feels too big, as it can sometimes, we have the safety of our sanctuaries—our constant state of familiarity—to retreat to before beginning our next adventure.

Folklore is something that makes peace with mystery, the great numinous unknown.

So, too, does the tarot. The more we let go of finite narratives like the hero’s journey, the more expansive we become. The more we can see our personal myth as an ever-evolving unfolding story that deepens in meaning and resonance over time, the more we can begin to see ourselves as dynamic, expansive beings with a multitude of stories within us. In the same way, the meaning of the cards can change over time as we develop our relationship with the deck and become more attuned to our personal journeys.

We are all made up of stories and the Fool represents, in many ways, the stories we tell about ourselves. The major arcana begins with the Fool leaving on a grand adventure and ends with the World. The message is clear: By the end of any good journey, we are at home in the world, at one with ourselves and our place this wild and wonderful universe.

Isn’t that what a good story does for us? It reminds us that we are connected to worlds outside ourselves and within. This is why I’ve begun to think of myself as a story witch. Between conversations with the tarot and conversations with beloved folklorists and fellow writers, Sara and Brittany, I’ve come to find story magic can help us re-enchant our lives and reimagine the stories we tell about ourselves.

For example, I was once a burned-out educator and people-pleaser. Now? I’m taking my power back and becoming the main character of my own life again, thanks to the incredible community that is The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

It makes me SO delighted to offer up a little magic of my own in their latest Enchant course.

I’ll be contributing a special series titled, “Conversing with the Tarot to Conjure Main Character Magic.” This Enchant tarot series is designed to help those suffering from burnout and stress to recapture their main character energy by consulting the deck. The cards are the embodiment of story magic and, by conversing with them—exploring the stories and iconography that overlap with folklore—we can learn how to reclaim our own story and find enchantment—and empowerment—in our daily lives.

Come join us on a journey into the expansive world of stories!

Note: The link I provided for the course has a special code so that a portion of the price you pay will support me and my work as a professor, writer, and bruja.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

I Want it Allllllllll: An Interview with Romance Author N.G. Peltier

It should come as no surprise, readers, that romance novels made up the bulk of my Emotional Support Books during the pandemic. That goes double for romantic comedies that lightened my heart and made me feel like the world wasn’t always a dark place. One of these Emotional Support Books was N.G. Peliter’s Sweethand, which was not only a feast for the senses but a study in BIPOC and queer joy. I am so excited to teach this book, the first in the Island Bites Series (and devour the second book in the series soon!). It likewise made my year when this fantastic author agreed to let me interview her for my course, “I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Legacy of the Romantic Comedy.” One thing we both agree on when it comes to representation in romantic comedies? WE WANT IT ALLLLLLLLLLLLL!

1. In my classes we talk about the yucks and the yums of various genres. What do you love or think is yummy about romantic comedies?

I absolutely love the awkwardness between MCs in rom-coms. The person could either be sooo awkward that they’re trip up their words or are just downright clumsy so it adds a hilarious element to it. And awkward tension to me is so fun to read/watch and write! 

2. What parts of the genre feel yucky to you? Anything you would change about them?

Some things I don’t like about rom-coms and feel really yucky, be it both books or movies, is that sometimes people lean into using bigotry to add the so called funny element. For instance, making fat people the butt of a joke or using a racist take etc. You can make something funny without that. So I would for sure change that about it. 

3. I have to ask: What’s your favorite romantic comedy? Why?

My favorite rom-com movie is HITCH! I can watch it over and over, and I have lol. I know the movie has its issues, of course, but I just love how we have Albert Brennaman, who is set up as this not-very-suave guy who’s juxtaposed with Hitch, who is supposed to be Mr. Expert at this love thing but really when Hitch goes on his dates just he can’t seem to catch a break/get it together while Albert is absolutely killing it in his own messy way. Lol. I just find it so cute and funny. 

My favorite rom-com book is I Think I Love You by Christina C Jones. This is a rom-com book where you will actually be cackling. Some rom-com books aren’t actually funny but CCJ never disappoints! 

4. What inspired you to write Sweethand?

Sweethand actually started off as a YA contemp fantasy romance thing LOL. There were magical elements and everything (maybe I’ll write that story someday with different characters). But I realized it just wasn’t working as I wanted it to so I decided…hmmm why not age everyone up and keep the enemies-to-lovers angle and go from there? I also wanted to have a fun romance set in my island with Trinidadian characters who could remind me of my friends and family. I really also wanted to have a baker heroine and randomly decided to make Keiran in the music biz as I felt their jobs gave them opportunities to interact/clash 😊 

5. Tell us a little more about the inspiration behind Sweethand. What romcom tropes and themes did you want to play with and why?

As mentioned above I definitely wanted to have fun with the annoyance to lovers tropes. Because I looove reading about people who just can’t stand each other for whatever reason but oh noooo they’re attracted to each other. The potential for sexy, fun banter is so great in these scenarios. I also decided to sweeten the pot by adding in another trope I love: forced proximity. These two, their blood already don’t take to each other, as we say here, and now they have to plan a joint wedding party?? Together?? Chaos and disasterrrr.

6. Your story is set on your home island of Trinidad. You’ve also said in other interviews that you rarely see romances set in the Caribbean centering on Caribbean characters. What was it like to write that romance?

It was an interesting experience. Of course, as I wrote it I was enjoying including all the very trini centric things, like local places, our food, dialect, aspects of the culture but on the flipside was the worry that hmmmm is this too Caribbean?? Is it not Caribbean enough?? But then I said you know what??? I’m writing this for me and hopefully readers will love it because in my mind regardless of where it’s set that shouldn’t hinder the enjoyment yeah? Also there are things that confuse me when I read romances set in America and I still manage…like I still don’t understand the education system. Like how old is a junior or senior or sophomore??? I just don’t knowww lol.

7. Similarly, you also center your stories on BIPOC and queer characters who aren’t featured enough in romance stories or romantic comedies. In fact, many of our stories in media are a kind of trauma porn, as I tell my students. What was it like to write a joyful story that centered on these communities? 

The population of Trinidad is mainly made up of people who are afro-trini and indo-trini. Why would I not centre us? It was just a natural thing. These are my friends and family members. The Caribbean is still so sadly anti-queer ☹ but for me I wanted to showcase that love isn’t for one group of people alone. Making Keiran bi and not have that be a whole thing during the story was also a very natural and conscious decision for me. There are joyful romances featuring queer characters who are just living and loving that already exist so I just wanted to add those. And I feel so glad when readers say my book cheered them up or made them happy because that’s really all I want 😊 

8. As you already know, there are A LOT of stigmas associated with the romance genre in genre and the romantic comedy specifically. Why do you think that is?

Hmmm, I think people have this notion that it’s a “feminine thing” so it’s girly and cringy to admit that hey I love/read romance. Which side eye to everyone who thinks so. There are so many different kinds of romance that okay, if rom-coms specifically aren’t your vibe cool, but there’s romantic suspense if you’re looking for something with some action! I love rom coms but I also enjoy action, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy, animations etc. There are even manga romances out there! Just give it a chance, at least. 

There’s also this notion that romance is not anything of substance or real literature but who gets to even define what real lit is???  Romances can be just fun, fluffy reads or be that as well as delve into deeper, “serious” topics. Just because we’re exploring love and relationships here doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a quality read or won’t be something of substance.

9. What do you think romantic comedies can teach people about life, love, and relationships (you can discuss both the good and bad here)?

Oh, rom-coms for sure let you know that love can happen anywhere and anytime. On the job, at the grocery, at a wedding. With someone you’ve known your whole life. I’ve been in a friends-to-lovers and office romance thing so…it is real hehe. 

One thing some rom coms seem to push over and over is the big grand gesture which while I love in movies and to read please don’t ever do some over-the-top thing to win my back I will be super annoyed lol. I prefer a small private gesture. So here’s where I think we should realize that relationships are so different. You can’t just reuse a move that may have worked on someone before with a new person. Tailor your gestures and actions to who the individual is. 

For instance, for me, I know people think oh for Valentine’s Day I just get my partner the usual flowers and candy cuz that’s what people do. Nope. Get me some books on my wishlist or that very specific thing I’ve been wanting to get foreverrr and I’d appreciate that more. I will always recall when one of my exes just randomly got me this duck puppet thing where when you put your hand in the back and make the mouth move, it quacked “Old MacDonald,” lol. It was so out of the blue??? but I love funny things like that so much. 😉

10. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I do want add that I want to see more and more rom-coms with underrepresented communities written by persons from these communities. I need roms set in various Caribbean islands. Give us the interracial roms where no one is white. The trans characters being cute and awkward where I’m over here like just kiss already??? Fat leads living their best sexy lives etc. I want it alll.

1. Where can people find you to learn more about your work?

Thanks so much for having me. I’m on Twitter, IG and now Threads as @trinielf. And if you want to learn more about my books check out my website.

Guest Contributor Bio

N.G. Peltier is an anime watching, book reading, video-game playing, story writing kinda girl.

A devourer of words and books from a young age, she enjoys writing romance and creeping people out with the Caribbean folklore stories she grew up hearing.

A Trinidadian born and raised, she currently lives in Trinidad with her mountain of ideas and characters battling each other for whose story get told next.

She is represented by Lauren Abramo of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

RomComs Are All That: An Interview with Romance Author Maya Rodale

Readers, let me tell you something: I was over the moon when Maya Rodale agreed to let me interview her for my course, “I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Legacy of the Romantic Comedy,” and for the Bruja Professor. I love teaching her book, Lady Claire is All That, part of her Keeping Up with the Cavendishes series. In case you didn’t get the hint from the title, the book is based on the teen classic rom-com She’s All That. It’s a delightful historical romp that introduces students to romance novels, fan fiction and adaptations, and the joys of historical romance. Maya was kind enough to chat with me about this book, romance, and the yucks and yums of the rom-com genre. SWOON!

1. In my classes, we talk about the yucks and the yums of various genres. What do you love or think is yummy about romantic comedies?

I love that romantic comedies put me in an emotional space of love, laughter and optimism. I love that they are unabashedly and unapologetically about having a good-hearted good time.  

2. What parts of the genre feel yucky to you? Anything you would change about them?

We can look back at Rom Coms from earlier times and be squeamish or even horrified by what we thought was romantic, or the dynamics between people or whatever. I think of the movie Knocked Up, which I really enjoyed at the time but now I have questions....

On a personal note, while I love grand romantic gestures in rom-coms, I would be horrified if that happened to me IRL. 

3. I have to ask: What’s your favorite romantic comedy? Why?

My favorite romantic comedy is my favorite movie—Roman Holiday. I love it because you can really see the heroine’s journey of self-discovery happening through the romance. I love her rebellion against what is expected of her. I love her joy and pleasure she finds all day. I love that her hero is thrilled to be there, holding her hand. The whole story is kind, it’s funny, it’s magical and you can feel it. Book #2 in the Keeping Up with the Cavendishes series, Chasing Lady Amelia, is based on it. 

4. What inspired you to write a retelling of She’s All That set in Regency England? What is it about that movie that captured your imagination?

Confession: I don’t think I had seen the movie before I decided to write a Regency version of it! Of course I was familiar with it, being a teen in the 90s, but for whatever reason, I had yet to see it. But watching it is the best kind of “work” and “research” that I do. The entire Keeping Up With the Cavendishes series is based on rom-coms and your next question will allow me to answer why I picked this movie...

5. Tell us a little more about the inspiration behind Lady Claire is All That. What romcom tropes and themes did you want to play with? How did the Regency setting change the original high school-set story?

First, I think the Regency is so very high school! 

I knew I wanted to write a very smart heroine based on Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. Readers were asking for her ever since my novel, The Wicked Wallflower, which drew a lot of inspiration from the work of Charles Babbage and the computer he invented. 

I also knew I wanted to write a “dumb” hero. So many romance heroes are the tallest, the smartest, the richest, the hottest, etc. and I was a little bored of writing that. I wanted the challenge of writing a hero who wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but who still had a lot to offer. 

And I had major feminist angst about the whole “makeover” plot and “make her popular” plot that I wanted to play with. 

She’s All That provided the perfect framework to play with all those ideas. 

6. I talk with my students about how many romance authors were inspired to become writers, in part, because of the 80s/90s/00s romantic comedies they grew up watching. Was that the case for you?

Sure! I LOVE those movies and then they stopped making them, so I turned to romance novels instead. And when I read those faster than they could be published, I had to start writing my own ☺ 

7. I also discuss with students how fanfic has really changed the way we think of stories, AND YET, in many ways, most writers are writing fanfic, trying to capture the essence of stories they love. Is that the case for you?

Absolutely. I used to play guitar, and I would try writing songs that sounded like an artist I loved and...my songs always came out wildly different. But it was a wonderful creative exercise. What do I like about it? What emotional notes are being hit, and in what order? What are the ingredients here? 

FanFic is the same, I think. The fourth book in the Keeping Up With the Cavendishes series, It’s Hard Out Here For a Duke, is essentially fanfic to the Meredith and Derek relationship on in season 1 and 2 of Grey’s Anatomy. I actually used the name Meredith Green as a placeholder in Book #1 and it went to press before I could change it so...I was stuck with it! 

8. As you already know, there are A LOT of stigmas associated with the romance genre in genre, and the romantic comedy specifically. Why do you think that is?

Well, I wrote a whole book about this. ☺

Short answer: I think culturally we have anxiety about women and other marginalized groups unapologetically experiencing love, pleasure and empowerment—and then being rewarded with a happy ever after. Romance novels and romantic comedies are all about that, unapologetically so. 

9. What do you think romantic comedies can teach people about life, love, and relationships (you can discuss both the good and bad here)?

A really good romantic comedy shows how the love inspires or agitates someone to really blossom and become their truest version of themselves. I love that. 

I could write A LOT here about how they teach us a script and a language for courtship, romance and love. Or what to look for in a partner. How a partner should treat someone they love. How we get to vicariously experience emotional highs and lows and practice feeling emotionally vulnerable. How we can overvalue grand gestures. 

Most of all, I think they remind us that love and life can be fun and funny and full of heart and emotion and we can take pleasure in that. That is no small thing.

 10. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

What a great list of questions, thank you!

11. Where can people find you to learn more about your work?

The best place to find me is www.mayarodale.com. I’m also on Threads and Instagram as @mayarodale and on Substack. 

My most “rom com” romance novels are: Lady Claire is All That, Lady Bridget’s Diary, The Wicked Wallflower, Seducing Mr. Knightly and the contemporary When Jane Met Duke. And in Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained I talk about why it all matters. 

Guest Contributor Bio

Maya Rodale is the best-selling and award-winning author of funny, feminist fiction including historical romance, YA and historical fiction. Reviewers and readers have noted her “signature wit and banter” (Entertainment Weekly) and declared her novels to be “endlessly entertaining” (Booklist), “funny, heartfelt and lovingly crafted” (Library Journal), “certain to delight” (Publisher’s Weekly), “energetic and bold” (Kirkus), and “absolutely a ton of fun to read” (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books).

A champion of the romance genre and its readers, she is also the author of Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained. Maya has reviewed romance for NPR Books and has appeared in Bustle, Glamour, Shondaland, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and PBS. She began reading romance novels in college at her mother’s insistence and has never been allowed to forget it.

Images of Lady Claire Is All That book cover and She’s All That movie poster.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

“Cheek to Cheek” with the Rom-Com Genre: The Musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Jennifer Howell

As the host of the podcast Every Rom Com, I’ve always taken the “every” part seriously. While some people prefer to draw strict lines around the genre, I’m always delighted to find romantic comedy structures and tropes in unexpected places. Whether a rom-com is hiding out in a zombie movie,  riding along with a group of storm chasers, or stowing away in a spaceship in a galaxy far, far away, I’m always glad when rom-com elements appear in other genres. 

That said, it’s never been too hard to find rom-com structures and tropes in the genre of movie musicals. Growing up, most of my favorites, from Singing in the Rain to The Sound of Music, featured strong romantic storylines and swoon-worthy scenes. But it wasn’t until I began working on a “Musicals” series for our podcast that I discovered a rich vein of romantic comedy gold in the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

Most of the Astaire/Rogers musicals are just romantic comedies set to song and dance, and they contain some of the most beautiful love scenes, funniest characters, and tropey-est tropes in rom-com history. In watching these films we can see how romantic comedy stories have changed with the times, and we can also enjoy the all-too-rare treat of romance being taken seriously by men, complete with heartfelt declarations, gorgeous costumes, and elaborate sets! If you yearn for a pre-Apatow age of men in rom-coms, Fred Astaire’s got you covered! 

These films do not, sadly, offer much (if any) representation for BIPOC audiences. Two of the movies also warrant content warnings. While it is often cited as “the best” of the Astaire/Rogers films, Swing Time also contains the only blackface performance of Fred Astaire’s career. And Carefree contains an instance of a white male character impersonating an Asian woman over the phone. All the movies contain instances of misogyny, but nothing that seems out of place with the social norms of the 1930’s. It’s also worth noting that Ginger Rogers nearly always portrays the type of assertive, independent woman that she was in real life.

These faults aside, there is much to enjoy in the Astaire/Rogers musical rom-coms, from their unapologetic celebration of love and romance, to their quick wit and hilarious supporting players, to the rapturous dance numbers which stand in for love scenes. With that said, let’s dig in!

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Films - The Basics

For those not yet in the know, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were a famous acting, dancing, and singing duo who appeared in 10 musicals together, most of them released by RKO in the 1930’s. Their first appearance together was in the 1933 musical Flying Down To Rio in which they played supporting characters who nearly stole the show. Astaire and Rogers had both been performing separately since their childhoods, in vaudeville and eventually on Broadway, before transitioning to the big screen. Rogers had appeared in more movies than Astaire by 1933, including in several Busby Berkeley musical spectacles. As an aside, it’s totally worth your time to watch Rogers’ trippy Pig Latin version of We’re in the Money in Berkeley’s film Gold Diggers of 1933 (check out this clip of Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933 - the Pig Latin begins at around 1:38).

Though the Astaire/Rogers movies are primarily discussed as musicals, they are also routinely and properly labeled on IMDB under “romance” and “comedy”, and Arlene Croce author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book calls the plots of these films “a very simple but very specialized form of love story.” 

The films are also extraordinary musicals, however. Fred Astaire is acknowledged as one of the greatest dancers in film history, and Ginger Rogers is widely considered to be his greatest partner. These films also introduced some of the most popular songs in American history, including Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off and The Way You Look Tonight, standards you may recognize from the modern rom-coms When Harry Met Sally and My Best Friend’s Wedding. Astaire and Rogers are already considered vitally important to the genre of musicals; I hope I can convince you that they are also important to the romantic comedy. 

I won’t be discussing all of the Astaire/Rogers films here. As mentioned, they were only supporting characters in Flying Down To Rio. Their follow-up film Roberta is an adaptation, and they are co-leads with another couple. They’re also co-leads in Follow the Fleet, though I highly recommend checking out that film for its playful musical numbers and nautical costuming. Finally, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is a biopic, and in The Barkleys of Broadway the couple are already married, so I’ll limit my discussion here to 5 films: The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), and Carefree (1938). If you end up wanting to know even more about Top Hat, in particular, we cover that film in-depth on Episode 58 of Every Rom Com!

Romantic Comedy Structure in Astaire/Rogers Films

The structure of the romantic comedy was set long before the age of cinema, in the plays of Shakespeare and others, and in novels, especially the novels of Jane Austen. Romantic comedy movies were also more abundant than some people realize in early Hollywood, including in the silent era. Some of the most well-regarded silent films, including Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights are romantic comedies, as are some lesser-known gems like It starring Clara Bow. The 1930’s, of course, also featured non-musical movies that inspired the modern romantic comedy genre, including It Happened One Night (1934), the Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant double-dose of Bringing Up Baby and Holiday in 1938, and many more classics starring top actors of the time. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did not introduce these stories and tropes in early Hollywood, but they did help to popularize them, since as a duo they were one of the biggest office draws of the 1930’s.

Most of the Astaire/Rogers films include the following recognizable rom-com story points. There’s the introduction to our lead character and their single life; there’s the meet-cute;, there’s usually love at first sight. After being struck by love, Astaire’s character begins a dogged pursuit of Rogers’ character, which is often met with initial disinterest on Rogers’ part. At some point there’s an initial spark, usually expressed through dance, then the couple are struck down by obstacles and misunderstandings. Generally, those obstacles are briefly overcome with a type of symbolic consummation in the movie’s most romantic musical number. But the couple are then beset by more misunderstandings or difficulties, leading up to the final resolution of the plot, which often includes a lavish music and dance number. 

In the five Astaire/Rogers movies under discussion, Astaire’s character is always introduced first. This differs from most modern romantic comedies, which generally center the woman. On the plus side, centering Astaire’s character demonstrates that love and romance are important to men, and that audiences in the 1930’s felt that romance was a serious enough topic to to be taken on by the greatest male performers. This hearkens back to Shakespeare’s time, when even plays with prominent female characters, such as Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It generally began with speeches by male characters. And, of course, in Shakespeare’s time, men were playing all the women characters anyway! 

The disadvantage of centering Astaire’s character, of course, is that Ginger Rogers was considered a less prominent part of the film, and in the early days of their partnership she was often paid less than even some of the supporting actors in their movies. Centering the male perspective also encourages the audience to identify with Astaire’s character, even when his behavior is annoying or even harassing.

Because early musicals generally didn’t allow for ordinary characters to transcend reality by breaking out in song and dance, Astaire and Rogers’ characters were nearly always some type of performer. After Astaire’s character was established, Rogers quickly entered the film too, since any plot beyond romance in these films tended to be just a paper-thin excuse to bring the couple together.

Each Astaire/Rogers movie has a memorable and often creative “meet-cute.” In most of the movies it might be more aptly called a “meet-annoy”, since Astaire’s character often does something to upset Rogers, whether it’s ripping her dress, or even accidentally getting her fired from her job! 

Top Hat might be the best and most memorable of these meet-cutes. In Top Hat, Astaire is tap-dancing late at night in a hotel room above Rogers’ room. The camera pans down from Astaire dancing, to Rogers waking from her slumber in a luxurious satiny bed. Elegant even in her annoyance, Rogers wraps a stylish robe around her nightgown and goes upstairs to confront Astaire. Seeing Rogers, Astaire immediately falls in love, and uses her visit as an opportunity to flirt with her. Rogers brushes off his seduction attempts with witty comebacks and returns to her bed. Then in a bizarre but somehow charming move, Astaire empties sand from an ashcan onto the floor of his hotel room, and performs a shuffling “sandman” dance to send Rogers to sleep. Despite her initial exasperation, Rogers falls back to sleep with a blissful smile on her face. 

Having met Rogers and usually having fallen in love at first sight, Astaire’s character now begins his pursuit. This aspect of the Astaire/Rogers movies may be the most jarring to contemporary audiences, as some of his behavior in these movies would be regarded as sexual harassment or even stalking by today’s standards. All I can say is that when you’ve watched a number of these films in a row, Astaire’s character begins to seem less threatening, as if he’s just a person Rogers’ character temporarily forgot she was in love with. Perhaps this isn’t a healthy response, but it does allow you to enjoy the movies! It’s also important to note that whether Astaire is pursuing Rogers’ character in a car on a country road, taking the place of her horse-drawn carriage driver, or merely showing up at her hotel room because he saw her in a flipbook, Rogers is always portrayed as a strong woman who can hold her ground and establish her boundaries. And in Carefree, for a change, Rogers is the one pursuing Astaire! 

The pursuit in an Astaire/Rogers film usually leads to an initial dance or song. While in a modern romantic comedy sparks might first fly during a first date, a deep conversation, or while working towards a shared goal, in Astaire/Rogers movies it is this first song or dance as a couple that marks the real beginning of their romance. The lyrics of the song will generally amount to a confession of Astaire’s feelings. In Shall We Dance Astaire sings: “I”ve got beginner’s luck/The first time that I’m in love, I’m in love with you/Gosh I’m lucky.”

 In Top Hat, Astaire pursues Rogers to a gazebo on a rainy day where he sings and they dance to the song “Isn’t This A Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain”. This dance captures Rogers’ initial dislike for Astaire; she begins to dance next to him only to prove that she can dance as well as he can. Then, as she begins to enjoy matching his steps, she finally lets him whirl her away into a couples dance. During the dance you can feel their chemistry building, and so in one scene they go from enemies (at least on one side) to potential lovers. 

To a modern audience the idea that you might fall in love over the course of one dance might seem unsophisticated or naive. This marks a major difference between early and modern rom-coms. Romantic comedies in the modern age are often concerned with psychological realism. Characters will come together (or not) because of their personality traits, neuroses, or tragic events in their past. When this is presented well, with strong characterization and subtle dialogue, it can create a deeper and more compelling love story. On the other hand, even the lightest of modern rom-coms can sometimes get too bogged down in obligatory psychobabble. Recently I watched French Kiss for the first time and I wondered why I needed to hear Meg Ryan diagnose Kevin Kline as being afraid of commitment, or Kline discussing Ryan’s fear of flying. Couldn’t they just hang out in the French countryside, be attractive, and have that be reason enough to fall in love? In an Astaire/Rogers movie, they definitely could! 

Again, when modern rom-coms handle the psychology of courtship deftly they can often be just as compelling, if not more, than the Astaire/Rogers movies. But in comparison to some of the less skillful dialogue, generic backstories, or silly slapstick that forms the lead-up to love in many modern movies, the Astaire/Rogers model of dancing your way into romance can feel sophisticated and refreshing! 

Of course, no romantic comedy is complete without some complications, and into every Astaire/Rogers movie misunderstandings and obstacles must fall. In The Gay Divorcee Rogers is already married and trying to get a divorce from a neglectful husband. In Swing Time, Astaire is engaged to a woman he no longer wants to marry after falling for Rogers. In Top Hat, it’s mistaken identity, as Rogers becomes convinced that Astaire is her best friend’s husband. These misunderstandings generally involve participation from a hilarious supporting cast. Top Hat is my favorite of the Astaire/Rogers movies, if only because the supporting cast of Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, and Helen Broderick make the comic scenes just as entertaining as the musical or romantic interludes.

Astaire and Rogers in “Follow the Fleet” (1936) in an elegant, romantic dance.

Many of the Astaire/Rogers movies also feature a second romantic couples dance before the finale. This is often the most romantic number in the movie, usually set at night, with Rogers in a beautiful gown, and featuring songs like Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” or Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.” This scene often seems to take the place of what might be a fade-out to a first sexual encounter in a pre-Code movie, or an actual sex scene in many contemporary rom-coms. In The Gay Divorcee the chemistry between Astaire and Rogers is so intense that Rogers ends the dance by practically swooning back onto a bench, in a seeming state of bliss, at which point Astaire offers her a cigarette. 

This consummation of love is temporary, however, as either the existing complications or new complications must be resolved. In several of the movies, the new complication leads Rogers into the arms of another man, and Astaire must find a way to stop the wedding, certainly familiar terrain for the modern rom-com audience! 

Finally, in each movie, misunderstandings and complications are resolved, and whether as part of the resolution or after the resolution, there is a final dance scene, which usually involves many extra dancers, and often includes a large crowd watching the dance. Some of these numbers seem to be a holdover from earlier musical films which included musical numbers as much for spectacle as they did for story. 

But in another sense, the grandeur of these numbers brings to mind the end of a Shakespeare comedy, which often saw all or most of the cast assembled to celebrate a wedding and tie up all the loose ends of the plot. At the end of some Astaire/Rogers movies it’s directly stated that their characters are now going to marry; in others it’s merely implied. But in all of the movies these large dance numbers seem to serve as a type of substitute for a wedding ceremony, bringing together the community to witness their union in the dance. 

We can still see this form of plot resolution in many modern rom-coms. When contemporary romantic comedies don’t end in actual weddings, they will often end in large celebrations, such as prom nights, New Year’s parties, or large family gatherings. Whatever the specific case, happy endings in romantic comedies are often celebrated by the whole community, and the Astaire/Rogers movie dance spectacles are just one variation on the theme!

Familiar Tropes in Astaire/Rogers Movies

In addition to sharing a story structure with the modern romantic comedy, Astaire/Rogers movies also contain familiar tropes!

One obvious initial trope is the rom-com character as an aspirational figure, rather than a believable human being. For example, a modern romantic comedy character might be a magazine writer living in a large Manhattan apartment, a doctor who never seems to be on call, or a middle-aged woman who can afford to renovate an Italian villa. Astaire/Rogers characters are similarly equipped with performing jobs that never seem to require rehearsals, and unlimited budgets to rent luxury hotel rooms, engage in foreign travel at a moment’s notice, and wear the finest clothes. 

Speaking of “the finest clothes”, while I don’t recall an Astaire/Rogers movie with a makeover or shopping scene, costuming plays a significant role in the Astaire/Rogers movies, serving not just as one beautiful element in a scene, but also as a symbol used in storytelling. The number “Cheek to Cheek” from Top Hat would be gorgeous regardless of Rogers’ dress, but without the flowing, feathered dress that she helped design, it might not have become one of the most iconic dance scenes in film history. The song’s lyrics begin with: “Heaven, I’m in heaven”, and the feathers that adorn Rogers’ shoulders bring home the point that she’s the angel. Another key costuming moment occurs in Carefree. As soon as Rogers realizes she’s in love with Astaire, she shows up to his office wearing a dress with a heart embroidered prominently on her chest. 

Fred Astaire in Top Hat.

Unlike many modern rom-coms, the men are also concerned with clothes in Astaire/Rogers movies. The title of the movie Top Hat is in fact taken from a number Astaire sings and dances to early on in the movie, “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.” The lyrics are entirely about the joys of getting dressed up to go out!

Costuming is a fun element in rom-coms old and new, but in Astaire/Rogers movies men also care about fashion! 

Another trope found in the Astaire/Rogers movies is the best friend character. While in modern rom-coms these characters are usually the same age as the lead, in the Astaire/Rogers movies the best friend role is often portrayed by a somewhat older relative, manager, or friend. As in modern rom-coms these best friends help to advance the romantic plots while also offering comic relief. Best friend characters take many shapes in modern rom-coms from true confidantes, to wacky co-workers, to frenemies. Rogers’ best friends ranged from a calculating manager in Shall We Dance, to a scatterbrained aunt in The Gay Divorcee, to the savvy, amorous older women played by Luella Gear in Carefree and Helen Broderick in Top Hat and Swing Time. 

Astaire, meanwhile, often found his best friend character in the actor Edward Everett Horton. Though I haven’t seen it discussed much in film criticism, Horton several times seems to play a very under-the-radar version of the gay best friend, though in this case he’s the best friend to the male lead rather than the female lead. In Top Hat, Horton plays Astaire’s friend and producer, Horace, and there are several scenes that suggest Horace may be in a relationship with his valet, Bates. This impression is furthered by several comments on the part of Horace’s wife. Another scene in Shall We Dance finds Horton having late night drinks with Rogers’ manager, in which scene the men make at least two comments that might serve as double entendres. Edward Everett Horton was a gay man in real life, and  to the credit of these films, the double entendres never seem to be a joke on the characters, but rather a wink to audience members who might see the queer representation hiding in plain sight.

Speaking of stock rom-com characters, many of the Astaire/Rogers movies feature a potential love interest for Rogers other than Astaire. Of course this character is either a total mismatch, dull, or Rogers just isn’t in love with him. This character is so common in modern rom-coms that writer, director and actor Michael Showalter made an entire parody rom-com based on the character type called “The Baxter.” The Astaire/Rogers movies have several memorable “Baxters” for Rogers. Erik Rhodes plays the outrageous Italian designer Beddini in Top Hat. Ralph Bellamy in Carefree, meanwhile, plays Rogers’ would-be fiance, who’s so tired of Rogers rejecting his proposals that he sends her to see his psychologist friend played by Astaire. Of course, instead of agreeing to marry Bellamy, she falls in love with Astaire. 

Carefree is also perhaps the wildest example of the type of tropey “hijinks” and improbable events you might find in a modern rom-com. One Carefree scene finds Rogers “under anesthetic” and thereby freed of her inhibitions, so that she borrows a policeman’s club to gleefully shatter a glass pane on a nearby truck. In another series of scenes Astaire hypnotizes Rogers to love her fiance again, but then realizes he loves her, and must find a way to hypnotize her back before she gets married. This pursuit finds Astaire trying to sneak into the bride’s room just five minutes before the wedding, one of the most recognizable tropes of all.

Weddings, engagements, and marriages must also either be prevented or dissolved in Top Hat, The Gay Divorcee, and Swing Time. And Shall We Dance involves an even more complicated story. Near the beginning of the movie, Astaire and Rogers’ single characters are rumored to be married by the tabloids. At first Rogers tries to squash the rumors, but when her manager provides fake evidence of the marriage to the papers, Rogers and Astaire actually marry in order to get a divorce. In the meantime, however, they’ve fallen in love, and now Astaire must try to prevent his own divorce with a final grand gesture presented in a dance performance! This story then, also contains an early example of the fake dating or marriage of convenience trope.

Finally, I’ve previously mentioned the misunderstandings that occur in Astaire/Rogers movies. As in many modern rom-coms these misunderstandings often involve mistaken identity, and sometimes feature characters hiding information from each other, or temporarily taking on disguises. In The Gay Divorcee Rogers wants to hide from Astaire that she’s already been married, and is on vacation in order to arrange a fake affair which will convince her husband to give her a divorce. Because she’s hiding this information, however, she’s led to believe that Astaire is the man hired to pretend to be her lover, rather than an actual suitor with a respectable job. In Shall We Dance, Astaire briefly affects a Russian accent in order to appear to Rogers as his stage name “Petrov.” 

And in Top Hat there is a whole cascade of mistaken identities and disguises. Astaire takes on the guise of Rogers’ horse-drawn cab driver in order to pursue her. Rogers mistakes Astaire for a friend’s husband. Rogers then tries to scare Astaire by pretending to be an easy woman looking to force him into marriage. Finally, Astaire’s friend Horace assigns his valet Bates to investigate Rogers. Bates puts on a series of disguises and follows her everywhere, in a bit that becomes progressively funnier throughout the movie, and plays a role in the film’s resolution. While tonally these moods perhaps shouldn’t blend, the mix of sophistication and silliness in the Astaire/Rogers movies somehow works perfectly.

I hope that my thoughts on the Astaire/Rogers movies have made you curious enough to check out one or two of their films! For my part, watching these early examples of rom-com tropes and stories has given me an even greater appreciation for our genre as a whole. Seeing how these stories are replicated throughout time tells me that romantic comedies are stories we need - to reflect our lives, to keep us company, and to inspire our dreams!

My Ranking of the 5 Films Discussed Here:

Top Hat - If you watch only one - make it the best!

The Gay Divorcee - A great double feature with Top Hat featuring many of the same cast!

Shall We Dance - There’s a dance number on roller-skates, need I say more?

Swing Time - Aside from the blackface number, a very solid romantic comedy, with some beautiful dancing.

Carefree - Maybe the least characteristic of the Astaire/Rogers rom-coms, but worth watching for Ginger Rogers’ antics when she’s “under anesthetic” or “hypnotized.”

Bonus: If you fall in love with this couple, as I did, don’t miss Follow the Fleet. Astaire looks great in uniform!

And a helpful reminder: Most of these movies are available to rent on streaming services, but don’t forget your local library as a possible resource! So many of the greatest romantic comedies and musicals of all time are available there for free! 

Guest Contributor Bio

Jennifer Howell is the producer, editor, and main host of Every Rom Com, the podcast that has fun taking romantic comedies seriously! When she’s not researching an episode, Jennifer can be found working at the library, swimming in freshwater lakes, meditating, and “improving her mind by extensive reading.” Jennifer lives in Wisconsin with her husband and a cat named Dinah. She’s always excited to talk about films or books on Twitter @everyromcompod, on Instagram @everyromcom, on Blue Sky Social @everyromcom.bsky.social or on Facebook at Every Rom Com: Podcast and Blog! 

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Putting Down the Burnout Crown with The Carterhaugh School of Folklore & the Fantastic

Confession: I absolutely adore the wonderful word witches behind The Carterhaugh School of Folklore & the Fantastic, Sara and Brittany! In fact, they really helped me find my way back to everyday magic during the dark days of the early pandemic. Even now, they nourish such a loving community of like-minded folklorists, storytellers, and book lovers all looking to reclaim our right to everyday enchantments and a life beyond burnout.

All of which is to say that I was beyond excited when they asked me to contribute some tarot magic for their new course Enchant, which you can read more about below…

What do you feel when you hear the word “burnout?”

Maybe it’s a sense of instant recognition or heaviness in your chest or limbs. Maybe it’s more like emotional exhaustion or a feeling of flatness. Maybe it’s just a big, gray BLAH or like sinking into the Neverending Story’s Swamp of Sadness.

For us, it’s kind of a resigned recognition, an “oh, hello again, YOU.” Burnout is an old nemesis of ours, one that keeps popping new heads like a hydra.

Over the years, we’ve come to recognize burnout as the antithesis of enchantment. Burnout eats up all the space and energy that enchantment needs to take root. It robs you of the spark that ignites enchantment. 

What do we mean by enchantment?

We think it’s a little different for everyone. For us, it means dwelling in a space of possibility, security, and creativity. It’s where art and connection thrive. And we tend to get there through folklore, especially fairy tales. 

We’re kind of the queens of burnout. And we have spent years trying to relinquish our crowns. 

But then we’d start another irresistible project or we’d get an exciting invitation or we figured if we Jenga-ed our calendars just a little bit harder…

… aaaand the crowns would boomerang back onto our heads, giving us migraines as they landed. As they always, always do.

And let us tell you, it is hard to feel enchanted when you have a migraine. 

So many of the people that we talk to these days have their own versions of these stories. Especially women and non-binary folks, but really just about everyone. 

There is so much to do. There is so much that people are passionate, sparkly, about, and yet the muck of the burnout swamp pulls them down, because they feel like they have an impossible amount of stuff that must be accomplished and that it all has to happen before they can take a moment for themselves.

So many of us have had our boundaries systematically eroded and have been taught over and over that their needs must come last. 

As for what we want? 

Honestly, for a while, we forgot that was even a question you could ask. 

When was the last time someone asked you what you needed? What you wanted? What would light you up, help you step from burnout gray back into sparkle, into something like enchantment?

If you’re anything like us, these can be weirdly difficult questions to answer.

Or maybe you already have an idea, but you haven’t started moving towards it yet.

Our new course, Enchant, came out of these questions. It came out of the quest to give up our burnout crowns for good (we’re still working on it but we’re putting them down for longer and longer and living for that feeling.) We’re learning and we’re unlearning. We’re breaking ourselves apart and putting ourselves back together again with the idea that we deserve magic - that feeling of replenishment and potential. 

Maria is, quite honestly, one of our role models for this, and it’s one of the reasons why we invited her to be a part of Enchant. She’ll be sharing her wisdom and strategies with you there, too! We’ll also have a bonus lecture with the amazing Terri Windling, a big workbook, and so much more. 

This is a course where the magic exists in art, in the everyday, in the ordinary, in connection, and in you. It’s not all going to be easy, but the best spells never are. We hope you join us.  

A note from the Bruja Professor: Learn more about this fabulous course here.

Guest Contributor Bios

Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman are award-winning folklorists, teachers, and writers with a combined 26 years in higher education and over a hundred publications. Together, they founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, teaching creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. In 2019, Carterhaugh won the Dorothy Howard Award from the American Folklore Society.

When they aren’t teaching at Carterhaugh, they are scholars, writers and best friends who have published peer-reviewed articles, appeared on podcasts, sold stories and poems, written book introductions and encyclopedia entries, and written for magazines and blogs. (They’ve also been known to crush “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at karaoke.) They are regular writers for Enchanted Living Magazine, and their weekly blog has reached more than 150,000 people. Sara and Brittany also deliver sold-out lectures at venues like the Smithsonian, the Profs & Pints series, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, and FaerieCon.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

A Brief (Personal) Overview of The Romantic Comedy

Okay, I admit it. There was once a time in high school when I desperately tried to be Not Like Other Girls. That meant rejecting anything normal teens would enjoy, including the teen rom-com. I was Cool. I was Sophisticated. I only consumed Deep Media.

Tragic, I know!

But the truth was, romantic comedies had me at “hola.” I just didn’t want to admit it…until one day, I cared less about being Not Like Other Girls and more about enjoying myself. I owe a lot of this to When Harry Met Sally, which, when I saw it in my late teens, was a revelation. The protagonists were adults doing adult things and talking about adult stuff and looking cool—well, 80s cool—while living against the sophisticated backdrop of New York City.

I know the film hasn’t aged well for some people, a shocking fact I learned while participating in the annual #RomComBracket on Instagram and the slowly dying bird app. But for me, it was the first movie that got me into the romantic comedy and made me realize that while I rejected teen romcoms, I’d been actually watching the genre for a long time in the form of classic silver screen screwball comedies and indie films. I’d also been reading romantic comedies in classic literature and “chick lit.” It’s just that When Harry Met Sally loosened something in my psyche so that I could whole-heartedly enjoy the genre without censure.

Honestly? The movies didn’t even have to be good for me to enjoy them—they still don’t! My sisters and I had a running game in graduate school to see what was the worst or most BANANAS romcom we could find. Sometimes, it was the worst movies that helped me the most emotionally as I dealt with the trauma of grad school. That tradition with my sisters has steadily transformed into relishing the terrible delights of bad holiday rom-coms. There is something deeply soothing about laughing at the tropes, the problems, and the over-the-top cheese of it all.

That’s the beauty of the genre: It’s complex. The stories can be hopeful and inspiring or cringe-y and terrifying. They can be sexy and fun or awkward and obnoxious…just like dating in the real world. Most importantly, they can tell us a lot about what mainstream culture thinks is romantic, funny, or normal. Quite often, those norms aren’t what individual people think are romantic, funny, or healthy, which makes the genre a great vehicle for talking about real-world issues surrounding love and dating.

Fun fact: Romantic Comedies have been around for a long time. Like waaaaaayyy back. I’m talking OLDEN DAYS. Shakespearean times, y’all. And they’re not just movies or plays! We have romance novels and television and streaming series…and other mediums.

The basic definition of a romantic comedy is a lighthearted, often funny, story that focuses on love and ends happily. It should come as no surprise that the genre is having a resurgence given the trauma of the pandemic, the popularity of streaming services that just seem built for popcorn movie fun, and the burnout many feel when looking at yet another reboot, franchise, or big blockbuster movie. Whatever happened to a charming story about two people falling in love?

And, because this is The Bruja Professor, we have to acknowledge the gentle magic of a good rom-com, the way it softens the world and soothes the soul. When done well, these stories offer hope and the promise that something as ephemeral as true love is, in fact, possible and that our emotional, personal, and romantic lives are just as important as getting that good job or buying that dream house. They’re a reminder, when life gets hard that we deserve the good things in life, not just a continuous cycle of plot twists. And, they’re the promise that magic is just around the corner in the form of a Meet Cute, synchronous happening, or an unexpected something that offers us a life of pleasure, joy, and love. Isn’t that the very promise that keeps us going back to these stories? To paraphrase Iris in The Holiday, many of us are looking for corny in our lives…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s a simple thing: A story about two people falling in love and living Happily Ever After. But it is also complex when we look at how this narrative shapes our concepts of love, romance, desire, and happiness…and who gets to be centered in these happy, joyful stories. If you’re looking to get a better sense of how to talk about romantic comedies and their historical and social context, check out my infographic below. May it inspire many a fun conversation as you dive into your next romantic comedy with friends. Just don’t forget the popcorn!

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

The Magic of Witchy Houses in Popular Culture

It should come as no surprise that I am trash for a witchy house. I have Pinterest boards full of witchy decor ideas for my forever home, and my for-now home looks like a cozy hobbit hole behind an unassuming apartment door—a hobbit hole if said hobbit was into crystals, herbs, and other witchy goodness.

It me. I am that hobbit.

I’m not alone in this obsession. Not a Halloween season goes by that I don’t see the meme that, quite accurately states, “There’s only one thing girls witches want and that’s the Practical Magic House.” Although the house doesn’t really exist—the facade was built exclusively for the film and then taken down—IT IS FOREVER REAL IN OUR HEARTS.

This, I can assure you, is a FACT.

Seriously, what witch hasn’t modeled their dream home after the house in Practical Magic? The plant room alone makes me swoon!

And it’s not the only magical house that has fired up our witchy hearts. We have the Halliwell Manor in the original Charmed and the reboot, not to mention one of my personal favorites, the gorgeous abode in The Witches of East End (2013), the outside of which, incidentally, is the same house in the Charmed reboot. Even shows like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Addams Family franchise, and the recent Mayfair Witches are popular in part because of the gothic magical vibes of their interiors. We want to live in these houses!

This is not even getting into the glory of the fairytale witch house, from Baba Yaga’s home that sits on chicken feet to the strange hut buried deep in an enchanted forest that may be made of gingerbread or moss-covered stones but will always be full of magic and more than a little menace. Or the cottagecore vibes of the witches in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters series…and so, so many more.

But why? What makes us love witchy houses in popular culture so much? Other than the fact that they are magical life goals, I mean. OBVIOUSLY.

As the bruja professor, I have a few theories about that…

Witchy Homes as Wild Sanctuary

First, I think it’s essential that we revisit Terri Windling’s lovely essay, “The Folklore of Hearth and Home.” In it, Windling draws on Jungian psychology to illustrate that homes are archetypal spaces, reflections of our psyche. It makes (magical and mundane) sense that our homes are the deepest reflection of who we are. Similarly, in her essay, “Wild Sanctuary,” Windling explores how Marie-Louise von Franz situates the wild wood of folklore as, in part, a reflective healing space the protagonist goes to when the outside world seems too complicated. I think, in many ways, the home can be a type of wild wood or magical realm we escape to when the world feels too fraught, the day-in, day-out too tiring. When we pair these two ideas together—home as archetypal psychic space and wild wood as sanctuary—we can see that the home becomes the site of our inner world, the place we retreat to in order to heal and reflect—and imagine a more magical way of being.

Pop culture pops out the concept of witchy houses as wild sanctuaries behind four walls and a door. It’s where we can be our more authentic selves, strip off the armor of the world, and just be. It’s also where we can tend our internal lives and our private lives…

More than that, the magical houses of literature, shows, and movies emphasize the domestic sphere as a sacred space.

Centering the Feminine Experience

The home, the private sphere, is often associated with the feminine. Most often, it is held secondary to the public sphere or masculine realm. I’m really trying hard not to do a deep dive into my graduate school work on 18th- and 19th-century courtship novels here, but I will say this: The courtship novel, like witchy media, is a genre that focuses on the domestic, the personal, and the private lives which are too often viewed as less-than in comparison with more traditionally masculine, extroverted narratives. Guess what? Both courtship novels and witchy media typically center on the feminine experience. Guess what else? The feminine experience is often seen as less important than the typical hero’s journey.

SHOCKER.

I mean, he goes out into the world and does stuff. She stays home and embroiders cushions. At least, that’s the stereotype, one that completely disregards women’s labor (both physical and emotional) and the importance of our internal lives. Regardless of your gender identity, I think everyone can benefit from celebrating the feminine aspects of their character. We all have both masculine and feminine archetypal energy within us, what Jung called the Anima and the Animus, and while some of his ideas on this are dated (um…what isn’t???), it’s important to remember that we all have a multitude of gender expressions within us. So when I speak of the witchy home as a uniquely feminine space, I’m not ignoring male-identifying witches or anyone who isn’t het-cis, etc., but rather celebrating what we all love about these houses, which is how they acknowledge the power of the traditionally coded-female domestic space and encourage us to honor the feminine-coded aspects of self.

Honoring the domestic sphere is just as important for men or people who don’t identify as women. I’m thinking, to draw once again on courtship novels, of Edward Ferrars in Sense & Sensibility. His mother wants him to be a stylish London lawyer. He, on the other hand, is quite at home in the domestic realm and ends up earning a living in a job that is much more suited to quite domestic pursuits. Let’s be real: Edward Ferrars is an introvert. And we can all relate to wanting a quite sanctuary to feel our feels in a world that wants us to be loud, extroverted, and masculine (yes, even Girl Bosses get burned out!).

But back to the heart of this essay—or should I say HEARTH?

Witchy stories and the houses they take place in have the magical ability to center women’s lives and see mundane things as, actually, quite enchanting. They go further to emphasize that often that stories that get swept under the rug are some of the most interesting, and the spaces we occupy carry the daily joys and dramas within their walls. I mean, who hasn’t buried an ex or two under the rose bushes? Who doesn’t hide their grimoire behind the fine china? Or bake a little spell into their brownies? Or go tell the bees important news? Just me?

The original Charmed is one of the longest-running TV series that centers on female protagonists. It covers everything from growing up in a non-traditional household, the dating lives of women (the joys and terrors), to starting your own business, going back to college as a non-traditional student, to getting married and having children, juggling work, kids, and saving the world, not to mention breastfeeding in public—you get the idea. So much happens in that house. Births, deaths, birthday parties, exorcisms…sure, it’s a show about magic and good versus evil, but, at its heart, it’s a show about sisters. And the lives of women.

Halliwell Manor in the original Charmed (1998) really put the whimsy in whimsygoth.

The Personal is Political…and Magical

The final part of this VERY FORMAL STUDY on witchy houses is that they allow us to see our everyday lives as magical. Like the classic courtship novel that showcase how the personal is political (to borrow the phrase coined by Carol Hanisch in 1970), the witchy home explores how outer world issues (sexism, racism…seriously, pick your -ism) play out within a smaller, more confined scope—and how individual agency can create change when we feel helpless in the face of so much STUFF.

We have our gothic elements—the nightmares and demons, both literal and proverbial, that echo in our psyches and spaces—as well as the hopeful conjurings that make life more enchanting. These homes boldly make subtext text. The stuff we’re working through in our psyches become the demons and monsters we fight, the curses we break, the spells we cast. The monsters in The Charmed reboot (2018), for example, aren’t just ice demons but predators of the #MeToo variety (yeah, it’s a little on the nose, but what paranormal series following the Buffy the Vampire Slayer lineage isn’t?). Similarly, our personal breakthroughs have communal significance, like Sally “coming out” as a witch at the end of Practical Magic…if that’s not queer-coded, I don’t know what is. Or that fact that the sisters break the family curse, ending generational trauma for not only themselves but the next generation. See? The personal is not only political here but magical when we recognize our profound capacity as individuals to conjure change simply by being attuned to our truest selves (I could get into a lot about witches and social justice practices here, but that’s an essay for another time).

The Halliwells in both series aren’t just sisters or witches, but the Charmed Ones, and only by reconnecting in their ancestral home can they activate their powers, which speaks to the power of family, home, and ancestry on our futures. The sisters (again with the sisters!) in both Practical Magic and The Witches of East End are as bound to their home as they are to the curses that control their lives. In all of these examples, the home is the safe space, the sanctuary where these witches go to seek refuge from the evils of the world. Granted, the home in the original Charmed is often invaded by baddies, but that’s because it sits on a magical nexus of sorts which is basically a homing become for all things magical, so what are you going to do? All homes have their quirks.

The Witches of East End (2013) has to feature one of my all-time favorite witchy houses!

Even in The Love Witch (2016), Elaine’s absolutely gorgeous home aesthetic is meant to contrast directly with her destructive nature. Sure, on the surface, she’s love and light….but underneath all that, she’s a toxic, traumatized individual who copes by inflicting that same trauma on others. But her house is so pretty! This is a great example of how her personal empowerment comes at the expense of others…not so magical, even if it looks good on the surface.

While we can empathize with how terribly she’s been exploited and abused, we also can’t condone the fact that her quick fix for healing trauma is to become the predator. Still, her home, filled with jewels, and herbs, and other spell-crafting material, is * chef’s kiss *. The home in this movie is a cautionary tale: Don’t confuse the witchy aesthetic with living right…but when you can be an ethical witch AND have your witchy aesthetic, too? That is truly magical!

Elaine casting her toxic spells and looking fantastic doing it in The Love Witch (2016).

So, on the one hand, we have the gothic elements of our lives literally hanging on the walls in our homes, like a terrible ex hexed into a painting for punishments and safekeeping (hello, The Witches of East End), and the proverbial ghosts of the people who came before us and other spirits (cough, cough, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina). On the other, we have the absolute joy, the whimsy, the magic of gorgeous homes that are not only feasts for the senses but actually look lived in like in Practical Magic. Buh-bye, ultracold modernism! We want spaces that are loving, warm, and downright mystic.

What in the Whimsigoth?

Let’s face it, a huge part of what makes these stories so enjoyable is the aesthetics. Dancing from whimsigoth to cottagecore to retro glam, witchy homes embody the aspiration fantasy of what our lives can be (just, you know, don’t use your powers for evil or whatever).

They illustrate that our sanctuaries are magical spaces worthy of the time and attention it takes to make them sacred and healing expressions of self. They remind us that our daily lives can be imbued with magic—that everything, even down to washing dishes in a GORGEOUS kitchen, can be a form of spell work (cleansing spell, anyone?). The home is a space where you go to be your most magical and most yourself, protection wards in place, kettle on, family at the dinner table, grimier safely tucked away in the attic.

An Ode to Witch Homes

So much comes from nurturing these domestic spaces, so it only makes sense that we’ve fallen in love with books and films that romanticize our sanctuaries. I mean, doesn’t it just make sense that our private spaces should be works of art and lovingly tended? 

It also quite subtly addresses women’s labor (traditionally): the magic of a well-made soup, the quiet conjuring of cleaning the house or caring for the familiars, I mean, pets, under your care, not to mention the power of a shared pot of tea and a leisurely conversation. Much can be worked through, much conjured over an afternoon cup of chamomile.

In many ways, we remember the houses more than the plot of specific stories. Like The Big City in a romcom, houses are the third protagonist of any good witchy story. Conversely, like The Small Town (very, very idealized) in a romcom, a house in a witchy story reminds us of the quiet, simple magic of daily life—no need to go to far-flung places to search for magic. It’s right in front of us. Homes are where we spend most of our time, where we are most ourselves. At the end of the day, these witchy homes remind us who we want to be—who we can be, what we can conjure, if only we remember we are magic.

Fun fact: This home is featured as the exterior for both The Witches of East End home and the Charmed reboot home.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

What's the Deal with WitchTok?

WitchTok. It’s a thing. And like all things having a cultural moment, there are good and bad things associated with the phenomena. 

It’s not that I don’t love what social media has done for these communities, but I do think it’s important to make it clear that it’s all sweet manifestations and positive affirmations. On the one hand, I absolutely love the fact that people can be more open about “alternative” forms of spirituality (read: anything that’s not institutionalized religion), but that doesn’t mean that it’s all love and light.

It’s not. 

And there are very real issues people have to understand so they don’t end up recreating the hot mess of institutionalized religions, including fear-mongering, spiritual bypassing, and run-of-the-mill performativity. (Quick side note: I’m talking about the bad stuff here and know that some people have been able to find meaning and goodness in these things. I’m not one of them, but more power to you if they’ve been helpful to you in some way.) In other words, just because witchcraft is a historically marginalized spiritual practice doesn’t mean it’s without problems, many of which I outline in this article.

I’ve been marinating on these issues after a recent interview on WitchTok by PBS Subcultures which offered a celebratory look at this pop culture phenomenon and the witches who have helped create safe online witchy communities. I especially appreciated how this segment made sure to point out ways to avoid cultural appropriation (a HUGE problem in the community) and that many of the WitchTok influencers that were interviewed seemed to be more aware and working within their own cultural practices. Yay!

Still, with full respect to the creators of this piece, I do want to take a little time to unpack the dark side of WitchTok. Overall, it was a thoughtful piece that focused on the very best parts of the WitchTok community, which is important given how often these marginalized communities are often villainized or misrepresented and, let’s be real, Halloween is a great time to introduce people to the concept of IRL witches. Who isn’t more open to new ideas come spooky season? And who wouldn’t like to know that some of their favorite story archetypes can also be…actual people with actual lived experiences?

So I guess this is my way of saying that I’m not some salty old crone who gets her kicks going around roasting the baby witches of TikTok. But I do think it’s important to teach people (I’m the bruja professor, after all) how to critically engage with witchy media. It’s not about choosing between loving or hating these subcultures or validating or decrying WitchTok (or social media in general). It’s about joyfully problematizing issues within these communities. It’s also about providing the historical context surrounding such conversations, including how streaming has introduced a new generation to witchy media that, in turn, has inspired a new wave of witches. And it’s about unpacking the nuances of a dynamic, evolving, and complex phenomenon.

I want my students especially to feel like they leave my classes with a clear sense of the beauty and wonder of these communities, but also the very real pitfalls and dangers. That’s the only way we can embrace the joyful and meaningful while also dismantling the hidden systemic oppression and other toxicities within these subcultures.

So…what does this have to do with WitchTok?

Well, let’s look at it this way. I think it’s great that witchy business is having a pop culture moment. Normalizing our communities keeps us safe and encourages others to explore their spirituality in ways that might be more fruitful to them than mainstream religion. Social media has gone a long way to making that possible.

At the same time, precisely because social media is so open, it can become a breeding group for misinformation, cultural appropriation, and general spiritual no-nos like sharing rituals from closed practices or practices that aren’t meant to be shared publicly or outside your circle (however you might define that—it could be your local or virtual coven or even your solitary self). There’s also the weird stuff of teaching people how to perform coercive love spells or summon demons…just don’t. It never ends well. Literally, any B horror movie will tell you this.

It’s also not as easy to say all witches are about social justice, including inclusion and religious freedom. Ideally, yes, we are. But there are still plenty of witches that engage in white supremacy and cultural appropriation, for example, or exhibit the kind of ignorant zealotry that suggests science and spirituality can’t coexist. Take the whole #WitchesWearMasks phenomenon. It started within the community to counter conspiracy-theory level panic about vaccines, masking, and modern medicine’s approach to curbing the worst of the pandemic. Many of us began using the hashtag to remind people that spirituality and science work hand-in-hand, and you can manifest your way out of getting sick in the way you can prevent the spread of disease by masking, social distancing, and good hygiene practices. 

Lastly, there’s also the issue of performativity. Yes, I like social media. Yes, I think it’s important for connecting people and disseminating information. Yes, I think we’re all performers in one way or another the minute we step outside our sanctuaries. But the dark side of this is that we can get lost in the performativity of an app rather than focusing on meaningful connections. This isn’t a particularly new or brilliant concept, but it bears repeating: there’s a fine line between reaching viewers and getting lost in the trap of creating content to appease algorithms. When creators rely solely on those algorithms, the things that say certain hashtags, songs, and subjects are trending, you start creating to feed the machine rather than coming from an authentic place. Hey, I’m not saying algorithms aren’t important—just that they shouldn’t be the sole motivating force behind creation.

Let’s give a few non-witchy examples of what I’m talking about here. A recent New York Times article explored how bad dates are great for TikTok content. On the surface, that’s kind of fun. We get to relate over bad dates, feel connected to a community that’s also searching for love, and generally feel better about the struggle to find The One(s). Yes, if these creators continue to make bad date content because it’s going viral, at what point do they become part of the problem? That is, at what point do they continue to date just so they have content to share, content that will hopefully continue to go viral? That’s not authenticity—it’s setting up prospective dates who unwittingly will become fodder for a creator’s feed.

We see the same issue with WithTok. We have to question at what point a beautifully crafted ritual or aesthetic is more authentic to the witch or the creator…that is, most of us witches don’t look camera ready when we’re making magic, and it’s important to remember that a lot of the “flawless” spell-casters out there don’t look like that when the camera is off either.

In another recent article, many begin to question how the rise of therapy talk in situations outside of the therapy room is hurting relationships. A large part of this is because of short TikTok videos from therapists advocating for clinical, almost corporate scripts to talk about relationship issues with friends and other loved ones. On the one hand, we can say, “Yay! I’m so glad to see therapy is normalized in this way!” On the other, a lot of people are missing and appropriating important terminology that should really only be used within a therapeutic context. Too many people bandy about words they don’t understand or try to use TikTok scripts to deal with complex situations—neither of which are ultimately healthy.

The same issue plays out in WitckTok. We get quick soundbites that offer self-care in the form of spell work or witchy business as an antidote to things like stress, depression, and anxiety. I get the allure of that—we all want magical solutions to mundane problems. But the problem is that WitchTok can sell conjure practices as a cure-all for serious issues that need professional attention. That, my readers, is not so magical, as it can make people feel like there is something wrong with them for not being able to manifest their troubles away or, perhaps worse, sell the illusion that you can do just that.

And yet…

I love that WitchTok is reviving this like whimsigoth, the fashion trend inspired by 80s and 90s witches (it makes it soooooo much easier to find home decor and fashion pieces). Basically, a whole lot of this phenomenon has to do with the fact that a new generation of viewers has been exposed to shows like the original Charmed and movies like Practical Magic, thanks to streaming and a lot of time at home during the pandemic.

Similarly, WitchTok, and social media more generally, is generating more interest in cottagecore lifestyles thanks to Instagram-worthy photos of That Bucolic Life. Truth? I am so here for inspirational reels that romanticize “roughing it” with zero understanding of what actual roughing looks like (yes, even cottagecore vibes and whimsigoth have their problems). Still…It’s aspirational. It’s fantasy. It’s just plain fun!

The problem comes when we treat WitchTok—or any group—as a monolith. It’s not. It’s got great things going on. It’s also got really bad things going on, and a whole bunch of stuff in the middle gray area. And it’s a gentle reminder, in the midst of witches trending on the internet, that we’ve been around for a long time and will still be around when the internet buzz around us has faded. The witches on this app haven’t invented anything. They’ve just made some things more visible to a new audience for better AND for worse.

Bottom line: Enjoy what’s there to enjoy on WitchTok, and social media more generally, and be mindful of its dark side so you don’t get stuck there. And remember that when WitchTok gets tired of whimsigoth and moves on to The Next Big Thing, the rest of us will still be living that low-key witchy life, loving our whimsigoth vibes and cottagecore aspirations. When the internet gets tired of watching videos of appropriated conjure practices or sus love spells, the rest of us witches will keep doing what we’ve already been doing all along: Making magic, even—especially?—when it can't be easily captured in a glossy click-bait video.

And who knows? Maybe some of those witches of TikTok will still be practicing, too.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

It's Not All Love & Light: The Dark Side of Witchcraft & Pagan Communities

I’ve become increasingly wary of mainstream culture’s love affair with witches. I know, that’s a terrible thing to say, considering I love all things witchy, I’m a bruja, and I teach a class on witchcraft in pop culture.

But hear me out.

People so often come to all things witchy (and, more generally, pagan and New Age) with preconceived ideas about what these spiritual communities are about and what they should look. In many cases, they don’t really want to learn the nuances or complexity of these subcultures. And I’m not talking about the people who call me a devil worshipper for posting tarot readings on social media or the randos telling me I’ll burn in eternal hellfire for doing unnatural things like posting body butter recipes.  I’m not even talking about the people who think witchcraft only exists in pop culture with the likes of Samantha Stephens in Bewitched, the sisters in Charmed, or the midnight margarita fun of Practical Magic. In fact, I love pop culture witches and think they have some great advice for magical living! No, I’m talking about the curious souls who’ve discovered that witchcraft is having a pop culture moment and have decided that, as a historically stigmatized subculture, this cultural renaissance is a very good thing.

And, in some ways, it is. Okay, in a lot of ways!

I mean, I never thought in a million years I’d get to be a bruja professor and teach courses on the legacy of witchcraft in pop culture that includes discussions of different spiritual traditions practiced by real communities. I never thought I could be more open about my own woo-woo ways as a teacher in higher education, nor a writer who could be open about my witchy life while also writing witchy fiction. This is a HUGE deal, especially for someone who has vivid memories of “friends” telling me I was going to Hell for not going to church on Sunday when I was a tween, something unheard of in more traditional Hispanic communities. True story. 

So, yes, normalizing these forms of mysticism offer an important foundation for people to openly and safely explore their spirituality separate from institutionalized religion. This is a VERY good thing. One of the joys of a subculture moving more mainstream is that it isn’t as stigmatized and, thus, more accessible. Woohoo!

Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with wholeheartedly celebrating the normalization of New Age spirituality and the many subcultures it encompasses…until you look a little deeper, that is. We’re living in a moment where any progressively minded person has become more aware of social inequities in our country if they weren’t already. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction to many of these shocking revelations is to celebrate and uphold all forms of inclusion. Again, this sounds great! And it is great in a lot of ways. 

But what often happens is that this attempt at inclusion becomes largely performative, and it frequently ignores the fact that many historically marginalized communities can also be perpetrators of systemic oppression or be problematic.  In our collective attempt to be more inclusive and progressive, we’ve silenced a lot of important complex issues that need to be addressed for meaningful change in favor of feel-good performative celebrations of diversity.

These issues play out in current discussions of witchcraft that want to celebrate female, BIPOC, and queer empowerment (to name a few historically marginalized identities) while ignoring very real issues within the community, including spiritual bypassing, cultural appropriation, and commodification, to name a few. 

It’s not all love and light…

Let’s be real, people. It’s not all love and light.

And it’s important to acknowledge this fact so we don’t perpetuate toxic behavior or encourage performative spirituality, which can have negative consequences, both personally and socially—and spiritually.

In an effort to encourage more consciousness in the theses subcultures originally designed to foster higher consciousness, I’m going to highlight some of the biggest issues within these communities and the ones that are most often ignored in favor of the feel-good quick-fix spells and witchy aesthetics divorced from genuine spirituality. I’ll explore them through the lens of pop culture, using examples from movies, books, TV shows, and other media, as they best explore the dark side of the witchy and communities in the way only pop culture can. I should note, however, that while I offer specific readings of these texts for the purposes of looking at the darkest details of many New Age subcultures, there are an infinite number of ways to read these stories—ways that are equally viable and important! I’m just using them here to illustrate some of the more pervasive issues within witchcraft communities and other pagan or New Age spirituality groups.

Common issues within mystic communities…

Spiritual Bypassing is when someone uses the outer trappings of a spiritual practice—meditation, spells, even yoga poses—to dissociate from trauma. They lose themselves in the feel-good aspects of the practice or the sense of control and temporary empowerment a spell can give without ever meaningfully dealing with the deeper things they need to work through, such as ancestral, generational, or personal traumas. Think of it as applying a glittery bandaid to a serious wound. 

I often use the witchy example of cleansing to explain this. You can smudge your house or do a cleansing spell all you want, but at the end of the day, if you find yourself in constant need of deep cleansing, you eventually have to ask yourself why you keep welcoming toxic energy into your life and engaging in toxic situations. Hard decisions have to be made and boundaries reinforced…which is not as sexy or as easy as lighting candles and reciting a cleansing spell.  And yes, you actually have to clean your space—vacuum, mop, wipe down surfaces—otherwise, it’s like putting a new coat of paint on a car that needs serious engine work done, that is, a cosmetic fix only.

Perhaps the best example of this is the cult classic The Craft (1996), in which teens start a coven, try to burn The System to the ground, and end up imploding instead. You know, the usual stuff teens do. Sure, performing spells to deal with real issues make all these young women feel powerful…for a time, but the reality is they are dealing with serious systemic issues that can’t be magic-ed away. Part of the reason why their coven dissolves is because those bigger issues—mental illness, domestic abuse, racism, physical trauma—are magnified, not diminished, by their use of the craft. 

I don’t think there’s a person out there who doesn’t love when Rochelle magically punishes the mean girl Laura for being a racist, but it ultimately doesn’t change anything. Pervasive racism in the elite space of private school is still there by the end of the movie, as is the fact that Rochelle hasn’t found a meaningful way to grapple with or heal from it. Same goes for Nancy—her magic empowers her but also makes her more unstable until she eventually becomes the kind of predator she turned to the craft to escape. Bonnie literally finds a surface or cosmetic answer to unresolved physical trauma. Even Sarah has a traumatic past that’s hinted at, though never fully developed, that’s tied to the death of her mother and her own suicide attempt. You can’t magic those issues away, and if you try to, they will bubble to the surface and create more trauma and chaos, just as they did by the end of this movie. The real villain of this film is unresolved trauma and how these young women use witchcraft like a sparkling bandaid on gaping wounds—sooner or later, the blood is going to seep out.

Toxic Positivity is closely linked to spiritual bypassing. It’s what I call the Love & Light Problem, where someone advocates for nothing but good vibes, completely suppressing or ignoring negative emotions or more serious issues. The 2016 film The Love Witch is a great example of this. Our perfectly quaffed witch swans around saying things like “Bright blessings!” She performs complex and aesthetically pleasing spells in an effort to take charge of her life. She’s also a hot mess. Her untreated trauma bleeds out into everything she does, leaving a trail of chaos in her wake.

Elaine, like the baby witches in The Craft, has a lot of undealt with trauma, to put it mildly, a fact that gets buried under her picture-perfect facade. She is always perfectly dressed with flawless makeup and a GORGEOUS aesthetic and can-do attitude which masks the very real sexual, physical, and religious trauma she’s experienced. Unlike the young women in the 1996 cult classic, however, Elaine is more put together. She hides behind positive affirmations and a carefully constructed Love Witch persona, all while perpetuating the same sexual and religious trauma on others. She, like Nancy in The Craft, becomes the predator and, while we might empathize with their traumas, those wounds, ultimately, do not give them permission to inflict them on others. 

Commodification and commercialization are also big issues within these communities. On the one hand, I love the Instagram-worthy images of witchy stuff I see online. It’s fun! It’s sparkly! It’s aspirational! On the other, it sells us the idea that we can’t be magical without a limitless expense account, tons of pricy crystals, expensive tools, and fancy accessories. In reality, these practices are about reconnecting with yourself and aligning yourself with the ebb and flow of the universe, not buying a bunch of stuff so you have the right witchy aesthetic. 

Again, I’m not saying don’t buy that thing that makes you feel witchy and fabulous or don’t watch that WitchTok feed that fills your cottagecore-loving heart with joy. I’m saying we need to separate the aesthetic from the practice. Also, in case you didn’t know this, YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY ANYTHING TO BECOME WITCHY OR MORE SPIRITUAL.

You also need to think critically about what you are buying. For example, crystals are a big part of this New Age industry now, and it is only recently that we are learning how exploitative and harmful mining practices are. Or do you really want to be like Sephora and sell witch kits that include sacred and endangered white sage and encourage people to “play witch” without understanding the real practices—and people—behind these things? I’m just pointing out the bad stuff here, but it’s also not as easy as all that. I have crystals, yes (though I’m more careful about buying them now), and I would be lying if I said I don’t want to buy my future children this witchy play set. Back in the day, I just used sticks, dirt, and rocks from my backyard, old-looking books from my parents’ library, and a random bucket. Still, there’s no reason my children can’t do both! 

The key factor here is realizing that while you might love collecting witchy mugs like me, they don’t make you a witch. In other words, I would be a bruja with or without those mugs, so I don’t believe it when someone tells me I *have* to have them in order to be *authentic.* I know the mug example is a little silly, but this is a gimmick a lot of people fall prey to, suddenly thinking they need to buy jewel-encrusted anthems and gothic couture to be an authentic practicing witch. If those things float your boat, by all means, enjoy! But don’t feel less than if you can’t afford it or it doesn’t vibe with who you are (witchcraft is learning to embrace your truest self, after all).

Spiritual Performativity combines the commodification of the craft and spiritual bypassing. There are loads of WitchTok videos that promote this spell, ritual, or a vibe…but you have to wonder at what point does their performance end, and the real spirituality begin? Some spiritual practices are close practices and are meant to be private. Not everything should be shared online. In other cases, you have to consider how informed the person behind the account is. I’ve seen many a baby witch proclaiming their knowledge and expertise with stuff that is just plain cultural appropriation, misinformation, or even dangerous (I’m looking at you, anti-vax pagan community!). 

In fact, a lot of witchy or mystic work is not something you can easily capture in an Instagram story or TikTok video. It’s a quiet, internal thing, something that works from the inside out. And, I promise you, most of us don’t often do spiritual things in full makeup and within range of an Instagram filter. Again, some of this social media stuff could be useful if this content if it’s being used mindfully. And some of it is just fun, soothing, or pretty to look at. But you have to then think about if this practice is moving beyond the performative. What ideas about spirituality are they trying to sell you? Who are these people when the camera is turned off? In other words, don’t mistake the set design, wardrobe, and theater of social media with actual spiritual practices. Often, they are two very different things.

Cultural Appropriation is, of course, a huge issue. Many people in witchy and pagan communities liberally “borrow” from other cultures. That’s a big HELL NO. Bottom line: If it’s not part of your culture, you shouldn’t be practicing it. You have no idea what energies you’re dealing with, and you’re basically welcoming in some pretty bad energy by messing with stuff you don’t understand. Seriously, any witchy horror movie will tell you this.

Still, many white practitioners have been known to publish books on voodoo, hoodoo, and other folk conjure practices that they aren’t actually connected to because they feel entitled to those practices. White practitioners also liberally label many conjure practices as “witchcraft,” when the practitioners of that practice often wouldn’t self-describe as a witch and have a completely different understanding of witchcraft. The appropriation of Indigenous practices is rampant in the community, not to mention the appropriation of practices from other marginalized groups. 

It makes sense that you shouldn’t trivialize spiritual practices from other cultures, and it’s easy to tell people not to. The problem comes from the fact that appropriation is so pervasive that many people don’t even know they're doing it. Take the use of white sage for smudging. It’s an Indigenous practice that should only be practiced within those communities. White sage is also endangered, thanks, in part, to its codification and appropriation of white New Age communities. So that means many newbie practitioners see something cool online and start doing it for themselves, not realizing that the thing they saw was appropriated from another culture. They then perpetuate that appropriation. 

Now, some people grow through that, and I respect everyone’s learning journey. Who hasn’t gotten into something only to learn that their initial foray included some sketchy info? But too often, people don’t ever bother to educate themselves or move beyond approbation. Worse, they feel entitled to it. There’s a huge problem with white supremacy and cultural appropriation in the community.

There are literally too many pop culture examples to name with this one, so I’ll just stick with the classic TV series Charmed (1998-2006), which used a vaguely Wiccan-inspired framework for their depictions of witchcraft. If you watch the series long enough, you will see the Charmed Ones engage with (read: appropriate) a variety of cultures ranging from Chinese and other Asian cultures, to black spiritual practices like Hoodoo and Voodoo, and Indigenous practices like smudging, to name a few. The reboot series, you’ll notice, makes a more concerted effort to distinguish between various spiritual practices—and who gets to practice them.

Let’s put the consciousness back in higher consciousness…

So where does all this yuck leave us? Hopefully, with a better appreciation of what is good in these subcultures and what is bad. There’s no such thing as a community—spiritual or otherwise—that’s all love and light. Every group has its dark side, and it’s best to be mindful of it. Hopefully, after reading this, you can develop a solid roadmap for navigating—and enjoying—these communities while avoiding the pitfalls. Consciousness, after all, comes with a price, as does magic. And if you truly want to practice any form of natural spirituality, you need to put the consciousness back in higher consciousness.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

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The Quiet Terror of Hallmark Holiday Movies: Folk Horror, Small Towns & Christmas Miracles

During the Before Times, I went to Smith College in what would end up being my last continuing ed travel adventure for some time. Located in a picturesque northeast coast small town of Northampton, this college has long been held as a bastion of liberal intellectualism and safe haven for scholastically-inclined women. I should have been excited, but nothing could explain the slow sense of unease that crawled over me during the long cab ride to that town. Sure, it could have been exhaustion from travel and so, so many delays. But there was no denying the quiet dread I felt as the sun set and the darkness seemed to swallow all sense of direction. I couldn’t help thinking, watching the treeline turn into dark, jagged teeth against the horizon in the fading light, that this was the perfect opening scene for a folk horror movie. 

I was in Stephen King Country, no doubt about it (which to my mind, is any vaguely east-coast small-town dotted landscape). Hey, I’m a desert woman through and through, and too much time on either coast leaves me longing for a landscape I understand and that understands me.

Thankfully, I arrived safely. Everyone was quite nice and the little town was small enough and safe enough for me to walk alone at night in search of dinner. I was grateful considering that I was one of the few people of color in the town (albeit white-passing) so, by horror movie standards, that would make me one of the first to go when things went all Children of the Corn.

As I strolled around the next day, however, I couldn’t shake this sense of unease, despite everyone, and I mean everyone, talking about what a perfect place Northampton was to live in. So inclusive! So harmonious! So happy! Just one look at the Black Lives Matter signs decorating the streets should have told me as much! Still, as I strolled around the neighborhoods on my conference break, it occurred to me that the beautiful little painted houses looked like the perfect setting for a Hallmark movie…or a B-horror movie. And then I found myself, quite literally, on Gothic street! The signs couldn’t have been clearer…something was not quite right.

No, I’m not here to roast Smith College, at least not any more than I do the rest of the Ivory Tower Collective otherwise known as academia. I left Northampton with gratitude for the experience and an even deeper gratitude for a public education and a life in the Land of Enchantment with wide open skies, a landscape I knew intimately, and adobe houses that, while not specter-free, were at least the kind of architecture and history that I knew how to make myself at home in. 

But I also couldn’t shake the overlapping similarities between small-town romance and small-town horror, the shades and echoes of which followed me throughout my stay in Northampton. As someone who loves romance and horror, it was hard not to see the small town setting as a nexus for exploring our fundamental humanity—and, in the case of the gothic, our darkness. Like academia, a college campus is its own kind of small town, and a remote rural setting is a focused place that, for its compactness and isolation, magnifies the light and dark of the human experience. And, like in academia, one person’s “safe space” is another person’s nightmare of gatekeeping, performative allyship, and tone policing. 

Radcliffe’s Quiet Terror…

I returned to these musings one year while binge-watching cheesy holiday movies. As I waded through tales of struggling Christmas tree farmers and city girl grinches, gingerbread artists and CEOs who’ve lost that Christmas magic, and more cookie decorating contests, tree lighting events, and neighborhood caroling than should be considered legal, it occurred to me that these films had an awful lot in common with folk horror. The quiet terror in the Scrooge-like protagonists was palpable as those big city fishes out of water in small, out-of-the-way towns were asked to endure local traditions and participate in timeless rituals until the ultimate culmination of all these ceremonies: The burning of the Wicker Man, I mean, the yule log, I mean, the lighting of the Christmas tree.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to the joys of cheesy holiday films filled with Santas masquerading as reindeer ranchers or plucky businesswomen teaching princes how to be down with the people and put up a Christmas tree or whatever. But if folk horror stands out for illuminating the darkest corners of the collective unconscious—and the collective urge to conform to the status quo—then holiday films are conspicuous for their absolute lack of darkness. Childhood traumas, and deaths of beloved family members, from parents to spouses, are quietly swept under the rug, used only as window dressing to make our plucky protagonists relatable, interesting, or otherwise worthy of redemption. Any meaningful discussion of those traumas is forsaken in an effort to get to the snowman-building party on time. No, those traumas are quiet, hidden, and like in folk horror, kept just out of sight (until the end of the horror movie anyway).

When I think of folk horror, I think of Anne Radcliffe’s definition of terror. It’s often quiet, eerie, and seemingly innocuous—until it’s too late. Radcliffean terror is frightening simply because it is the thing we cannot see—it plays at the edges of our sight, fueling our imagination and making us fear the unspoken, the unseen, suppressing the unsettling feeling that something isn’t quite right. And, while some folk horror often descends into actual horror—the in-your-face violence and traumas that you can’t look away from or ever unsee—it all begins with Radcliffe’s quiet, uncanny terror.

Folk horror is also a genre adept at exploring the terror of how white supremacy, oppressive social norms, and heteronormativity, to name a few issues, are quietly reinforced and any expression of otherness stamped out. Of course, folk horror critiques these things, showing them as the evil that they are. In contrast, the quiet terror in Hallmark Christmas movies—excuse me, holiday movies—was, for a long time, the suppression of queer relationships and BIPOC characters with skin dark than a paper bag, not to mention anyone who wasn’t conventionally religious. This was Candace Cameron Bure Land, after all, where everything must remain snow white, candy-cane sweet, and cleaner than a born-again Christian’s heart. And while it’s true that much of that is changing thanks to new network management (more on that later), there was a long time when issues of race, sexuality, and other “taboos” were silenced in order to keep the network a “safe space” for the Bure’s of the world.

Terrifying! 

—but also not unlike the small, insular communities in many a folk horror tale.  Let’s take a closer look…

Is it Christmas Magic…or the Call of Cthulhu?

For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to focus my reading on a handful of movies that I feel best represent the folk horror genre, old and new, and the holiday movie genre typified by Hallmark movies (hey, I’m not above using the network name a clickbait title, but let’s be real, they aren’t the only ones doing these sorts of movies). Both The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsummer (2019) are iconic films to the folk horror genre and speak to what is quietly terrifying about insular communities, not to mention the slow-burn gothic elements that signal things Will Not End Well. 

And, dearest readers, I must be honest and admit that I completely blanked when it comes to naming specific Hallmark holiday movies to compare these two folk horror films, although, in retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised. All the movies are so similar that it is impossible to tell them apart. But, since I’m on a roll roasting Bure for her bigotry, I’ll use two of her movies that have become Hallmark staples and defined the holiday movie over the last decade, Let it Snow (2013) and Christmas Under Wraps (2014). But, seriously, I could be describing just about any small-town holiday movie as you’ll see with the other films I list.

Now, let’s take a look at what these genres have in common so you can decide if the magic behind these stories is a Christmas miracle or the byproduct of the cult-worshipped Cthulhu, an octopus-like monster whose dreams shape the very fabric of our existence!

Timeless Traditions…

Both The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) center around warm-weather holidays, respectively Beltane and the summer solstice, and, until recently, most holiday movies centered around Christmas. Let it Snow (2013) focuses on a variety of holiday traditions from around the world and Christmas Under Wraps (2014) deals specifically with the joys of the Santa Clause myth.

A Welcoming Community & an Outsider who Becomes Part of the Family…

Both Let it Snow (2013) and Christmas Under Wraps (2014) feature a Big City Bure who doesn’t have time for the frivolity and festivities of Christmas until she is welcomed into the quirky small town of Garland, Alaska (Let it Snow) and learns that it just might be the home base of Santa Clause! In Christmas Under Wraps, Big City Bure learns that not everything needs to be about corporate bottom lines and efficiency. Sometimes, it’s about waffles and ice fishing and cute inn owners. There’s no way she can go back to city life after that!  

Similarly, the young adventurers of Midsommar are welcomed with open arms to the Love and Light commune of the Hårga in backwoods Hälsingland, Sweden. Likewise, the upstanding Sergeant Howie is treated like a special guest when he lands on Summerisle in The Wicker Man. That’s old-school community charm for you!

Singing and Dancing…

Let’s not forget the hearty welcome Police Sergeant Neil Howie receives when he visits the island of Summerisle and gets a boisterous round of song and dance at the local pub and inn. Who doesn’t enjoy uncomfortably suggestive songs with equally repulsive dance moves about the landlord’s daughter with both the landlord and his daughter present and clearly enjoying themselves? This festive song and dance pales in comparison to the maypole dancing of Midsommar where the only thing more extra than the flower adornments is the aggressive twirling. Fun times! As for holiday movies, well, there is always a caroling scene. Always. The Christmas Cottage (2017) is just one of thousands of examples. 

An Annual Festival…

Like caroling, there’s always a party to be had! And, if you’re (un)lucky, you just might be roped into participating. It may be May Day or it may be Christmas—either way, it’ll be a party you’ll never forget!

Precocious Children…

Who can forget that precocious little school children or that audacious little girl, supposedly “missing,” who leads the sergeant on a merry chase in The Wicker Man? Then there are the young girls in Midsommar who aren’t above a little mischief as they spike drinks and plant a little something extra special in the food of their esteemed male guests. See A Princess for Christmas (2011), A Crown for Christmas (2015), Switched for Christmas (2017), and Picture a Perfect Christmas (2019) for kids who are just a little too clever for their own good and not above orchestrating a romantic entanglement for their adult counterpart(s). Thrown in Children of the Corn (1984) and The Bad Seed (1956), and you’ve got a neat set of stories that show just how cute—and quick-witted—little kids can be!

Quirky Courtship Rituals…

Mingle All the Way (2018), The Christmas Cottage (2017), The Engagement Clause (2016), A Bride for Christmas (2012)…seriously, so many wedding/bride/engagement Christmas movies! Clearly, you will cease to be a valuable member of these insular societies if you aren’t marrying and reproducing. But they are nothing compared to the joyful communal copulation in The Wickerman, not to mention the naked dancing around a fire in that movie, or the maypole dancing and “forced seduction” of your soon-to-be-ex boyfriend (to put it VERY euphemistically) by a group of fertile young women in Midsommar. 

Delicious Treats!

See any holiday movie with “gingerbread,” “cookies,” “baking,” “sweet,” or “candy canes” in the title. A Cookie Cutter Christmas (2014), The Sweetest Christmas (2017), Christmas Cupcakes (2017)…you get the idea. Seriously, is it even a holiday movie without a cookie-making scene or a baking contest? Of course, we have the delightful post office/drugstore/candy shop in The Wicker Man where jars of dried foreskin and hard candies sit side by side, or the tasty cakes with a special ingredient (pubic hair) of Midsommar. Yum!

Traditional Values…

Like the heartwarming community in Midsommar, many Hallmark movie small-town communities are known for their cozy conformity, sparkling eugenics, and dazzling white supremacy (see previously mentioned Bure movies). They too, want to welcome you into their loving arms—so long as you have blond hair, blue eyes, and light skin. Dani, in Midsommar, survives because she looks just like everyone else, whereas Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man doesn’t survive specifically because he isn’t like everyone else (he’s a Christian virgin, not a sex-positive pagan). Hey, it’s important to maintain the old ways!

A Festive Makeover…

Take any holiday movie about royalty and you will most definitely get a glamorous makeover moment where the nanny/reporter/basic bitch will be transformed into a princess with the coaxing of helpful staff, a sparkly dress, and a can-do attitude. A Princess for Christmas and A Crown for Christmas are just two examples. Although the heroines’ transformations in those films from ugly ducklings into princess swans are nothing compared to Dani in Midsommar as she gets a glamorous dress made of flowers with a glorious crown to top it off. Royalty, indeed! Even Sergeant Howie gets his time to play dress up, first as a fool and later as a sacrificial lamb. What joy!

Holiday Miracles…

Let’s circle back to the Bure stories here. Both Let it Snow and Christmas Under Wraps end with the Big City Bure learning to love the small-town charm and festive holiday spirit—with a side of love! She’s also able to save Santa—and Christmas—in Christmas Under Wraps and figure out how to keep a small inn in the black while also highlighting what’s unique about it in Let it Snow. Take that corporate cookie-cutter holiday!

Wait, that’s a different movie. I think.

Finally, we learn that the sergeant in The Wicker Man was specifically called to this secluded island to help solve the problem of failed crops—he’s their only hope! And Dani, in Midsommar, finally finds the family, love, and acceptance she’s always craved by the end of the movie. She will never be alone again. Heartwarming!

A Lit Ending…

Folk horror and holiday films always end the same way: LIT! It could be with the lighting of the Christmas tree (I’m not even going to bother listing specific holiday movies here—see all the Hallmark holiday movies ever made); the cleansing fires of the Hårga that help you release the negative things in your life, like bad exes; or the wicker man himself, where you get a staring role as kindling!

See? Folk horror and small-town holiday movies aren’t so different after all.

A Walk Down Gothic Street…

In the end, you might be wondering why I’m taking the time to write about small towns, holiday romances, and folk horror. It’s simple: Stories shape us. Stories inform. Stories help us explore and reflect on our life experiences, such as why a visit to a prestigious college would feel strangely triggering. 

There’s a fine line between cozy community and frightening insularity, powerful belief in something bigger than us and violent zealotry, divine miracles and human monstrosities. And, sometimes the most horrific things are candy-coated, all the better to make the social conditioning easier to swallow.

As for Smith College, well, I finally figured out the gothic stain on this idyllic supposed sanctuary. Like so many other (dare I say all?) higher education institutions, it struggles to take its anti-racist agenda seriously and take its other inclusive agendas beyond the performative. Allyship is about active inclusion and meaningful reparations, not pretty words. Academia is much like the small towns I’ve been writing about: Sometimes a safe haven for those in search of like-minded souls, sometimes an incestuous cult that silences outsiders who question the status quo and don’t actively worship Cthulhu.

Yet there is still hope.

In perhaps what some would consider the surprise of the century, Hallmark is being aggressively more inclusive, including more stories with queer and BIPOC characters. It’s a REALLY BIG DEAL, in case you didn’t know this, to see them centering these traditionally marginalized identities in stories of joy, love, hope, and a holiday bake-off. But if you still want that back-woods Midsommar charm, you can find it on GAC Family Channel, where Bure and her friends like the criminal Lori Loughlin, are holding court. Perhaps we can all write a letter to Santa asking him to get Elon Musk to buy the channel. He would be the perfect CEO Scrooge to run GAC into the ground.

What a Christmas miracle that would be!

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

How to Tell if You are a Heroine in a Gothic Romance

It’s no secret that one of my favorite genres is gothic romance. It perfectly blends two of my greatest loves: the romance genre and the gothic (duh). Like the traditional courtship novel, the typical gothic novel deals with young women finding their way in the world, usually when marriage is not an option for them for one reason or another.  They must join the workforce, typically in someone else’s home.

Where the domestic sphere is often seen as a sanctuary or safe space from the outer world, the gothic romance explores the quiet terrors of the home, specifically when you have limited agency, and that home is not yours. It explores women’s place in a world that is equally filled with unspeakable terrors and infinite possibilities. Best of all, we get some sort of resolution, sometimes a HEA (Happily Ever After) or sometimes the catharsis of bringing previously hidden traumas into the light. The terrifying domestic space becomes a sanctuary once again.

The gothic romance also deals with something far more transgressive and, dare I say, terrifying to the status quo: female sexuality. In these stories, women are not just navigating the strange world within the domestic sphere but their own sexual yearnings and psychological landscape. I say ‘female’ because the genre historically centered women’s lives in a man’s world, so to speak. That said, the genre also centers on other non-het-cis male perspectives. Gaywyck, published in 1980 and largely considered the first gay gothic romance, was written by Vincent Virga because he wanted to show that “genre knows no gender.” A lovely sentiment since the genre explores what it means to be human, magnifying our desires, our fears, our hopes…all the hidden, unmentionable things frowned upon by polite society. I think that what makes this genre so powerful is that it shows protagonists who are often at their weakest grow into themselves and become empowered simply by daring to bring what is covered in shadow into the light.

Of course, it is never that simple, certainly not when giant ghost helmets fall from the sky, killing your betrothed (Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, 1764) or when an evil Marquis tries to force you into marriage or mistress-hood (Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest, 1791). Or, you know, you are VERY attracted to your boss, and IDK, he seems to like you but also has a ton of secrets (Victoria Holt’s The Mistress of Mellyn, 1960). Life gets so much more complicated when you’re the long-lost illegitimate love child of your employer who hired you under suspicious circumstances (Dark Shadows, 1966-1971). Suffice it to say, the truly juicy parts of these stories are the telenovela-worthy plots filled with romance and intrigue. Plus trap doors! And hidden rooms! And prophecies! And problematic employee-boss relationships! And maybe ghosts, if you’re lucky!

The genre has a rich history, which you can learn more about via the New York Public Library’s Brief History of Gothic Romance. If you want a more in-depth study of the genre, Romancing the Gothic - 300 years of Gothic Romance with Lori A. Paige, is a fantastic video lecture that details the origin of the genre from the 18th century and its resurgence in the 20th century via category romances and television. Lori A. Page is probably one of the most important scholars in the field. Her book, The Gothic Romance Wave: A Critical History of the Mass Market Novels, 1960-1993, is a feast for any connoisseur of the genre. Read it and thank me later!

My deep and violently passionate love for this genre has made me do many a thing, including purchase my own billowy gothic nightgown. Who doesn’t want to traipse around a gothic castle in a thin billowing white nightgown on a moonless night? Just me? It has also led me to ask the following very important question to my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook followers: How would someone be able to tell if they are a heroine in a gothic romance novel (heroine meant in the most inclusive of ways, of course)? For REASONS.

So, if you, too, have been wondering, as the nights get colder and darker, and your prospects seem slimmer and slimmer, if every macabre happening or strange summons could be because you are, in fact, a heroine in a gothic romance, here are the tell-tale signs:

• You are an orphan. But you are also plucky, so are resolved to forge your own way in the world.

• You are also very beautiful…or very plain.

• You are in need of work, so you must go a-governessing.

• You frequently have candles go out in dark corridors. Useless!

• You discover a wife in the attic of the home in which you are employed (whose wife is anybody’s guess).

• You are fearful of—and in lust with—the lord of the manor…he is terrifying, in a sexy way.

• You are subjected to many sexual advances from your boss, his rivals, and/or others.

• You a befriended by a noble stranger (he, too, is an orphan, though don’t be surprised if he ends up being the long-lost son of a rich and noble family. Cha-ching!).

• You keep falling through trap doors, stumbling upon hidden passageways, or generally finding secret rooms that aren’t on any blueprints of the house.

• You are approached by a strange woman from the village who warns against the evil haunting the house you now inhabit.

• You are a little afraid of the child you are hired to care for. You don’t know if you should nurture them or run from them. They are strange, very strange.

• You are prone to gazing out windows, especially if it is raining out.

• You often feel that someone is watching you, especially when you pass the portrait of the old patriarch of the estate whose eyes seem to follow you as you walk down the forbidden corridor.

• You are in a state of chronic isolation, as you live in a remote location and you have zero friends, save the raves who live in the tree outside your window and caw ominous portents.

• You repeatedly wake up to your bedroom window being open, though you could've sworn you closed it.

• You are forbidden from entering a specific wing in the manor, which, naturally, only makes you go explore it.

• You try desperately not to fall in love with the master of the house but do so anyway. The heart wants what the heart wants (even if he is a little sus)! What can you do? HE GETS YOU.

• You look suspiciously like the woman in the hundred-year-old painting over the mantle in the drawing room.

• You must to some distant, inhospitable location to find love/yourself/meaning in life.

• You are offered marriage by a "nice" but incredibly bland guy, who you turn down, so he is free to marry an equally nice but bland person, and you're free to be wooed by the handsome, brooding guy you really like who might also be a vampire.

• You have a tragedy in your past—

• You are fleeing said tragedy, which is how you ended up at a remote estate that no one else dared willingly enter.

• You are the queen of innocent but curious sexual tension. You may not know what’s what, but you have STIRRINGS.

• You are going to be married off against your will until you run away. Anything is better than being forced into a loveless marriage!

• You might even have a creepy “uncle” or strange family friend who keeps alluding to your inheritance in the form of "husbandly care" for all your needs. Definitely time to hit the road.

• You often run through castles barefoot in a long white gown during the witching hour.

• You encounter one terrifying ghost who is actually just trying to help.

• You are prone to fainting fits and fits of melancholy.

• You are far too curious for your own good.

• You can quickly pin up your long flowing hair, except for that one pernicious lock that always falls loose and can only be brushed from your face by the inquisitive fingers of the lord of the manor.

• Your lock locks also easily tumble from said pins and cascade around your nubile figure at inopportune moments.

• You are frequently haunted by the aroma of fresh-cut heirloom roses that may or may not be of supernatural origin.

• Your sleep is often disrupted by a cloud or shadow passing in front of the moon, which then leads you to discover the french doors to the balcony in your bedroom are ajar. A lone bat might perch on said balcony.

• You succumb to a mysterious ailment while your employer is in the city on business, at which point he makes a hasty return, dreadfully worried about you, his employee, which he absolutely does not have FEELINGS for (spoiler alert: he does).

• You suspect the housekeeper is hiding a secret that will lead to your or your master’s demise.

• You will likely find yourself in a disorganized library on the property at some point, where you will get yelled at in then kissed in later.

• You will then unexpectedly meet the young lady who is your lord's intended—you know, your boss and the man with dark secrets that you are in love with—and you will spend the remainder of the night wondering about that kiss! And that other woman!  And those mixed signals!

• You hear hysterical laughter in the middle of the night from a mysterious source and grab a candle to investigate it, your bare feet chilled against the floorboards.

• You hear references among the staff that your (super handsome and grumpy) employer was engaged once. No one knows what happened to her, only that she adored the pianoforte. Cue "eerie lullaby" by the phantom of the Yorkshire moors.

• You, conversely, know that the lord of the manor was once married, but absolutely everyone refuses to talk about what happened to his wife. Maybe he murdered her. Maybe she ran off with a lover. Maybe she haunts this castle still.

• You often look to the estate as you return from your country walk (you love a good country walk) to find a window curtain twitching as if someone has been watching you.

• You find the house you are in doesn’t seem to like you. Or worse, it REALLY likes you…and never wants you to leave. Ever.

• You are subjected to the cruelty of the lord’s mother who intends to ensnare her son in a most unsuitable but practical marriage if she can just get you to stop distracting her son with your sexy little threadbare governess clothes!

• You often hear and see strange things that the rest of the house insists aren't real.

• You were raised by an unloving guardian, or you were raised by one who loved you quite a bit.

There you have it. If you can relate to most of the signs in this very formal and thoroughly researched list, then you are most certainly a heroine in a gothic romance. Be warned! And prepare yourself for your fate by reading (or rereading) some of these delightfully thrilling tales…

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

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A Brief History of Haunted Real Estate in Popular Culture

One of my favorite things about teaching a course about supernatural sleuths (aside from being able to teach a course on one of my favorite topics) is that, when I tell people I teach a class on ghostbusters and supernatural sleuths, most of them end up having a story about their brush with the supernatural. More often than not, their stories revolve around that time they lived in a house that was haunted or know someone who did. I don’t care how rational or “normal” some people might seem, when it comes to the topic of ghosts and the things that hunt them, well, the conversation inevitably takes a turn for the spooky—and fun.

The same phenomenon holds true when it comes to house hunting. Let’s face it—we’ve all checked out that apartment unit or seemingly ideal home and walked away feeling like something wasn’t right. We might have even experienced something uncanny or so strange our waking minds simply cannot process it. And it makes sense. Those are our intimate spaces, the places we go to get away from the world, our sanctuaries, ideally, where we are our freest…and most vulnerable.

That’s what makes the haunted house such a beloved horror story premise. They are the home—pun intended—of all our hopes and fears, mirrors to our social and psychological states. They’re also a reminder that there are those who have come before us and that we are sharing a space with them. And, let’s be real, homes absorb a lot of the energy of those who inhabit it, and that energy remains, for better or worse, long after the inhabitants have gone.

Whatever your feelings are on the possibility of spectral tenants in your own home, it’s worth looking at the (very brief and selective) history of haunted real estate in popular culture. Check out my video essay below to see how gothic romances, B horror movies, and monster-of-the-week TV shows have had a serious impact on real-world real estate and our perceptions of the haunted house setting, which has gone from terrifying to kind of cool. Enjoy!

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

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The Legacy of the Occult Detective ~ Romancing the Gothic Guest Lecture

I have a deep love for things that go bump in the night and the gothic stories that explore them. I am especially trash for supernatural sleuths, occult detectives, ghostbusters, monster hunters…you name it. If it involves the study of spooky stuff, I’m in! What few people know is that the idea of ghostbusters or other supernatural “scientists” actually predates the monster-of-the-week TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Salyer and Supernatural, two shows that most people associate with the paranormal investigator archetype in pop culture. In fact, much of the genre originated in the Victorian era with iconic occult figures such as Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence (my favorite, I name my familiar, Smoke, after one of his cats), Thomas Carnaki, the Ghost Finder, and others.

I grew up reading Blackwood and fell deeply in love with the urban fantasy take on the supernatural sleuth first watching the short-lived SyFy channel show, The Dresden Files, which got me reading Jim Butcher’s series, on which the show was based. I spent my grad school years in a deep and devoted study to all things monster hunters, as I devoured a variety of urban fantasy series, old ghost stories, and monster-of-the-week TV shows. Read: I consumed all of these stories about people on the fringe of society kicking ass against the forces of darkness to cope with the stresses of graduate school. My actual studies were in 18th-century literature, specifically courtship novels. Still, I like to think that I got a second doctorate in the gothic after my personal studies in this monster hunter genre.

Still, as any scholar can tell you, the more you study a genre, the more you realize how little you know. For example, Tim Prasil, one of the most well-known historians of ghost stories and early occult detectives, just published a book on ghost hunting before the Victorians, which tracks the early explorations of the unknown long before the Spiritualism movement. I’m also learning about the groundbreaking L.A. Banks, who, in the early 2000s, put BIPOC stories front and center in a still relatively white genre of urban fantasy. See? There’s still so much to explore in this genre that has shaped me as a professor, write, and, yes, bruja, which is part of the joy of studying it.

Last year, I was pleased to present a lecture on the legacy of the occult detective for Romancing the Gothic where I outlined the basics of the genre from the Victorian Spiritualists to the modern monster-of-the-week TV shows that the genre is now synonymous with. Although it was one of my first lectures in a VERY LONG TIME and there was some pandemic brain involved (lots of “ums” and “likes,” ek!), it offers a comprehensive, if incomplete, overview of the genre, where it has been, and where it can go, including how the historical and social contexts of the times shape the way we talk about the other, the unknown, and what is truly terrifying. Enjoy!

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that stories are magic & true magic is in the everyday…or your next good read, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment.

Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!