Rediscover:
The Last Witchfinder: A Novel
by James Morrow
Harper Perennial
2007
Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.
The role of fate in human lives is something that writers may never be able to stop obsessing over; whether it’s classic mythology or Victorian literature or even an episode of “Lost” we can’t help but feel that there is some force guiding our path. What’s especially interesting is that in some sense, modern fiction has become even more drawn towards the workings of fate than the works of the Enlightenment or other relatively recent movements.
Whittled down to its bare essentials, James Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder: A Novel is a fine specimen of this phenomenon, focusing as it does on the tale of one Jennet Stearne, an intellectual rogue who finds her fate intertwining with that of the soon to be United States of America. Think of Stearne as an ancestor to Forrest Gump, but with twice the brainpower. Daughter to a foolish witch hunter who winds up exiled to the American colonies after burning his own sister at the stake, Stearne finds herself immersed in the battle not just for the triumph of reason over revelation but also of liberty itself over repression, both of body and mind. Like Gump, Stearne crosses paths with several historic American figures, first and foremost the young Benjamin Franklin who she ultimately falls in love with, but the real story is her life’s mission, her attempts to strike down all laws that allow supposed witches to be executed. Of course, these things are never easy and to compound matters she finds herself at odds with her own brother.
The Last Witchfinder’s strength lies in its depiction of life in the chaos that was the New World. The New World as depicted by Morrow is one flush with superstition and paranoia, not all that different from its homeland; the colonies are separated by religious sects and the nationalities of their citizens but law is basically nonexistent and towns are left to fend for themselves. Witch hunters were able to make a tidy profit just from traveling from town to town picking out the least popular members of the population and disposing of them for a sum. The “Indian problem” was dealt with similarly and all it took to be labeled a heretic was to have a few of your neighbors angry with you for some trespass or another.
This isn’t exactly a unique or revolutionary perspective but Morrow’s fluid use of Old World language and clever decision to have a book narrate the novel as if literature had a mind of its own enable the novel to be both entertaining and effective. The character of Stearne in particular instantly comes off as a classic, a mixture of Benjamin Franklin’s fictional personalities from his newspaper days and the stronger of Shakespeare’s women. Stearne suffers great tragedy all throughout The Last Witchfinder but her refusal to stop until she has revealed the truth to the world allows her to be a feminist icon of sorts, strong-willed but not a shrew, intelligent but humane. Franklin himself fits excellently within the narrative, proving himself to be more than the historical fiction equivalent of jumping the shark, his language perfectly in sync with his writing in a way that is novel and logical.
Unfortunately, the book is weighed down somewhat by its slightly haphazard ending, which may be on par with works of the time but within the context of what the novel attempts to achieve just comes off like the stereotypical wedding at the end of a classic comedy. Given the progress of Morrow beforehand, the ending feels rushed and ridiculous, hopelessly out of tune with the rest of the book. Similarly, the plot of the work as a whole is often predictable, the path clearly visible throughout. This could be read as simply a means by which to illuminate the fate we supposedly all adhere to, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making the novel seem somewhat juvenile.
Luckily, Morrow’s characters and world are so enthralling that it’s easy to forgive the missteps. Even when plot point B will clearly lead to plot point C, it’s so fascinating to witness that it doesn’t really matter how obvious Stearne’s fate is. Where so many of Morrow’s works have taken an overly venomous, cynical look at organized religion, in The Last Witchfinder the author has at last found a story and a character that acknowledge the obvious pull of faith as well as its ultimate trappings in a way that seems natural rather than forced.
by Morgan Davis
