It
was Friedrich Nietzsche who said something to the effect “nothing offends a woman’s vanity like a woman’s vanity.” Though probably not the least politically
correct statement of the era, such thoughts nevertheless did little to complexify
opinion of women. Scheming, jealous
shrews who think only in terms of their own conceit the resulting image, adding
the supernatural only darkens lines and casts longer shadows. Women’s magic near automatically represented
by ugly witches or aged, plotting spinsters, it’s as if we’ve come to accept
the combination of spells and femininity as being nothing short of a malicious
search for renewed beauty and youth, and revenge on those who have it. Capitalizing on the idea in what is certainly
dated fashion is Fritz Leiber’s Conjure
Wife (1943). Penned in fine prose
and plotted to a perfect T, the novel is a horror of both the literary and
gendered variety.
Raymond
Saylor is an ambitious sociology professor working at prestigious Hempnell
University. Life in an easy groove, his
academic papers are accepted to positive criticism, his domestic life is at
ease, his peers and students respect him, and he is in a leading position for
the faculty chair that will soon be vacated.
But at the outset of Conjure Wife,
Saylor discovers something when snooping through his wife Tansy’s dresser that
changes everything: she has been practicing voodoo for years without his
knowledge. Tufts of feather tucked away
here, magic charms hidden there, vials of graveyard dirt pushed to the backs of
drawers, shiny buttons attached to clothes—all around their home she unearths
the evidence as Saylor confronts her.
Despite Tansy’s protests that her magic has been protecting him from the
feints and jabs of others at the university all along, the implements are
burned, leaving Saylor ill at ease. But
a phone call jerks him from his reflection.
The professor’s heart set ticking, a student on the other end of the
line is raving and crazed with the idea he has been wrongfully failed. But the infuriated young man is only the
beginning. Issues with the dean’s wife revealed
during a game of bridge, a love-smitten student harassing him, a seemingly
mobile piece of building ornamentation, strange noises in the wind—Saylor’s
world begins to crumble, professionally, academically, and domestically, around
him. But Saylor has not discovered all
of Tansy’s secrets.
