TOltha, Violet and Kate have in common a family secret and the unwitting mission to inspire us all: women, be aware of your power, they tell us. Seek him with resilience and stay in connection with nature, they add. Ultimately, though, network why female solidarity wins.
Emilia Hart, 30, has worked as a lawyer in Sydney and London, where she now lives. Weyward it is his first novel. It will be on September 15th at Pordenone reads. Photo: credit Otto Wicks-Green
It reminds us Altha, accused of killing a farmer: to condemn it people appeal to the her “gift” of entering into relationships with plants and animals, a gift which in 1619 made her a “threat” to be eliminated. It reminds us Violet, a sixteen-year-old who in 1940 thinks more about climbing trees and getting to know insects than looking for a husband: in the meantime he struggles to find out more about how his mother died from his father. And finally there is Kate, thirty-year-old today who flees from London, but also from her violent husbandor, to take refuge in the Weyward cottage inherited from great-aunt Violet, a place that hides a secret.
Three generations of House Weyward and a witch hunt that never ended: is the plot of Weyward (Fazi Publisher), novel that can be read in one breath by newcomer Emilia Hart, 30 years oldborn in Sydney based in London.
Weyward by Emilia Hart, Fazi Publisher (pages 406, 20 euros).
Why did he write it?
It seemed urgent to me. It was 2020, full pandemic, and I moved for six months to Cumbria, a rural county in north west England. I was lucky because I was surrounded by the vastness of those landscapes. Despite everything, however, I felt recluse. Thus I began to think about the meaning of imprisonment and escape.
Escape from what?
Any news about Covid was a source of horror in those days, but the increase in cases of domestic violence also worried me. I imagined the women trapped with their executioners. Until one day I also discovered the infamous Pendle witch trials that took place near Lancaster in the 17th century. It was frustrating to think that nothing had changed over the centuries or perhaps only the fact that the persecution of women had moved from the squares to the houses. I felt angry and wanted to write something to criticize this endless story of misogyny.
And it started from a house.
I have discovered that certain places have a power. Or maybe they just help us find our power.
The uncultivated garden with the secular maple seems to be another protagonist of the novel.
Yes, I was inspired by another magical vein, that of my maternal grandmother, a nature lover who marked my growth. By writing I went to trace the connections with the women of my story. For example, I followed in her footsteps of my paternal grandmother, never known because she died a few days after my birth: like her, I left Australia as a young man for London.
Which of the three stories do you feel closest to?
To Violet’s. He really enjoyed writing it and I find it therapeutic. As she deals with her trauma, she doesn’t give up on living to the fullest by following her curiosity alone. Do you know that the way you see insects has changed me? I, who have always been afraid of cockroaches, now appreciate their complex beauty.
Kate, on the other hand, is one of us.
Yes, he escapes from the sheltered existence of London leaving behind even the idea he had of himself. In the peace of the cottage, among flowers and birds, he realizes he is neither weak nor sad. She realizes this when she learns the stories of her ancestors and decides to get rid of the man who abuses her. We too, like her, have a lot to learn from the others.
In the past, resistance to male control made women a social “danger”. It doesn’t look much different today.
Yes, according to the British data on feminicides every three days a woman is killed by a man. The data on sexual violence are high despite the fact that there are still few reports. The right to abortion in Poland and the USA has been questioned. But in the meantime, people believe that feminism is over and nobody needs it anymore. This is the thing that really worries me.
Do you know what male violence is?
Yes, I know personally. And I know many of the women who have experienced harassment, abuse and assault.
This novel is part of the “witch lit”, the literature inspired by witches, a popular genre.
This recent explosion is very interesting. In reality, however, feminist literature has long included the theme of witch hunts. I think about Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, (published in Italy by Adelphi in 2019, ed) the story of a spinster who, in order to gain independence, “chooses” to follow her vocation as a witch. It’s a book published in 1926 and it’s incredible that a century later this image is still used to blame social misogyny.
How do you explain it?
I think it’s because the renewed fight for gender equality still finds us grappling with many of the battles our mothers and grandmothers fought. Perhaps, as women, we are still in search of what Townsend Warner calls “a life of our own, and not an existence given to us by others.”
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