The Coven

Horace Walpole first established the gothic genre in 1764 with The Castle of Otranto, which features an ominous mood, an isolated setting, eccentric characters, and supernatural events. Ann Radcliffe’s works, including A Sicilian Romance (1790), echo many of the figures and images that Walpole created but add “female protagonists battling through terrifying ordeals while struggling to be with their true loves. This concept […] ultimately separates gothic romance from its cousin, gothic horror” (Pagan, Amanda. “A Brief History of Gothic Romance.” New York Public Library, 4 Oct. 2018). Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), another prominent example, focuses on an independent heroine who falls for a mysterious, brooding man who alternates between lying to her and showing her affection. Harper L. Woods’s The Coven shares many similarities with these early gothic romances, featuring a strong yet vulnerable heroine; a foreboding and isolated setting; supernatural, horror-imbued events; and a darkly attractive love interest in the figure of Gray.

The Coven’s protagonist, Willow Madizza, has a strong sense of responsibility and no interest in romance, at least until she is faced with temptation. Like Brontë’s titular Jane Eyre, Willow is self-reliant, composed, and emotionally resilient. She knows that seducing Gray comprises part of the revenge plot for which her father has trained her, but she does not anticipate the attraction she feels for this shadowy figure. Faced with this unfamiliar temptation, she carefully recalls her duty: “Find the bones of my ancestors […] and use them to Unmake the Vessels and destroy the Covenant. Only the bones would fully enable me to grasp the magic of the Hecate line” (19). Her resolute nature highlights her innate bravery, and these attributes are tempered by her deep love for her little brother, Ash; as the novel progresses, she does everything in her power to protect him from difficult choices. Although she is only 20 years old, Willow is self-sufficient and self-possessed. Though she is ambivalent about the nature of her “duty” and the best path forward, Willow holds a great deal of personal power and relishes challenging the status quo.

In addition, the strange yet isolated beauty of the novel’s setting at Hollow’s Grove University easily aligns with gothic conventions. Surrounded by a forest filled with “creatures far worse than witches,” the school “jut[s] up out of the cliffside, arches and spires reaching for the sky” (59), invoking the clear image of a remote and forbidding castle with its stone arches and soaring towers. Moreover, the danger posed by the surrounding environment cuts the school off from more populated areas, isolating the students and trapping them within the forest’s borders.

By introducing a barrage of supernatural events, Woods further highlights her text’s debt to its gothic predecessors. Most notably, Gray possesses superhuman speed and abilities; his blood has healing properties, and he also demonstrates vampiric qualities in his reliance upon the witches’ blood for survival. Willow also exhibits gothic tendencies when she performs blood magic and offers her blood to the dying plants in the school’s courtyard, revitalizing them. Additional elements of the gothic can be found in the mysterious murders, perambulating skeletons, ritual killings, and evidence of necromancy that permeates the school, and the demonic figures that are unleashed in the novel’s climax firmly cement The Coven’s place in the annals of modern gothic reinterpretations. The possibility of supernatural elements is a common gothic trope, and The Coven relies on “the ‘accepted supernatural,’ in which […] the supernatural is simply assumed to be part of reality, and no other explanation is given” (“Glossary of the Gothic: Supernatural.” Marquette University). 

Finally, Woods emphasizes her novel’s allegiance with the subgenre of gothic romance (rather than gothic horror) given that Willow’s primary focus is on her romantic interest, Gray, who is a demon trapped in a Vessel. Although his current avatar is a beautiful, ethereal, and humanlike body, he is eager to return to his true form and needs Willow’s help to accomplish this. Despite her aversion to romance, when Willow meets Gray, she judges him to be “beautiful and infuriating—a disaster waiting to happen” (22). She immediately realizes that her attraction to him hints at something deeper and far more primal, though she struggles to imagine seducing such a creature. Gray’s moral ambiguity and his propensity toward selfishness and cruelty combine with his desire to protect and support Willow, rendering him a quintessential gothic love interest. Ultimately, Woods juxtaposes Gray’s ominous flaws with his animalistic attraction and innate power, and the revelation that he is in fact Lucifer himself is designed to both horrify and titillate the protagonist. 

In short, The Coven is firmly entrenched in the centuries-old tradition of gothic romance, relying on many of the genre’s familiar tropes. Willow undergoes a range of “terrifying ordeals” to ascertain the nature of her relationship with Gray and discover his real identity. Her own story, which ends on a cliffhanger when she learns who Gray really is, promises further development in the second Coven of Bones installment, The Cursed.