The Rules of Magic

The second daughter of the Burke-Owens family is named for her “inky black tresses” and is “as shy as she was beautiful” (3). Her special gift is reading others’ thoughts; however, her extreme sensitivity means that she finds it difficult to cope with school and is often in tears. Jet’s lifelong opposition to societal organization is prefigured by her affinity with cats, an independent animal that she nurtures in both Manhattan and Massachusetts.

Jet’s predicament embodies the theme of Romantic Love as Curse and Idyll as she defies all forms of opposition, namely the threat of the Owens curse and Reverend Willard’s sinister warnings, to seek out every opportunity to meet her love, Levi. Jet’s desire to be with Levi is so strong that it dulls her sense of her responsibility to others, as when she hatches the selfish wish that Frances will always remain in New York to cover for her when she goes to meet him. The heightened nature of the love affair sees the young lovers staying up all night and planning to lose their virginity at the renowned Plaza Hotel. When this final meeting ends in a car chase that kills both Levi and Jet’s parents, she feels guilty about the selfishness of her single-minded focus on her lover. Rather than blaming the Owens curse, she blames herself for the accident. She regards her prominent blue scar as evidence of her punishment, and her trauma and self-loathing lead to her losing her magical intuition or “gift of sight” (124).

Utterly exiled from her former self, Jet becomes like one of the many troubled youths of the 1960s and draws upon the Magical World of 1960s New York to lose herself in drugs and rediscover that she is someone worth caring for in the casual yet affectionate sexual relationship she has with Rafael. Although Jet maintains that she had one true love in the form of Levi, she opens her heart to others and works with Frances on the plant-cures business to ensure the survival of the Owens clan.

Vincent is an anomaly in the Owens family for being born a boy in a family where daughters typically bear daughters. He is musically gifted and so charismatic and handsome that a nurse tries to kidnap him when he is born. Frances believes that he is especially vulnerable because she thought she saw a halo around him, “the sign of a beautiful, but short, life” (193). This proves correct in one sense, because Vincent’s circumstances—in exile and under the Owens love curse—make it easier for him to die off in one life and become reborn under a new identity. Indeed, his new, non-Owens identity in France proves more resilient as he lives to old age, as evidenced by gifts of macarons to Regina.

Out of all the Burke-Owens children, Vincent struggles the most with the challenge of being an Owens, troubled by his ability to see into the future before he is emotionally ready to face it. He submerges this fear in the magical world of 1960s New York, experimenting with drink and casual sex and even setting up a dark-magic enterprise inspired by the forbidden tome The Magus. As a male in a matrilineal family, Vincent feels like an outsider and that he is not properly part of things. This motif is echoed in his forced exile to Europe when he seeks to escape being drafted. Still, he is an important person in the family legacy, as his one-night stand with April results in the conception of Regina and the continuation of the Owens line through him.

Vincent experiences redemption and a return to his real self through love, first through his loyal dog, Harry, and then through William. Vincent’s deep feelings of belonging when he experiences love with William and acceptance of his gay identity cause him to declare the Owens curse irrelevant to him. In the spirit of the times, he prefers to live for today rather than let the past dictate his affairs. However, when the misfortune of being drafted for Vietnam hits, Vincent feels more vulnerable and must accept the perils of being an Owens, even as he erases them in his faked death and resurrection. 

Stylish former model Susanna Owens has turned her back on the Owens clan, everything they stand for, and the idea of romantic love as curse and idyll in order to have a normal life with Dr. Burke-Owens, a man she loves rather than is in love with, in Manhattan. Susanna’s cold attitude derives from both the painful aspects of being a family outcast and losing the Frenchman she was in love with in a tragic accident.

As a result, Susanna tries to protect her three children both from identifying with their magical Owens identity and from falling in love. Hoffman shows how her stance is one of denial, as it goes against both her children’s natures and her own. Although she likes to pretend that she is entirely normal, she still sets store by the superstitions she grew up with, along with the lavender soap from Aunt Isabelle that she “faithfully washed with” (14). More of the items she forbids her children from owning, such as red shoes, are found in her closet after her death, suggesting that she has never relinquished her true nature.

Susanna’s protective measures turn against her when she insists on following Jet and Levi in the taxi, leading to the fatal accident. This suggests that it is Susanna’s fierce denial of love rather than Jet’s falling into it that caused the accident.

Susanna’s husband, Dr. Burke-Owens, derives from a set of academic, “elegant, serious people” (13). After an Ivy League education, he becomes a psychiatrist. Dr. Burke-Owens’s interest in science from the masculine tradition of Freudian psychoanalysis is posited against the Owenses’ feminized form of magic. In a typical logician’s manner, he seeks a rational explanation for his children’s unusual behavior and decides that personal genetics are to blame and that contact with the larger Owens clan will inflame his children’s most eccentric tendencies. Ironically, given that he is incapable of influencing his children, Dr. Burke-Owens has written a masterful tome, called A Stranger in the House, about troubled adolescents, which turns out to be a “love letter” to his children (177), even though none of them read it during his lifetime. This illustrates the disconnect between father and children and the fact that they identify more with their mothers’ side of the family than with him.

The softer side of Dr. Burke-Owens is evident is his failure to charge his patients adequately and in the fact that he subsequently dies in debt. The decrepitude of his falling-apart house is a symbol that his and Susanna’s life in denial of the truth is defunct.

Susanna’s aunt Isabelle resides in the Owenses’ ancestral homestead in Massachusetts and, of all the family, lives most openly in the challenge of being an Owens, as she implores the children to never forget themselves. Despite her small frame, she is a “formidable woman” who always wears black and has haphazardly upswept white hair and a perfect complexion from washing with her black soap (21). Thus, unlike Susanna, Isabelle has no qualms about looking like the stereotypical witch or outcast; Frances, who later models herself on her aunt, copies her and takes her place as the intimidating witch woman of Magnolia Street. While the villagers fear Isabelle, they rely on her medicinal and emotional plant cures in equal measure, crowding on her porch after midnight. In some cases they express gratitude for her generosity. She thus becomes part of the village establishment and earns respect.

While Isabelle’s brand of love is tough, as she sets her nieces and nephew many tests and does nothing to shield them from the reality of the Owens curse, she ultimately supports the novel’s idealized premise of romantic love as curse and idyll when, on her deathbed, she draws Frances’s attention to the fact that everything will die and that she can only keep herself from an early death if she allows herself to love. In providing a generous interpretation of Maria Owens’s curse, stating that it was a result of a misunderstanding, Aunt Isabelle becomes the gatekeeper of the family knowledge.

Maria Owens was born in England, abandoned in a field as a baby, and arrived in America in 1680. Her magical powers made her an outcast from the outset; however, her beauty and charm attracted the attention of historical witch-hunter Hathorne, who was already married with children. Hathorne and Owens’s affair resulted in an illegitimate child, and when he did not return to her, Maria set the curse that evil would befall any man unfortunate enough to fall in love with an Owens woman. Although many, including Aunt Isabelle, tried to re-negotiate the terms of the curse, positing that Maria and Hathorne’s relationship was based more on lust than love, it bore fruit in the fatal accidents that have befallen the Owens women and their lovers.

Frances achieves an intimate relationship with Maria Owens by reading her diary in the local library, seeking to understand more about her and the curse. This contributes to Frances being more cautious than her siblings when it comes to love.

The Owens children’s cousin April is the rebellious daughter of a branch of Beacon Hill–residing Owenses who also seek to deny their past. However, platinum-blond April is bold, brash, and lusty, not giving “a hoot about anyone’s opinions other than her own” (35). Her position on the challenge of being an Owens is a defiant one: She seeks to embrace not only her magical powers but also the chaos that love and sex relationships will bring, because it is natural and inevitable, given who her family is.

However, her vulnerable point is in loving Vincent, who prefers men sexually and only sees her as a one-night stand. Her tearfulness, when she visits the Burke-Owenses and Vincent neglects her, indicates that she did harbor genuine feelings for him. When Vincent impregnates her with Regina, a precocious child with a shortened life span, April follows the example set by generations of independent Owens women and raises the child in California, using her gifts as a scientist to help. Prior to her death, April becomes a form of matriarch, educating her young granddaughters in a version of the Owens tale and informing them that the death of their parents is inevitable. She gives Sally Frances’s number to ensure that her granddaughters will be raised in the Owens tradition.

We meet Reverend Willard when he is presiding over the funerals of the boys who got struck by lightning during their dates with Frances and Jet. He is one of Hathorne’s descendants and inherits his family’s historic suspicion of the Owens family. This becomes exacerbated when his grief for his late wife causes him to adopt a puritanical streak, pronouncing aspects of culture, like the literature of Emily Dickinson, as depraved. His opposition to Levi’s dating an Owens is hysterical and takes the form of historic witch-hunters’ methods to halt the progression of witches, such as the use of nails to pin down a witch’s steps.

However, after Levi dies, the reverend has time to reconsider his actions. His ultimate forgiveness of Jet and agreement to officiate Frances’s wedding indicates a passage toward reconciliation between the witch-hunters and the witches, perhaps promising a more peaceful, collaborative future.

The reverend’s son, Levi, is tall and handsome, and Jet finds his “calm, serious manner” comforting when she meets him at the funeral (65). His ability to know and accept Jet’s background from the outset feeds into the theme of romantic love as curse and idyll, as they fall into a state of completely knowing each other, supported by intense physical chemistry.

Despite his father’s puritanical ideas, Levi has thoughts of independence: He wishes to go to divinity school at Yale and then head west to escape his family. Levi’s desire to shed a family who does not understand him and puts restrictions on who he can be parallels Jet’s experience, making them even more fitting soulmates. This is reinforced in the fact that Jet continues to love him until her death, never seriously considering anyone else. However, this feat also shows Jet protecting future suitors from the Owens curse.

Like Levi and Jet, Haylin and Frances are drawn together by the feeling of being gawky outcasts. Antisocial Haylin deplores the rich-boy, prestigious legacy of the Walker dynasty and instead seeks to spend his life serving others. This is evident when he becomes a doctor both at home and in the Army, where he ends up sacrificing a leg. While Frances remains an outcast throughout her life, Haylin becomes a socially renowned member of the Massachusetts village community, exposing the residents’ respect for male medicine over female home cures.

Although Haylin is briefly put off by Frances’s erratic attitude toward him and decides to move on when she refuses to take her place at Radcliffe, taking up with Emily Flood instead, Frances is the only woman he truly loves. Conversely, his rightness for Frances is symbolized in her crow’s lifelong preference for him. This aligns with the theme of romantic love as curse and idyll and shows the pair forming another of the novel’s lifelong relationships. For Haylin, it transpires that a life without Frances is worse than one with the threat of death always hanging over him. However, rather than defying the curse, Haylin attempts to respect it by keeping enough distance from Frances. Still, when his cancer diagnosis heralds certain death, these scientifically minded people can surrender control and be together fully as the celebration of their lives together falls under the shadow of loss.

Emily Flood, who is blond and wholesome looking with a “huge smile” and preppy clothes (197), is positioned as Frances’s opposite, as well as her love rival for Haylin’s affections. Unlike Frances, she is afraid of birds and promises to lead Haylin down the respectable path that his parents approve of. Frances and Emily envy and resent each other, given that each has what the other does not have—Emily knows about Haylin’s unparalleled connection with Frances, while Frances is aware that Haylin can have the secure future with Emily that the curse will not permit.

However, given that Haylin never loved Emily and that she marries another soon after their breakup, Emily is revealed as an imposter on the path to true love.

Regina Owens is the fruit of a double Owens bloodline, given that her mother is April and her father Vincent. This marks her from the outset for having a brief but intense life. Like her aunt Frances, she inherits an affinity with birds, producing a spectacular bird drawing and growing up to be “so graceful the birds came to watch when she hung the laundry on the line” (353). This quality, her beautiful singing voice, and her long black hair show that she has inherited her father’s intense charisma, and the connection between the two despite their estrangement is evident from her babyhood, when she desires to be close to him.

Regina grows up to be a risk-taker, falling boldly in love with a man at Berkeley and dropping out of school to live off the land with him. She further embodies the family’s idea of romantic love as curse and idyll, given that she and her husband remain madly in love throughout their marriage and have “their arms around each other” when the fire that kills them begins (356). Despite the Owens family curse, Regina hoped to impart a fearless spirit to her daughters, half-worrying that Sally is too cautious.

Regina’s eldest daughter, Sally, is dark-haired like her grandfather Vincent and of a cautious temperament, although she shares her aunt Frances’s gift for summoning birds to her. Although barely 13 months older than her sister, Gillian, Sally is the responsible one who bears the heavy knowledge that she will one day lose her parents and is entrusted with calling her estranged aunts when she does. On arrival in Massachusetts, Sally has more affinity with Frances, in that they share bird-beguiling ways and the serious responsibility of being the oldest.

“Fair and usually fearless” Gillian Owens is her older sister’s opposite (355). Her bravery is emphasized in how she dangles from branches, allowing the wind to permeate through her. However, she is initially in denial of her parents’ death, clutching her stuffed bear and judging her aunts Frances and Jet for their shabby appearance, on the verge of tears when she meets them. Aunt Frances identifies her as a “troublemaker,” and their two strong temperaments clash (361). This sets the scene for Gillian being a rebel in the next chronological book, Practical Magic.