Practical Magic

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of sexual and domestic assault.

 Practical Magic centers around and is guided by the destructive power of love. Early in the novel, it is presented as a sickness that becomes all-consuming and erodes the mind, even manifesting in the physical body:

They could see how love might control you, from your head to your toes, not to mention every single part of you in between. […] a woman could want a man so much she might vomit into the kitchen sink or cry so fiercely blood would form in the corners of her eyes (14).

Contrary to the message of many fairy tales, love is not a force of healing but a rupture of the self. Sally and Gillian learn this early in life due to their aunts’ work. They see the degradation of the women who come to the aunts for help, and they witness the long-term effects of Irene, the girl from the drugstore who thought she would do anything for love. Initially, it’s her love for the married man that makes her ill. When she receives her heart’s desire, however, it only makes things worse; she becomes unrecognizable to her friends and loses the parts of herself that deserved love in the first place. Finally, her descent costs her voice—a thinly veiled metaphor for what all-consuming love can do to a woman.

Seeing this from a young age, Sally and Gillian “lock their pinkies together and vow that they’d never be so wretched and unfortunate […] as if desire were a matter of personal choice” (79-80). However, each comes to face the destructive power of love in her own way. Sally gives her entire self over to love in her relationship with Michael, and when she loses it, she gives up her own sense of self in the process. Gillian initially burns through a string of men as she tries to avoid the powerlessness that true love can bring, but finally succumbs to it with Jimmy, a man who treats her the way she inherently believes she deserves.

Destructive love is also featured in the flashback to Maria Owens, two centuries earlier. Maria came to love a man who was unable to completely give his heart to her in return, which led her to harm herself and give rise to the suspicions that would follow the Owens women ever after. The novel uses Maria’s story to illustrate how little has changed in matters of the heart between then and the present; love was as aggressive and oppressive 200 years ago as it is today.

Each woman in the Owens family struggles with the disconnect between the values of social convention and independence in her own way. The clearest example of this is Sally’s journey as she strives for stable normalcy away from her ostracized aunts:

[B]eing like everyone else was her personal heart’s desire. At night Sally dreamed of ranch houses and white picket fences, and when she woke in the morning and looked out to see the black metal spikes that surrounded them, tears formed in her eyes (17).

This leads her to spy on Irene, hoping that the love charm she’d been given won’t work, thereby proving the town’s suspicions about the Owenses unfounded. In the end, this journey forces her to take her children and move away—ironically, using independence from her family as a way to achieve the convention she always craved.

Kylie also who undergoes a journey in pursuit of independence, in this case from the shadow of her elder sister. Initially, she believes turning 13 is the key to achieving this; however, she learns that true change, and with it the independence she’s searching for, can only come from within. Even though Practical Magic is not a young adult novel, taking time to focus on a young adult character allows the narration to explore this pivotal period of formation and choice. People Kylie’s age, and in particular young women, often find themselves at a crossroads between wanting to fit in—as Kylie has done up until this point in her life—and wanting their own independence. Previously, Kylie had been measuring her self-worth next to the perceived worth of others, such as Antonia and Gillian; by the end, however, she has come into her own independence and is able to recognize her own value.

Again, examining the external framework of the Owens family and their ancestor Maria Owens, the novel explores the way independence has always been a risky endeavor, particularly in small communities. Maria was immediately met with suspicion because she was a woman alone, and because she held herself with confidence and sensuality. She was an unconventional example of a woman in that time and place, and this lack of convention made her a target for others. This became the unwitting lineage of the Owens family, who have always stood at the fringes of social convention. Through the course of the novel, Sally, Gillian, Antonia, and Kylie all come to understand their place in this family and who they are within it.