Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites: Witch and Wizards
The concept of the magical realm never gets
old. Stories about witches and wizards are always one of the favorites of
fantasy lovers, also a popular theme for Halloween costumes and other. In
addition to this, there seems to be a very frequent question about male and female
wizards: If witches are only females, what are ‘male witches’ called? The
magical world stepped into fictional works since a long time ago, and the
impact of the gender hierarchy still remains in parts of it. I remember that
when I was young, the vocabulary ‘witches’ was often used to address females
who are considered ‘evil’; only ‘females’, that is. There didn’t seem to be the
opposite term for males.
Equal Rites is one of Terry Pratchett’s
Disc World novel series that touches on this topic of the gender in the magical
world. Esk is a girl who has gifted the magical powers from a wizard in his
last days, but doesn’t realize her powers until later because female magicians
were considered taboo in Disc World. This was the part that I felt the author
was connecting heavily to the gender equality issues that I’ve mentioned above.
Within Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett describes the difference between witch and
wizard magic as being household and fighting magic. The scene in which Granny
teaches Esk witch’s magic implies the inequality further as the magic that
Granny teaches are tricks rather than magic. All the other ‘real magic’ that
Granny talks about are all related to household chores and duties, and Granny
is often connected to the smell of ‘herbs’ which emphasizes her thoughts about
magic being harmonious with ‘nature’.
The nature we all know is often called ‘mother
nature’ which is also another fun element to think about when reading this
book. The ‘female magic’ as referred in the novel heavily relies on the logic
of nature, while the ‘male magic’ is the magic that comes from nowhere – such as
making fire in mid-air without anything – going against the natural laws.
Nature itself has been like a symbolism of the female gender identity itself.
While the ‘witch magic’ follows the laws of the world, ‘wizard magic’ is
characterized to be powerful and dangerous, referring back to the idea of ‘masculinity’
that came down far from the past.
The turning point of the novel when Granny
sends Esk to the University of wizards seemed to be the main message that Pratchett
was trying to deliver. When we think about categorization of ‘male and female’,
everything is quite unreasonable meaning that it is more of a prejudice.
The
topic of ‘witch and wizards’ is something to think about and also a chance for us to
think of all this gender categorizations that exists even within the media
today.
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