Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones

First published: 1977

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: The supernatural and coming-of-age

Time of work: The late twentieth century and a period much like Edwardian times

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Another world, inhabited by witches, warlocks, and magicians

Principal Characters:

• Cat (Eric) Chant, a young, seemingly ordinary boy, who is discovered to be a rare potential enchanter endowed with nine lives
• Gwendolen Chant, Cat’s sister, an aspiring and unprincipled young witch
• Chrestomanci, a powerful enchanter, who is the uncle of Cat and Gwendolen
• Julia Chant, Chrestomanci’s plump daughter, a minor witch
• Janet Chant, Gwendolen’s double from a coexisting world, who is a straightforward twentieth century girl
• Michael Saunders, the tutor to Cat, Gwendolen, and Chrestomanci’s two children, who is an accomplished magician
• Mrs. Sharp, a Certified Witch, the very lowest qualification, with whom the young Chants first live when they become orphans
• Mr. Henry Nostrum, an unscrupulous necromancer and Gwendolen’s teacher before she and Cat go to Chrestomanci Castle, who, along with his brother, hopes to exploit her power

The Story

Charmed Life begins with the orphaning of protagonist Cat (Eric) Chant and his sister Gwendolen in a ferry accident that drowns their parents. Cat clings to his sister, who he knows is a witch, and they are among the few saved. They live, supported by the town of Wolvercote, with Mrs. Sharp, a bumbling Certified Witch, who arranges lessons for the girl with Mr. Henry Nostrum, a seedy necromancer. Although Gwendolen, like Cat, is fair-haired, blue-eyed, and angelic looking, she is ambitious and calculating. Having found among her parents’ papers letters from Chrestomanci, a figure held in some awe by witches and warlocks, she writes to him, and it is arranged that she and Cat go to live in his castle at Bowbridge.

The unaccustomed luxury depresses Cat. Initially thrilled, Gwendolen soon resents the lack of attention paid to her talent by the others in the castle, among them Michael Saunders, the tutor; Chrestomanci’s wife, Milly; his two plump children, Roger and Julia; the maids, Euphemia and Mary; and Chrestomanci himself. To force them to notice her superiority, she devises a series of mean tricks, such as ruining the lawn with molehills and transforming Julia’s skirts into snakes. Chrestomanci ignores the disturbances until Gwendolen uses dragon’s blood to summon up a procession of horrible creatures and sends them into the dining room during a party. Saunders soundly spanks her and takes away her magic, winding it like a string around his wrist.

Furious, Gwendolen makes master magic, which sends her to another world and pulls one of her doubles, Janet Chant, from a coexisting world into her place. Cat struggles to keep the transfer secret by covering up Janet’s blunders. The story culminates in a terrifying scene in Chrestomanci’s private garden, which has entrances to other worlds; from one of them, Gwendolen, now a queen, returns. Witches, warlocks, and others with supernatural power arrive, all intent on the sacrifice of Cat as an innocent child, a requirement for keeping the doors open for their unscrupulous purposes. Saunders, Chrestomanci, Milly, others from the castle, and in particular Cat himself, combine to overcome the evil forces. It is revealed that Cat is a rare potential enchanter with nine lives, which Gwendolen has been stealing and squandering to get power for her spells, and that he is really nephew to Chrestomanci and will be his successor.

Context

Charmed Life is the first of several novels by Diana Wynne Jones known as the Chrestomanci cycle. Among the others are The Magicians of Caprona (1980) and Witch Week (1982). Although the powerful enchanter is central to the plot resolution in each of these, he is not usually the protagonist, and it is not even certain that the same Chrestomanci appears in all of them since the name refers to an office rather than to an individual. Moreover, the setting of each may not be the same world: The Magicians of Caprona occurs in a vaguely Italianate preindustrial land, and Witch Week takes place in a modern boarding school of a country very like twentieth century England. The Chrestomanci novels have in common, however, a chief character who is unaware of his importance and discovers the extent of his magical powers only at the culmination of the story. Jones uses this general pattern in a number of her other novels, notably Archer’s Goon (1984) and Howl’s Moving Castle (1986), both books with more exuberant humor than Charmed Life.

Since 1975, Jones has published a larger number of imaginative and innovative fantasies for young people. Among them are three set in Dalemark, a feudal kingdom resembling medieval Iceland: Cart and Cwidder (1975), Drowned Ammet (1977), and The Spellcoats (1979). These fantasies, similar to Charmed Life, use elements from folklore and mythology with various twists and degrees of seriousness, as do several others including Howl’s Moving Castle and Dogsbody (1975). Some critics believe Jones’s most successful use of ancient wisdom lore to be in Fire and Hemlock (1985), a complex fantasy that places the ritual killing of the king, as examined in Sir J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890), in a modern setting.

Although many of the novels by Jones play with ideas of time and other worlds, most are best classified as fantasy rather than science fiction, a possible exception being A Tale of Time City (1987). This novel is set in a civilization of extremely advanced technology, which exists outside time as this world knows it. A number of her novels have been named honor books for the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and commended for the Carnegie Medal. Charmed Life was the winner of the prestigious Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction.