Aaron Pharr
5/1/2023
“The Witches of Eastwick” by John Updike is a novel imbued with an obsession with the human body and the resulting shame or excitement of such a body and its functions. While sex is heavily emphasized, other bodily functions, from pregnancy to defecation, are intertwined with the motif of magic and how it crosses over with American culture. Repeated mentions of excrement within the text present a striking view of the evolution of human processes and their new functions within the 20th century.
Wanting to cast a malicious hex on Jenny for stealing their man, the witches create a wax doll in the rival woman’s form. For the curse to be effective in destroying their opponent, the replica of Jenny must possess something from her. The witches discuss possible options for this human instrument, from blood and hair to the more comical fingernail clippings and belly-button lint. Then Alexandra “solemnly” adds excrement to the list, lamenting both its repulsive nature and how difficult it is to collect in suburban America when compared to the third world. Sukie then jokes about a possible newspaper article, “The Flush Toilet and the Demise of Witchcraft.” The subtle jest highlights magic as existing in the natural functions of the human body and how that magic has been deteriorated by culture and technology (Updike 238).
In her feminist article on bathroom spaces and the human body, Judith Plaskow illustrates how defecation was publicly visible and integral to daily life for centuries. When discussing Medieval Europe, a time period many will associate with witch hysteria, she writes, “The smells and presence of excrement pervaded the environment: the walls of the house were stained with urine; people relieved themselves in the streets; latrines were everywhere, near doorways, stairs, and kitchens” (Plakow 57). In such an environment, it would be easy for witches to coat their wax dolls in the feces of their foes. The tiresome collection of hair and fingernails would not be necessary when the essence of humanity would be plastered all over the town.
Plaskow highlighted the visibility of excrement before the invention of the toilet, and Updike similarly calls upon the idea as well in the conclusion of his Maleficia section: “Before plumbing, in the old outhouses, in winter, the accreted shit of the family would mount up in a spiky frozen stalagmite…” This grotesque image puts feces at the front and center of family life and life itself, demonstrating that, while perverse, the natural functions of the human body were accepted before the revolutionary development of the flush toilet. After its creation, our waste, and thus part of our humanity, is disposed of without second thought, and we are disconnected from our natural selves and our magic. Continuing his passage, the author suggests that modern American culture has destroyed the old acceptance of feces because now there is nothing more to life than the “airbrushed ads at the front of magazines, the Platonic forms of perfume bottles and nylon nightgowns, and Rolls-Royce fenders” (Updike 210).
It is interesting that this mention of a mountain of easily accessible excrement comes only twenty-eight pages before Alexandra gravely admits that excrement, now inaccessible, could help rid them of Jenny with their voodoo.
In the same passage, Updike associates excrement and witchcraft further, claiming that because of the maleficent actions of the witches, the notion of witchcraft has piled up on the community’s consciousness like that stalagmite of shit. The diction of the passage in “stained,” “embarrassment,” and “unease” describe not bathroom usage but witchcraft itself, undeniably tying the supernatural power of the women to the processes of the body, which have become taboo in America.
This obsession with bodily function permeates the novel. The witches have many sexual encounters with many men, where semen is recurringly mentioned. However, the functions of women are held in higher regard by the text, even by Darryl Van Horne, the man who has foursomes with the witches. In their initial hot tub encounter, he declares, “I’d love to be a woman” and justifies this sentiment with, “Think of what a female body can do-make a baby and then make milk to feed it.” His attitude is accurate, as the human body, the female body, has this magical, miraculous ability that is entirely natural, not magic at all. Jane gives Darryl a concession to his masculinity: “Well think of your own body, the way it can turn food into shit” (Updike 108).
It is bizarre, yet simultaneously thought-provoking, that the mundane action of defecation is compared to the creation of life in this moment. However, Jane is correct in stating that even the most mundane bodily function is quite magical. This scene is paramount in expressing the emphasis on the human body that “Witches” so often does in its characters and construction, and it helps to serve the deconstruction of that magic imposed by American society.
In his anthropological satire, “Body Ritual Among the Nacriema,” Horace Miner exposes many of the ideological and cultural conundrums of American life by framing our daily experiences as mysterious, tribe-like rituals. The dentist becomes the holy-mouth-man. Doctors become medicine men. Psychologists become “listeners.” Our toilets become household shrines, and the location for excretion becomes part of the capitalistic signifiers of class; for example, a 2-bedroom,2-bathroom apartment is more expensive than a 2-bedroom,1-bathroom comparison.
When combining the study of Nacriema with “The Witches of Eastwick” and its sexually charged, simultaneously shameful analysis of the American body, it is clear there is a common understanding of the sad state of our society. Breastfeeding is shunned in public. Defecation is taboo. While technology has increased, our own connection to the human body has decreased. In 2023, with further technology and lifestyle improvements, Horace Miner’s statement in 1956 about the human body being an ugly, disease-prone prison that we reject is all the more true (Miner 503).
The results of the satirical Nacriema study have “shown them to be a magic-ridden people” (Miner 507). The connotation of magic is prominent when alongside the literal spells and hexes of “The Witches of Eastwick,” a novel whose magical rules are strongly associated with the human body. Miner’s use of “magic-ridden” is lexically complex. It suggests that the people with their rituals and magic potions are ridden, or full of, magic. However, to ‘be rid’ of something is to lose it, and as Updike paints it, America is a society that is being ridden of its magic by its technology and culture.
Miner ends his essay with a quote from anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, “It is easy to see the crudity and irrelevance of magic.” There is something primitive and vulgar about many of our natural functions. In isolation, defecation, semen, and breastmilk are all jarring, bizarre spells. In our individual lives, there is a degree of insignificance or triviality to many of these bodily processes, as while they are extraordinary symbols of life itself, they are common, everyday actions.
Viewing the body as magic is why “The Witches of Eastwick” has real witches. The immersion in the beauty and ugliness of their bodies in all of their actions grounds them in a natural supernatural, which allows the scenes of actual witchcraft in the form of thunderstorms and hexes to feel all the more visceral.
Undoubtedly, the witches are cruel and vindictive. Not only did they neglect their own children, but they left a trail of destruction, resulting in multiple deaths. However, perhaps they are seen as “evil” by the townspeople not for their uprooting of marriage, but for their blatant connection to the human body, which the rest of American society lacks.
By being familiar with their own bodies, they possess a power that no one else in their town does.
-Works Cited-
Miner, Horace. “Body Ritual Among the Nacriema.” 1956. American Anthropologist, vol. 58, 1956, pp. 503-07. 3 vols.
Plaskow, Judith. “Embodiment, Elimination, and the Role of Toilets in Struggles for Social Justice.” CrossCurrents, vol. 58, no. 1, spring 2008, p. 51+. Gale in Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A182027737/SUIC?u=high_school&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=f83bf28c. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.
Updike, John. The Witches of Eastwick. Random House Trade Paperback edition. ed., New York City, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1984.
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