The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

A book review

In 1612, a group of accused witches from the Pendle Hill area were tried and hanged in Lancashire County, England. The Daylight Gate is a short, intense novel based on the extensive documentation from the trial. It plunges readers into a time when people genuinely believed witches had supernatural powers. In a series of short, impressionistic chapters, it shows us why, alternating among characters with different reasons to believe or disbelieve in occult forces.

All based on actual people, the characters are portrayed with strong psychological realism within a setting saturated with the kinds of fears, longings and revulsions that fed occult beliefs in the early seventeenth century. This gives The Daylight Gate a quality of ruthless authenticity; as the occult elements seep into the story, readers are led to interpret them as dreams, hallucinations and wishful thinking - until the story begins to push us another way.

Alice Nutter, an intelligent, wealthy widow, has pursued alchemical research with John Dee, leading to her discovery of the magenta dye that made her fortune. In contrast, Old Demdike and her family are ragged, dirty and well-acquainted with suffering; they would be homeless if Alice did not let them live in an old tower on her property. The powerless Demdikes long for the only kind of power they can imagine having. Thomas Potts, "a proud little cockerel of a man," is a legal official who has made himself important by hating everything King James hates, especially witchcraft and popery. Roger Nowell is the local magistrate; living in "the finest house in Pendle," he dislikes disturbance and prefers to take the line of least resistance, whether that means dismissing as irrational the possibility that witches may be active in his jurisdiction, or appeasing the King's witch hunter by making arrests.

The Daylight Gate is a profoundly skillful tale that makes us feel the fears, desires and confusions of the past. It may also make us wonder about our own lives and the varied beliefs of our own time. (2012; 224 pages)