History, intersectional feminism, and The Once and Future Witches: a good book that could have been better

When a feminist book takes place in a historical period, there's always a risk that it might feature outdated forms of feminism. Historical books about suffrage and witchy feminine rage tend to offer catharsis to a very specific type of reader: first- and second-wave feminists, those who want to see older and more cartoonish forms of patriarchy bested, but are uninterested in thinking too hard about things like intersectionality and gender essentialism.

The Once and Future Witches, on the other hand, seeks to be progressive, while simultaneously centering three white women. The balancing act is an awkward one. The book acknowledges the troubling relationship between suffrage and racism. It then offers an alternative movement that feels totally anachronistic in how modern it is. The new movement is still run by white women, the three Eastwood sisters from the New England countryside who want to reclaim their power by using their magical abilities. For some reason, these sisters are more open-minded than all the other white feminists of the era, perhaps because they themselves know what it's like to be othered. The oldest is lesbian, the middle had an abortion once, the youngest walks with a mobility aid, and they have all experienced abuse and poverty. They are also witches. They quickly learn to accept each other's differences, and they decide to welcome and celebrate similarly marginalized women who don't have a place in the more conservative suffrage groups.

In the real world, the suffrage movement did have an understanding of what we would today think of as a form of intersectionality. For example, despite some classist remarks made by its leaders, the movement did manage to join forces with labor rights groups. On the other hand, Black women were, in the end, completely abandoned by suffrage. By contrast, the Eastwood sisters are somehow unwaveringly intersectional and progressive. They start a feminist group that has queer women. It has disabled women. It has immigrant women. They fight for labor rights and for reproductive justice. They're willing to align themselves with Black women. They believe men have a role to play, and they eventually conclude that gender seems to be a social construct. Their movement represents everything feminism should be nowadays. It's also everything feminism was failing to be in 1893.

The failures of suffrage-era feminism do not go overlooked, but injecting modern sensibilities into the past is a lazy way to fix it. It perhaps only allows white readers to escape into a world that doesn't make them feel so guilty for things like the bans placed on Black women at various suffrage conventions. The book seems as though it's for women who know intellectually that first-wave feminism is outdated, but are still so emotionally or subconsciously attached to it that they find comfort in stories about white women earning the right to vote. To assuage their guilt over their attachment to something as flawed as the suffrage movement, this version of it is more diverse. The one major token Black character in the book feels like she exists to unburden both the characters and the readers of their white guilt.

It's not that the book is bad or too problematic to enjoy. It's overall an excellent read. The lyrical prose is absolutely intoxicating, and even the way the story centers anachronistic white women is fine. It's actually kind of nice to see the more conservative white feminists get sidelined and abandoned for once instead of Black women. While the whitewashing of history might be a little misguided at times, it's not like it's doing something outrageously insensitive. Fantasy stories have the freedom to invent alternate histories. In fact, a major theme of the book is how sometimes the true histories have to be passed and concealed in fairy tales. The whitewashed version of history presented in The Once and Future Witches isn't going to be for everyone, and perhaps it's better to elevate books that don't center three white women in this way. However, as a witchy feminism story, it's still refreshingly intersectional, beautifully written, and a thoughtful meditation on sisterhood and womanhood. It requires some suspension of disbelief, but the same is true of any fantasy book.

When the suspension of disbelief becomes difficult, readers should ask themselves why it feels that way. Why is it so hard to believe that white women can be exactly what everyone else wishes they were? Was it really so impossible for the real suffrage movement to welcome BIPOC women, or was the racism an active choice that white feminists made at the time to suit their own personal interests?

Alix E. Harrow, the author, would probably argue that it was at least partially a choice. She would say that white women (from any era) can and should be doing better, and it's a little defeatist and unimaginative to think otherwise and to refuse to show such progressivism in literature. Harrow isn't wrong here, but this kind of messaging is disappointingly not at all the central message of the book. When the book sprinkles modern sensibilities throughout the story to serve as wish-fulfillment to white readers who want their witchy protagonists to avoid the flaws of their historical counterparts, it doesn't feel like it's demanding that people take notes on how very possible it actually is to choose to be an intersectional feminist. It feels like evasion more than anything else -- escaping into a reality in which suffrage is led by people worthy of admiration, women who don't make concessions and compromises to avoid alienating segregationists from the movement.

It's a better world to escape into than one in which the heroines don't have to think about race at all. It's certainly better than a world in which readers are expected to root for racist protagonists. However, instead of depicting heroines that readers can realistically try to emulate in place of the white feminists who abandoned BIPOC women during the suffrage era, the book acts as though people like the Eastwood sisters actually existed. They didn't, at least not in large enough quantities to make a notable impact when it came to voting rights. Harrow might argue that they could and should have existed, but they didn't. Pretending otherwise is just whitewashing history. As a result, this book still only offers catharsis to a very specific type of woman, though it casts a slightly wider net than a lot of other historical feminist stories that focus solely on first- and second-wave feminism. This one is for readers who normally critique first-wave feminism, but want to take a break from the critiquing. It's for readers who just want to uncomplicatedly celebrate the suffrage movement.

As for myself, I'm okay with celebrating suffage. Those folks accomplished a lot, and there's no reason to overlook their achievements. We're allowed to be inspired by them. At the same time, it's possible to hold two truths at once: they were inspirational, and also, a lot of them were racist (or at least tolerated racism). The Once and Future Witches isn't really designed to make room for both those truths. No inspirational feminist in the story ever tolerates racism. It might sound like a good thing on the surface, but it's also a layer of nuance that just gets stripped completely from the narrative. Readers are never once asked to challenge who they admire. They are never asked to sit with any sort of major ideological tension. Solidarity isn't always simple, easy, and obvious. If it were, everyone would be doing it all the time. Instead of featuring characters who make the hard but correct choice, The Once and Future Witches simply acts as though such a decision was never difficult to begin with. It's a minor gripe, but that missing bit of nuance is what makes this book merely good when it really should have been great.