Enchanted Glass

        I am interested in finding mirrors in literary works. Looking for reflections of characters and events in a story is one of the ways I read novels. In Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones, I enjoyed discovering different kinds of mirrors.

        Enchanted Glass tells a story in which two orphans meet and get a new home, a new family, and a new life. It sounds simple, but it is not.

        Jocelyn Brandon, a magician, died without passing down —in person— his possessions and position as an occultist to his grandson, Andrew Brandon Hope. Andrew knows that as Jocelyn's sole heir, Melstone House is now his, but he ignores that a field-of-care was associated with the property. 

        A History professor and researcher, Andrew quits his job at the university to move to his new residence, start a new life, and write the unconventional history book he had been brooding for years. But Melstone House is not the home he expected. The professor, as people in the estate call him, is constantly harassed by his housekeeper, Mrs. Stock, and his gardener, Mr. Stock, who are not relatives, but virtual enemies. They want to continue running Melstone House as if Jocelyn was still the master. Every day, Mrs. Stock moves the furniture to the places they occupied before Andrew's arrival, and every morning, Mr. Stock brings the discardable produce from the garden to Andrew's kitchen. Mrs. Stock punishes Andrew by cooking things he does not like and accusing him of being single-minded, a projection of her own stubbornness. Mr. Stock every morning gets to the kitchen with full hands and an attitude that suggests he will slam the back door, a beautiful door decorated with panes of stained glass in different colors. Andrew waits for Mr. Stock at breakfast time and, seeing him through the glass, opens the door when he is near to prevent it from slamming. The glass is so beautiful and delicate that Andrew wants to preserve it. 

        In an attempt to reveal to Andrew that he has a field-of-care to manage, Mr. Stock and Mrs. Stock suggest that Andrew employs their relatives in his house. So he meets them the day an orphan boy arrives at Melstone House looking for Mr. Jocelyn Brandon, the only person who, according to his late grandmother, could help him in case of trouble. And in trouble, he was. So, on the same day, Andrew takes Shaun, Mrs. Stock's nephew, as a handyman, Stashe, Mr. Stock's niece, as a secretary, and Aidan, the grandchild of his grandfather's friend, as his ward. He has his reservations against Shaun, as he seems "a bit off" and must tell him exactly what to do, and against Stashe, whom he judges insane for her way of divination: using the results of the horse races from yesterday to anticipate today's events.

        The presence of all these people, and some more, introduces Andrew to his until then unknown responsibilities. He must protect the people in his field-of-care from magical beings and magic users. But he does not know yet how big this field is nor what to do about it. That is the fundamental problem of the novel.

        When Andrew installs himself in Melstone House, he undertakes reparations he deems urgent. One area needing deep cleaning was the shed, which was covered by layers of tarpaulin and intriguing spells Andrew could only see when they were down. There was another glass window on the shed's roof made of colored panes, and the shed itself, after being cleaned, turned out to be a sort of ancient chapel. As menacing people suddenly appear in Melstone, Andrew understands that the glass windows represent counterparts between two worlds, his world, and the Fairy World. Counterparts are sort of doppelgängers. They do not look identical, but one can connect them somehow. The parallel worlds make Andrew's unwilling and unexpected job as a magician necessary. 

        The stained glasses are the "mirrors." The existence of similar people between the two worlds, is the main and obvious reflection in the story: Duplicated people. Stashe and Tarquin, her father, are represented in the back door glass. Their counterparts in the Fairy World are Queen Titania and the Puck.

        A different kind of specular reflection is that of Andrew and Aidan, the two characters in the novel without a counterpart in the Fairy World. It unfolds as they get to know each other, so it is not a vision produced by a sudden encounter, as it happens with the counterparts. The reader builds the image of one on the other, chapter after chapter.

        During the walks Andrew and Aidan take around Melstone, mapping the field-of-care, Andrew finds that someone is fencing his forest, and he faces the person ordering this work, Mr. Brown. Then, he understands what is happening. His ancestors were forced to keep an imbalance between the people in the field-of-care and the Fairy World. There were counterparts on both sides, but the Brandons were compelled to get rid of the counterparts on their side. Jocelyn did not approve of this but was trying to keep things at peace with Mr. Brown, a man from the Fairy World in Melstone. Andrew's ignorance of the contract one of his Brandon ancestors signed three hundred years ago started eliciting the balance between the two worlds by allowing people from the Fairy World in Melstone. This incursion threatened the power of the fairy king. 

        Soon Andrew realizes that Aidan and himself are in danger. Each has an enemy. Andrew's enemy, Mr. O. Brown, wants to take over his field-of-care. Aidan's enemy, Oberon Rex, the fairy king, wants to take the boy's life to preserve his own power. Needless to say, their enemy is the same person. 

        Andrew must protect Aidan, firstly, for being a minor without guardians, secondly, for being an inhabitant of Melstone's field-of-care chased by magical folk. His personal writing project is then delayed by this new task: trying to figure out the extension of his field-of-care and how to protect it. Andrew did not receive a manual, a treatise, a letter, or anything explaining the care he must offer in Melstone. However, in the vision in which Andrew knew about Jocelyn's passing, his grandfather showed him a document with a black seal that seemed important, yet he could not find it. He knew it was the key to clarify everything.

        Thus, Andrew feels hopeless about his situation, but Aidan is there to help him bring back all the instruction he indeed received from his grandfather when he was Aidan's age. As Andrew spends time with the boy, trying to grasp all this field-of-care business and comprehend Aidan's problem, memories of what he as a child lived with Jocelyn during vacation rush to him and make him understand that everything he did with his grandfather, the walks, the talks, the games, was how the magician was teaching him what to do.

        Both Andrew and Aidan arrive at Melstone House after the death of their grandparents, the only relatives they had. Andrew's parents had died long before, and Aidan was the child of a single mother who had died of cancer and was brought up by his grandmother, Adela Cain. Both grandparents, Jocelyn and Adela, had field-of-cares and troublesome relationships with their children. However, they were very close to their grandchildren, who were not skeptical about magic and magical folk and accepted their teachings about them. 

        To some extent, Andrew and Aidan are runaways. Andrew runs away from the university, seeing it as an obstacle to meeting his goal of writing a book. Aidan escapes from a foster home where non-human stalkers harass him. In fleeing those places, both are looking for a kind of freedom and safety.

        At age 12, Andrew was pretty much like Aidan: Close to the occultist grandparent. Curious, he wants to know who eats the vegetables left on the woodshed's roof. Caring for a person in need, he gives clothes to Groil. And he enjoys comics, the non-serious literature, dismissed by adults, just like fairy tales are.            

        Presently, they share their readiness to care for younger beings: Aidan cares for Rolf, the weredog, who in his human state is a child, and Andrew cares for Aidan, a kid who is a stranger to him. ​​Andrew quickly becomes a good guardian for the boy, as he reads Aidan's needs and understands him just by remembering how he was at his age. The resemblance is not limited to their attitudes. A picture of Andrew at 12 shows how alike they look. 

        Mirrors and magic sight

        Sight is the essential element in Diana Wynne Jones's protagonists. One gets to know all the main characters in her works, magic users especially, for their eyes and how they look at people and things. The description of their eyes and gaze, gestures at looking, and what they can see make them memorable. Sirius[1] and Howl[2] both have, in their own way, otherworldly green eyes; Erick Chant's eyes are blue[3], and Tom Lynn's are gray[4]. Chrestomanci's vague look[5], the way Rupert Venables touches his glasses to glare at people, or Maree adjusts them to defend herself are a signature of their personalities[6]. All of them see things invisible to others. Even David, helped by Luke, sees what no human can see: Brunhilda's eternal sorrow in everlasting fire[7].

        Enchanted Glass shows two characters with the same trait, skill, and gesture. Andrew and Aidan wear glasses, and to detect magic must take them off. The boy knows this. Andrew is unaware that his power over people only works while he cleans his glasses until Aidan points at this. When the boy reveals that he takes his glasses off to see if something or someone is magical or real, Andrew realizes he does the same and starts practicing this consciously, and what he accomplishes inspires Aidan to look for things as Andrew does. Encouraged by the notion that Andrew can see the leg that Tarquin had amputated, Aidan searches Melstone House for hidden things. They influence each other. Andrew recovers his touch for magic with Aidan, and the boy, in turn, sees Andrew as his role model. When he has a conversation with the voice in the shed, restored as a sacred place, he says:

 I want to be wise, like Gran and Andrew, and have my own field-of-care and write books about all the amazing things I find out and, and fix things magically that can't be fixed any other way and, and do lots of other things that need magic and, and— (p. 198)

        In short, Andrew sees in Aidan his past, and Aidan sees in Andrew his future.

        They presumably wear glasses to see better, but when they do it, they see less. Andrew is a younger image of Jocelyn, like Aidan is a younger image of Andrew, yet the "old man" did not wear glasses because his eyesight was "magically good." Perhaps, it was not a matter of having good sight, but the right sight why Jocely did not wear glasses, and, although not overtly expressed in the story, seeing the world with unaltered eyes would be the best way for Andrew to take care of his field-of-care. But how painful that would be. It all amounts to appreciating Jocelyn's courage to live to a very old age seeing everything the way he did. 

        All these similarities and coincidences between Andrew and Aidan are evident as we follow Andrew's process of self-discovery or recollection of an age in which magic was acceptable to him, before he became an adult and a historian, that is, before he could ignore his own magical powers. 

        Also spread throughout the novel is the most sophisticated product of the author's craft in Enchanted Glass: the main magic user in the story. Jocelyn Brandon is a persona built by everybody's memories and allusions. Magic in Diana Wynne Jones's stories is usually verbal and somatic. However, here we can learn how powerful and important "the man," or "old man," was not for his spoken word and grand gestures and actions but by what remains of him: his notes, correspondence, bills, and other papers, and the comments and speculations of people who knew him or knew something about him. Little by little, the reader must connect all the bits and pieces to understand the man's qualities and weaknesses. All one can visualize of him for a second is his mute ghost in the first chapter, but in the end, we have a picture of him more detailed than the one we have of Andrew and Aidan with all their action and dialogue. It is as if we get to know the man not by looking at him but at his reflection, which is nonetheless impressive. It is touching, for example, to find that Jocelyn endured Mrs. Stock and Mr. Stock's bossy ways to protect them. The evidence is in the little notes to self.

The notes were written on pieces torn off letters, old magazines and even raggedly torn pieces of new paper. Old Mr Brandon's writing was black and crotchety and full of character. Aidan noticed one that said, If Stockie brings me any more carrots, I'll pull his head off!!! Another said, O. Brown is talking nonsense. Counterparts not dangerous. And a third said, Trouble in London again. Sigh.(p. 139)

The fact that Mr. Stock is still bothering Andrew with heavy amounts of carrots and unpleasant oversized vegetables, and that he is one of the persons in the glass, shows that Jocelyn tolerated him beyond what is humanly possible. Not everyone in the glass was always there, but Mr. Stock was already in the red pane when Andrew was 12. Despite the obligation to avoid having counterparts in Melstone, Jocelyn kept Mr. Stock in his estate for over two decades and even had a term of endearment for him.

Conclusion

Set in the task of spying specular reflections in this novel, one finds several ways in which Diana Wynne Jones plays with duplicates and multiplication of things, casts and catches light or shadows on characters, places, or events, offering a familiar side, and an unexpected one. The first feature is the proliferation of people carrying the name Stock. At least six Stocks are mentioned in the story; most are unrelated and have nothing in common but the last name. The second is the existence of not only one enchanted glass, but two, whose significance is to represent the counterparts between two worlds. The familiar side is the beauty of the glass; the unexpected side is that not only one but two are needed to channel ancient magic, and each glass can be used as a whole or by panes. The third is the counterparts. It is easy to see them as doppelgängers, but given that the creatures in the two worlds can be humans, humanoids, or something else, it is not always easy to spot that they are people duplicated in one of the worlds. The fourth is the parallelism between Andrew and Aidan, explained above. Many things identify them with one another, but their differences harmonize them. Also, revelations on their background are certainly unexpected. 

Finally, the construction of the primary magic user, Jocelyn Brandon, from "indirect sources." All the information we collect about him throughout the novel sheds light on his persona. We do not see his performative spellcasting; we only know the effects of his magic and work. We know Jocelyn for the memories of people who knew him and the things he left behind. Without seeing him in action, we know the good, the bad, and the ugly about him. Assembling the image of the man from the little pieces scattered throughout the novel is a nice magical challenge to offer to a young audience.

[1] Dogsbody, 1975

[2] Howl's Moving Castle, 1986

[3] Charmed Life, 1977

[4] Fire and Hemlock, 1985

[5] The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. I-III

[6] Deep Secret, 1997

[7] Eight Days of Luke, 1975

Jones, Diana Wynne. Enchanted Glass. HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Kindle Edition.

Diana Wynne Jones reads from Enchanted Glass

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