Rite as Social Myth in The Witches of Eastwick

I wrote this in May '05 as a free topic paper for a fascinating class on church ritual; as may be apparent, I was kind of desperate for a topic. Sort of like a Socialist analysis of Hamlet, only less learned. It may get you into that '84 zeitgeist, though.

For a book about witchcraft, John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick barely focuses on the three title witches’ rituals together, not even in the third of the book entitled “The Coven.” Rather, the book functions as an exploration of liberated womanhood, and imagines what happens when that womanhood bumps into a masculinity whose power can challenge it. (A couple caveats if you’ve seen the movie: book and movie are virtually nothing alike, aside from some almost coincidental similarities; and I’m pretty sure the witches’ literary masculine counterpart Darryl Van Horne is not the devil.) At the beginning “The Coven,” though, Updike does show us one of the witches’ Thursday night meetings, and, at “The Coven”’s end, counterpoints it with the first of the sexually charged, Van Horne-sponsored meetings that will soon take over their lives. If you want (and you understandably might not), you can read the witches’ pre-Van Horne Thursday night gatherings as parodies of rite, with their founding myth the women’s liberation from unfulfilling marriages and subsequent realization of all their feminine powers.

Here’s a basic “Coven” plot outline. Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie are witches in the small Rhode Island town of Eastwick. They’ve been witches ever since their marriages ended and they felt their powers expand to engage the natural forces of the world. (From pages 77-8 of the Fawcett Crest mass market edition: “Then in mid-marriage [Alexandra’s] own body disgusted her. It was the body outside, beyond the windows, that light-struck, water-riddled, foliate flesh of that other self the world to which beauty still clung; when divorce came it was as though she had flown through that window… The morning after the decree, she was up at four, pulling up dead pea plants and singing by moonlight… This other body too had a spirit.”) Since then, they’ve been regularly meeting on Thursday nights to drink, gossip, and act out this forming myth of their new union with nature and each other. In their private lives, they sleep around with most of the married men in town and practice their respective arts of sculpture, cello playing, and newspaper features writing. When the repulsively alluring New York millionaire scientist/ musician/ art collecter Darryl Van Horne moves into the town mansion, they are drawn to him and eventually focus their sexual and spiritual energy on him. At chapter’s end, the witches have the first of many regular orgies at the mansion, and these orgies will eventually supplant their Thursday rituals together. This leads to plenty of jealousy, guilt, and evil spells that make an annoying townswoman spit out feathers, but those are other chapters.

So what do these Thursday night rituals consist of? Not much, but Updike tells us enough to infer that some regular activities take place. They eat junk food and drink liquor in someone’s living room, cattily talk (notably with the TV off) about the townspeople and the men they’re sleeping with, complain about their many children, and eventually attain a sort of spiritual high. Updike establishes that the three have a well-established relationship: “Alexandra tended to dominate, when the three were together, by being somewhat sullen and inert, making the other two come to her” (p.34). He goes on to describe the culmination of all this togetherness: “On those Thursdays the three friends would conjure up the specters of Eastwick’s little lives and set them buzzing and circling in the darkening air. In the right mood and into their third drinks they could erect a cone of power about them like a tent to the zenith, and know at the base of their bellies who was sick, who was sinking into debt, who was loved, who was frantic, who was burning, who was asleep in a remission of life’s bad luck…” (p.36). Updike is taking a parodistic view of a divorced women’s support group (sort of like the overly loud and annoying ladies who meet in the movie Jerry Maguire to get in touch with their anger) and turning the group’s meetings into rite. The women meet because they have rid themselves of their men; this riddance frees them to realize the full power of their formerly constrained womanhood, which is intimately tied into the forces of nature; the symbols of their together-liberation are those things women do on a “girls’ night out.” The junk food, drinks, sex talk, and complaints about the kids all point to the fact that the women are unattached to those things that formerly bound them, and they also bring about the women’s repeated weekly re-liberation. Through these acts the women “erect a cone of power” and unify themselves with each other and the forces that control their surroundings.

When the meetings with Darryl replace the Thursday nights, the women don’t immediately feel the loss. After all, a large part of their regular conversation is devoted to discussing their affairs, so regular sexual activity in the exotic setting of Darryl’s mansion must seem like a positive development. We realize in the later chapters, though, that without their regular witches’ meetings--without regularly acting out their myth of independence-through-divorce-leading-to-formerly-unrealized-power--the women’s lives take on an emptiness. Their spirits grow smaller and meaner, and they become cruel towards their neighbors and one another.

If there’s an analog in our Christian worship, it may be when we mistake the things we do in worship for the reason we worship. The reason the witches of Eastwick “worship” is to enact their continuing feminine liberation power. They do this through practicing a hedonism previously forbidden them by the demands of responsible marriage. When they practice this hedonism for its own sake and in a setting that renders impossible their myth’s enactment (i.e., an orgy with a man), they escalate the myth’s obvious trappings but make its true fulfillment impossible. A direct Christian parallel is difficult, but we might experience something similar if we replace our worship with a steady diet of hymn-sings or contemporary Christian concerts. Or if we allow a pastor or musician to become the inappropriate focus of our worship--a “Darryl Van Horne,” to be sort of crass. In the former situation, worship may still be possible, but it will be harder; and if it leads to the second situation, our worship rite won’t work.

Ask Darryl Van Horne!

Q:How would you describe the distinctive aesthetic character of the year?

A:I love the junk. I hated that abstract stuff they were trying to sell us in the Fifties; Christ, it all reminded me of Eisenhower, a big blah. I want art to show me something, to tell me where I'm at, even if it's Hell, right? So when this Pop came along, I thought, Jesus, this is the stuff for me. So fucking cheerful, you know--going down but going down with a smile. Like the late Romans in a way. 'Djou ever read Petronius? Funny. Funny, God, you can look at that goat Rauschenberg put in the rubber tire and laugh until sundown. I was in this gallery years ago on Fifty-seventh Street and the dealer, this faggot called Mischa, they used to call him Mischa the Muff, hell of a knowledgeable guy though, showed me these two beer cans by Johns--Ballantine ale, actually--in bronze, but painted up so sweet, with that ever-so-exact but slightly free way Johns has, and one with a triangle in the top where a beer opener had been and the other virgin, unopened. Mischa says to me, "Pick that one up." "Which one?" I say. "Any one," he says. I pick up the virgin one. It's heavy. "Pick up the other one," he says. "Really?" I ask. "Go ahead," he says. I do. It's lighter! The beer had been drunk!! In terms of the art, that is. I nearly came in my pants, that was such a turn-on when I saw the light.

I asked him what the price was for these beer cans and Mischa told me and I said, "No way." There are limits. How much cash can you tie up in two fake beer cans? No kidding, if I'd taken the plunge I would have quintupled my money by now, and that wasn't so many years ago. Those cans are worth more than their weight in pure gold. I honestly believe, when future ages look back on us, when you and I are just a pair of skeletons lying in those idiotic expensive boxes they make you buy, our hair and bones and fingernails pillowed on all this ridiculous satin these fat-cat funeral directors rip you off for, Jesus I'm getting carried away, they can just take my corpus and dump it on the dump would suit me fine, when you and I are dead is all I mean to say, those beer cans, ale cans I should be saying, are going to be our Mona Lisa. We were talking about Kienholz; you know there's this entire sawed-off Dodge car he did, with a couple inside fucking. The car sits on a mat of artificial turf and a little ways away from it he put a little other patch of Astroturf or whatever he used, about the size of a checkerboard, with a single empty beer bottle on it! To show they'd been drinking and chucked it out. To give the lover's lane ambience. That's genius. The little extra piece of mat, the apartness. Somebody else would have just put the beer bottle on the main mat. But having it separate is what makes it art. Maybe that's our Mona Lisa, that empty of Kienholz's. I mean, I was out there in L.A. looking at this crazy sawed-off Dodge and tears came to my eyes. I'm not shitting you. Tears.

(courtesy John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick, pub. 1984)

Imaginary Popscape 1984 Songlist

“No Surrender”/ “Bobby Jean”—Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, from Born In the U.S.A
“Take Me With U”—Prince and the Revolution, from Purple Rain
“Jump”—Van Halen, from 1984
“World Destruction”—Timezone, 12” Single, from Deconstruction: The Celluloid Recordings (Bill Laswell)
“What’s Going On”—Husker Du, from Zen Arcade
“Answering Machine”—Replacements, from Let It Be
“I’m Goin’ Down”—Bruce Springsteen again
“When Doves Cry”—Prince again
“Trapped Under Ice”—Metallica, from Ride the Lightning
“Chartered Trips”—Husker Du again
“Run Runaway”—Slade, from Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
“Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba”—77s, from All Fall Down
“First Movement (Fast)”—Steve Reich and Musicians with Chorus and Members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (Michael Tilson Thomas), from The Desert Music
“Material Girl”—Madonna, from Like a Virgin and The Immaculate Collection
“Darlington County”/ “Working On the Highway”/ “Downbound Train”—Bruce Springsteen yet again
“Ride the Lightning”—Metallica again
“I’ll Wait”—Van Halen again
“Turn To Me”—Lou Reed, from New Sensations

Imaginary Popscape 1984 Commentary

“No Surrender”/ “Bobby Jean”—Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, from Born In the U.S.A.
Christgau: A+, #1 Album of 1984
Eddy: one of the Top 15 Albums of 1984
Grammy: album nominated for Album of the Year 1984
RS: #6 Album of the ‘80s
How the hell can Bruce Springsteen be so easy to make fun of, but at the same time so undeniably appealing? Here’s a smattering of Bruce references I’ve collected over the years:
In elementary school, I went on a field trip to the high school library; I spent the time poring over a teenybopper book titled something like Today’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars, whose author struggled with the same question, calling Bruce’s singing “rough” and his guitar playing “simple,” finally chalking his appeal up to communication with “everyday people” (or something like that).
In Paul Zollo’s excellent Songwriters On Songwriting, Randy Newman explains why he satirized Springsteen in ‘83’s “My Life Is Good”:

I think his reputation artistically probably is inflated a bit. But everyone who sees him changes his mind. A lot of musicians don’t like his music. But when they see him, it’s like they become a pod person. [Laughs] It’s like [softly] “No, he’s great, man.” I say, “What do you mean he’s great? Yesterday you said it sounded like it all came out of a well.” And they say, “No, man, he’s great, he’s great.” I don’t know what it is. It’s like hypnotism.

During the five hour drive back to college, my road-trip buddy Mark rocks Garth Brooks, Elton John, the Bloodhound Gang, Top 40 radio, and Bruce’s “My Best Was Never Good Enough,” which includes the immortal line, “‘Now life’s a box of chocolates/ You never know what you’re going to get’/ ‘Stupid is as stupid does’/ and all the rest of that shit.” (The featured songs from Garth—“Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)”—and the Bloodhound Gang—“Hold Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)”—are no days in the park either.)
In his excellent A Whore Like All the Rest, Richard Meltzer relates an amusing (and kind of jerky) anecdote wherein he jumps out of his seat and belts “Oklahoma” along to his girlfriend’s Springsteen record—the point being that Bruce isn’t singing rock ‘n’ roll, he’s singing showtunes.
Several months later, in a biting (and kind of stupid) Meltzer-inspired fog of thought, I agree with a coworker that Springsteen’s great “for the most part” but caveat that he’s “not cynical enough” (comparing him, no doubt, to the brilliant lifelike cynicism of—who the hell?—Dylan? Eminem? Probably Randy Newman).
In Accidental Evolution, Chuck Eddy posits his rock worldview with the following Springsteen observations:

“When Bruce Springsteen puts over a believable song, he does it the same way John Waite does—by accident.”
“Bruce Springsteen has his moments, but he usually doesn’t have a whole lot to do with rock ‘n’ roll. Like Rick Wakeman or Pete Townshend, he plays art-rock. By which I mean his muse can’t be separated from his ego; he’s too palpably concerned with how he’ll be documented in the history books.”

Springsteen’s an obvious example that everyone can relate to, but what makes him so obvious and so relatable?
He’s huge, of course—everybody knows at least one song (my mom likes “I’m On Fire,” though she used to worry about me listening to its dirty lyrics). Unlike other rich superstars, he somehow retains his image of a knowable person. His ‘80s peers Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince are all too intimidatingly mired in controversy or, at this point, their own grandeur to imagine hanging out with them. Don Henley, who’s probably just as rich and popular, works for everyman causes but seems to lack (at least persona-wise) Springsteen’s openness. Maybe this is because we don’t know how Springsteen votes. He’s almost certainly a democrat, but in the older, populist sense of the word; it’s hard to imagine another musician that Ronald Reagan and Ani DiFranco could appreciate equally.
It’s a shtick, of course. Whether or not private Springsteen is more agreeable or a better citizen than private Prince is hardly our concern. Prince has turned private fantasies (his and ours) about sex and decadence into enormously appealing music; Bruce has done the same for citizenship, or at least for private fantasies of citizenship, which for most of us are still rooted in the varied carols of Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” Who’s America? Mechanics, carpenters, masons, boatmen, deck-hands, shoemakers, hatters, wood-cutters, ploughboys, mothers, wives-at-work, seamstresses, laundresses. (Note the absence here of bohemians and billionaire bigshots, or even white-collars.) On Born In the USA, America is a jobless Vietnam vet who can’t get work at the refinery, road workers, convicts, a car wash attendant, a rock musician, a barfly, and an aspiring author; only one of their varied carols (the road worker in “Darlington County”) is happy (and even then his buddy gets arrested), a couple are more bittersweet, but none of these blue-collars seem happy about their jobs. (Contrast them with Whitman’s singing Americans, who could themselves show up in a Broadway musical montage.)
In this sense, then, Springsteen is too cynical re people’s attitudes toward their jobs: you go to work, you come home, you pine about your friends and your love life, and what you do at work doesn’t really matter. In fact, it’s hard to think of a song anywhere that focuses on the productive/creative triumphs of the singer at work—“Day-O” and “Paperback Writer” and Weird Al’s “Dog Eat Dog” excepted—so this “cynicism” may reflect society at large (if not just an overused pop-music cliche). But if that’s the case, I don’t want the cynicism, because it’s not very interesting. Springsteen’s at his lyrical best when he gets little details exactly right—like “We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school,” from “No Surrender”—and while he can do this with aspects of jobs (see “Downbound Train”), you don’t feel like the characters are invested in their work. But I want to talk to people and hear from people who are invested in their work; I want to know what they find stimulating about their careers. This doesn’t make Bruce bad (I did put six fucking songs off his record on here), but it shows that his primary strength is not “relating to the everyday joe” (i.e. the blue-collar worker as regards his work), except as a uselessly sympathetic drinking partner who nods at all your complaints.
Or maybe it just shows that my conception of the “everyday joe” is in error, and that Springsteen’s ability to relate to everyone implies that all of us, bohemian and blue-collar and bourgeois and billionaire bigshot alike, are ourselves “everyday joes.” To put it another way, when Prince makes millions of people love “When Doves Cry,” he implicates us all in his shtick—we might not have pseudo-Freudian psychosexual hang-ups, but we can realize how much we enjoy the kinky energy of the music and lyrics. Springsteen’s pleasure implicates us in his everyday American shtick, and so, while we might not all work down at the car wash dreaming of our love gone bad, while some of us may indeed like our jobs and find them fulfilling, we can recognize the self-pity of being someplace “where all it ever does is rain,” and realize that plenty of others do too. Pointing out this stuff, of course, is a big part of the job description for being a popular musician.

“Take Me With U”—Prince and the Revolution, from Purple Rain
Christgau: A-, #29 Album of 1984
Eddy: #73 Heavy Metal Album
Grammy: Best Rock Performance, Best Original Score Album 1984 (album); album nominated for Album of the Year, Producer of the Year (Prince + Revolution) 1984
RS: #2 Album of the ‘80s
SARG: 9

“Jump”—Van Halen, from 1984
Billboard: #3 Song of 1984
Christgau: B+
Eddy: #12 Heavy Metal Album; one of the Top 15 Albums of 1984
Grammy: song nominated for Best Rock Performance 1984
RS: #81 Album of the ‘80s

“World Destruction”—Timezone, 12” Single, from Deconstruction: The Celluloid Recordings (Bill Laswell)
Christgau: “classic”
Eddy: “hokey”

“What’s Going On”—Husker Du, from Zen Arcade
Christgau: A-, #23 Album of 1984
Eddy: #304 Heavy Metal Album
RS: #33 Album of the ‘80s
SARG: 10, #4 Alternative Album

“Answering Machine”—Replacements, from Let It Be
Christgau: A+, #2 Album of 1984
RS: #15 Album of the ‘80s
SARG: 10, #31 Alternative Album

“I’m Goin’ Down”—Bruce Springsteen again

“When Doves Cry”—Prince again
Billboard: #1 Song of 1984

“Trapped Under Ice”—Metallica, from Ride the Lightning
Eddy: #187 Heavy Metal Album

“Chartered Trips”—Husker Du again

“Run Runaway”—Slade, from Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
Eddy: one of the Top 15 Albums of 1984

“Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba”—77s, from All Fall Down

“First Movement (Fast)”—Steve Reich and Musicians with Chorus and Members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (Michael Tilson Thomas), from The Desert Music

“Material Girl”—Madonna, from Like a Virgin and The Immaculate Collection
Billboard: #67 Song of 1985
Christgau: LV-B; IC-A+, #4 Album of 1990
Eddy: IC-one of the Top 15 Albums of 1990
SARG: LV-9; IC-8, #11 Alternative Album

“Darlington County”/ “Working On the Highway”/ “Downbound Train”—Bruce Springsteen yet again

“Ride the Lightning”—Metallica again

“I’ll Wait”—Van Halen again

“Turn To Me”—Lou Reed, from New Sensations
Christgau: A, #10 Album of 1984
SARG: 8