Bond with nature links generations of women

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This article was published 29/04/2023 (910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Time moves backwards and forwards in Weyward, Emilia Hart’s debut novel, as she weaves together stories of three women in the Weyward family.

Hart, who grew up in Australia, now works as a lawyer in London. Her short fiction has been published in Australia and the U.K.

The epigraph in Weyward notes that the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth were first named the Weyward sisters, but the name was later changed to the Weird sisters. One of the three main characters in Weyward is Altha, a young woman imprisoned in 1619 and awaiting trial for witchcraft in Lancaster, England. Her arrest follows the death of a farmer who is trampled by his maddened cattle. Altha’s mother Jennet is a healer who uses herbal medicine to help any who seek her services, often secretly.

At this time in history, lower-class women typically lacked power, and any possession of what could be construed as higher powers were suspect, and they were often said to be witches with supernatural powers. Altha learns her mother’s skills, but she lives as an outsider in the tiny cottage they share until her mother’s death.

This cottage in Crows Beck, Cumbria serves as a place of refuge for later generations of Weyward women including Violet and then her great-niece, Kate. Violet leads a sheltered life inside her father’s estate, Orton Hall. She longs to learn more about the animals and insects that fascinate her, but her father keeps her at home while her younger brother Graham is sent to boarding school. She misses her mother, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Graham was born. She cherishes her mother’s pendant bearing the initial W.

When her father invites her cousin Frederick to visit during a furlough from the British Army, Violet is intrigued by the handsome soldier. Her inexperience with the outside world and men’s desires makes her a vulnerable target.

Kate is also trusting and quite innocent when she first meets the golden-haired, handsome Simon. After their wedding, he convinces her to quit her job in children’s publishing because he is making a much higher salary.

Isolating her from her workmates and friends, Simon grows increasingly jealous and suspicious, and his negative emotions erupt in physical violence. Kate knows she must escape before he seriously injures her. She’s able to run to the Crows Beck cottage that her great-aunt Violet left her in her will. Here she discovers her aunt’s history and gains knowledge of her female ancestors’ ability to commune with the natural world of animals and insects.

Hart’s three women each have their own unique life story, their shared ancestry and supernatural powers binding them together. Throughout Weyward, the three women gradually transform from being victims at the mercy of others to powerful survivors who control their own destinies.

Altha describes the Weyward women’s bond with nature. “The animals, the birds, the plants — they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows — the ones who carry the sign — watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief.”

Hart creates a compelling tale about this trio of Weyward women and their struggles to embrace their true powers.

Andrea Geary is a freelance writer.