The Historical and Occultic Blend: the Examination of Sorcery, Satanism and Witchcraft in Marjorie Bowen’s Novels Black Magic and the Poisoners

Abstract

The „other‟ is a powerful aspect in Marjorie Bowen‟s supernatural novels. It refers to those who are considered to be different, those who cannot integrate well amongst their peers and fit within the collective social mode of the normal and the ordinary. It represents alienation, isolation and rejection in microcosm. The „other‟ can represent a mode of identity for those who do not belong and in this sense the description of the practice of witchcraft is a declaration of the sane and rational world defined by contrast with the supernatural and the occult. Marjorie Bowen's novel Black Magic, published in 1909, has been referred to as "the queerest novel in the English Language"1 as detailed in the preface of the novel and indeed only a lively imagination could have conjured such a story. A weird, haunting and powerful thriller, it has an excellent ending and maintains a strong degree of horror throughout. The accounts of sorcery, satanic worship and the evocative black magic scenes in the novel are of a rare breed and the novel's vivid narration almost presents the plot as an adventurous foray into the darker realms of hell, heaven and the omniscient existence of the supernatural which were to become key themes in much of Bowen‟s later work in the years to come. Gothic melodrama was a particularly potent focal point in Bowen‟s work, even when the genre of the novel was predominantly historical, gothic and supernatural themes became the enduring narratives of much of Bowen‟s literary development.