Why does Ruth incorporate imagery of witches into her tribute?

The Montreal Massacre was truly a witch hunt. Twenty four women were shot. Fourteen of those women murdered simply because they were smart and independent females who wanted a degree in engineering. They dared to break with traditional female roles. They were brave enough to be different. So surely they must be witches. At least that’s how the gunman seemed to view them. He was on a misogynistic witch hunt. He was no different than the men who tried Anne Lamarque as a witch simply because she dared to be different and owned a grimoire or witch’s spell book. Instead of killing Anne those men banished her to the forests across the river. Certainly no woman could survive life in the wilderness. Sprinkle in some magical thinking and many years of handed down lore and maybe, just maybe Anne and some other banished witches not only survived but established the community of Three Pines. Now that might explain some of the healing magic that seems to be in the atmosphere of this little know village. I think the fact that Gamache tried to keep everything in his life and home the same after his parents were killed was magical thinking on this young boy’s part. He thought if everything stayed just as they left it when his parents left that fateful night then that would bring them safely back to him. To move things around or to pass the spot where dad’s bookmark was would be like saying they never existed. He knows they now live in his heart but still he grieves.

Ruth’s “witches” are women with agency, who define themselves, who read, have financial means of their own and the capacity to thrive. The witches in the grimoire and the story of Anne Lamarque are examples as were the young women with the audacity to study engineering. Anne and the events in her life are woven throughout the story, including the finding of the grimoire whose cures and recipes were thought by authorities of the day to conjure demons (at least in the context of this story, the grimoire in the attic did conjure a specific demon) to the final scene where Ruth explains that Anne did more than survive. She returned “To forgive them. That was the magic.” In answer to an earlier question, one person cited her admiration for the women in this story. I think that resonates here as well. The women we meet in Three Pines are women with strengths and agency. I certainly have my favorites, Ruth, of course, Reine-Marie, Myrna, Clara, Annie and Amelia and, in the end, Harriet who manages to move past her anxieties and magical thinking. As Ruth notes, they would have all been witches in the 1600s.

“Before I was not a witch, but now I am one.” I like to interpret as “Before I had no power, but now I have learned that I DO.” The women who have come after the Montreal Massacre continue to honor their memory by RISING. Women everywhere have survived so many hardships by learning their power and surviving. That’s the real magic.

Because of how foreign and distasteful the idea of women studying in this manner was to the shooter. Brilliant, confident women can be intimidating to some men and to some women, maybe seen as “other” and not “same.”

Misogyny is as old as humankind, just labeled differently in different times and places. Women stepping out of their defined roles can’t be tolerated by those who are easily intimidated.

Well – all my thoughts have been taken. The one thing I have to add about witches during the Salem witch trials is that to decide if you were a witch or not you were dunked under water for an extended period time . If you survived then obviously you were a witch and therefore burned. If you drowned it was proven that you were not a witch – just a little too late

Witch hunts are perpetrated out of fear, out of a feeling of threat, out of ignorance. When ignorance has power, those who have intelligence, wisdom, and the ability to create something outside the ordinary are feared, suppressed, and often eliminated. It is especially so for women. Those who “don’t know their place” or are more capable than their male counterparts have often been labeled and punished. What a sad state of affairs! It’s so frustrating. I love that Ruth recognized the correlation between witches and the engineering students, and all womanhood, especially those who dare to not hide their intelligence and capability despite pressure to do so. And the world of Three Pines is populated by so many excellent witches, young and old and in-between! As far as the second question goes, many excellent suggestions have already been given about the references of witchcraft and magic in this book, it was hard to think of another, but then I remembered— there is a certain magic in Armand and Jean-Guy’s relationship, too. Do they indeed have a mystical relationship that goes back through time? In previous books, it’s been mentioned that both Annie and Reine-Marie believe so; and Armand had that immediate sense of deja-vu when he met Jean-Guy (though Jean-Guy apparently did not, yet “he felt his DNA attach itself to him” and became totally vulnerable to his kindness, and felt safe for the very first time, within very short order. For such a prickly, defensive young man, that had to have been magic)!

After all these wonderful in insightful comments, I can’t resist adding this: https://youtu.be/rf71YotfykQ?si=f7zVuw5aKiLCdyTM