Book Review #9: "Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery" by Brom
Examining the moral implications of becoming a witch
Through a fantastic and startling array of disturbing illustrations and eerie storytelling, Brom develops a seemingly straightforward feminist narrative that turns into something more sinister. The evil lurking in Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery both meets expectations and utterly subverts them, presenting a moral gray area instead of redemption. Ultimately, Slewfoot is about the driving forces behind monstrosity and who gets the power to define “monster.”
Slewfoot follows Abitha (a witch’s name if I ever heard one), a young woman forced to live in a Puritan colony called Sutton by her father. Although she cares for her husband and he cares for her, she has trouble following the silent obedience expected of Puritan women. When her husband dies in a mysterious fall, Abitha’s social and political standing further decline. Pushed to the brink by her unmanageable farm and evil brother in law, her only chance at survival becomes the very devil who killed her husband–a spirit who is further intent on destroying the very settlement Abitha calls home.
In the ongoing relationship between Abitha and Slewfoot (or Samson, as she calls him), there becomes an interesting meditation on the nature of good and evil–a theory that the book applies both within and without the text.
Take Wallace, Abitha’s brother in law, for instance. Wallace embodies everything negative about Puritan life–he is misogynist, racist, egotistical, and hypocritical. He uses religion as a means to an end. As evidence of his vile nature, Wallace is deeply cruel to Abitha, saying to his brother, “It is just hard to keep one’s temper with that harpy nagging us” (16). Wallace’s hatred of Abitha and desire for social validation ultimately result in his accusing her of witchcraft. The townspeople, save for a few kindly souls, are similarly repugnant. They jeer and throw rocks at prisoners in the stocks and gleefully join in on socially marginalizing and ultimately condemning Abitha. In many ways, the story primes us for their impending dooms.
However, Brom similarly calls into question the distinctions we make between good and evil, which works both for and against the novel’s themes at its perplexing conclusion.
Slewfoot/Samson is the most obvious example of this moral liminality. Slewfoot is a forest spirit raised from the dead by strange creatures called wildfolk that bear a resemblance to less romantic conceptions of fairies. They tell him that he must kill all the people in the village and feed their blood to a tree that will revitalize their magic. While this sounds bad, Slewfoot and the wildfolk have an inherent connection to the land that the Puritans have stolen. This “right” to the land, paired with the broader themes of colonialism, climate change, and invasion, recontextualizes what the Puritans (and the reader) might initially read as “evil.”
In addition, the narrative portrays nearly everyone in Sutton as corrupt and sociopathic, further manipulating our conceptions of morality. We believe that characters like Wallace deserve what’s coming to them. However, the wildfolk brutally murder Abitha’s husband, showing that they do not morally delineate between people. To them, all humans are bad.
In fact, Slewfoot has every intention of killing Abitha until he meets her. He discovers that she is a “cunning” woman (a witch) who can help him discover his true identity. After Abitha makes him an offering of honey brittle and a flower crown, Slewfoot uses his magic to grow corn stalks in her arid farm. After the ritual is complete, Slewfoot says, “‘I believe this is what I am meant to be!’ He grabbed her hand, but gently this time, holding it as though precious. ‘Praise you sweet creature. You have released me’” (113).
In many ways, Slewfoot is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. The innocent, outcast sees through the monster’s rough exterior to reveal a compassionate humanity beneath. Like its inspiration, Slewfoot is also deeply concerned with conceptualizing violence as a reaction to injustice. It is certainly gorier than a Disney film, but its questions about appearance and motive tie into the fairytale’s overarching themes.
For example, Slewfoot causes Abitha to re-examine her spiritual beliefs, which, of course, is part of the novel’s focus on moral relativism. He has no idea about Satan or the devil and wonders if Abitha’s worship of a Christian God provides her anything as fruitful or concrete as their own relationship. These considerations cause Abitha to, “wonder why she kept insisting he was the Devil. Was it because he had horns and hooves?...Abitha thought about how hurt, lost, and confused he seemed, and that didn’t strike her as the Devil she’d heard so much about” (109). Through these doubts, Abitha discovers her magical abilities–culminating with a thrilling broomstick ride through the forest.
However, there’s a reason Slewfoot is a horror novel and not a fantasy romance. Brom warns from the beginning that everything will go awry. Predictably, Abitha’s community puts her on trial for witchcraft. The people of Sutton turn from evil caricatures to depraved demons. The torture scenes are made worse by the fact that Brom takes them straight from reality–describing punishments used in both the colonial and English witch trials.
It is in Abitha’s salvation and, really, resurrection, that Slewfoot fully embraces moral liminality. When he rescues her, Slewfoot gives Abitha a choice: be saved but disabled from the punishments she’s undergone or become one of the wildfolk. She chooses the latter, enduring a physical transformation that solidifies her identity as a witch, growing the hooves and horns that once made her question Slewfoot’s morality. They then engage in a killing spree, first targeting the men responsible for her torture and then going after the entire town. In one of his final acts of violence, Slewfoot traps the citizens (including children) in the church and burns it to the ground with cleansing fire.
The epilogue provides even more context. Set in 1972, Abitha traps two hunters in her forest cottage, telling them that “the Devil” will join them for supper. Her intentions with these men are vague, but since they’re hunting illegally and Abitha is now a sworn steward of the forest, we have to imagine they aren’t good.
Rather than reclaim the labels witch and devil, Abitha and Slewfoot lean into them. They give Sutton what it asks for; Abitha uses prejudice to exact her revenge. The glaring issue with this act of reclamation is that it almost justifies the Puritans’ actions. For example, the witch hunters additionally target Sarah Carter, the reverend’s wife, for defending Abitha and giving her food. Since Sarah refuses to admit her guilt, she suffers even worse punishments than Abitha. After being nearly pressed to death, she finally says she is a witch and accepts her fate of a year’s imprisonment.
When she later sees what Abitha has become, she laughs, half-crazed and says, “How could you do this to me?...To my family?...Damn you, Abitha Williams! Damn you! I hope you burn for all eternity!” (288). Sarah’s reaction is entirely warranted. She stood up for Abitha and, for her good deeds, was humiliated and almost killed in front of a community that once respected her. This, paired with Abitha’s implied murder of two seemingly innocent hikers, complicates Slewfoot’s role in the story. Obviously he gives her a lot, but he also eliminates much of Abitha’s moral high ground. By the end, she risks being just as immoral as Sutton’s citizens.
Slewfoot is not meant to be redemptive. It says it at the outset: “A tale of bewitchery.” To be bewitched is to be influenced by an outside force and fundamentally changed to serve that force. We can say that the people of Sutton are bewitched by their need to establish racial, cultural, and religious supremacy that would justify their invasion. Slewfoot and Abitha bewitch each other, making one another more and less human (whatever “human” means). Brom argues that we should switch focus from who is evil to the forces that incite evil. Because, for all my analysis of Abitha’s loss of morality, she only commits such heinous acts because of the torment she endures. Maybe it’s not just, but justice isn’t the point. Justice, like anything else built on a singular set of morals, is subjective. According to the wildfolk, Abitha has performed an extremely moral and utilitarian act.
Finally, I can’t complete this analysis without mentioning the Pequot, whose stories inform Slewfoot’s identity and origins. While the book incorporates Indigenous traditions, the Pequot characters are throwaway plot devices. Wallace uses them as pawns to vandalize Abitha’s farm, getting a man killed in the process. In turn, Abitha uses the man’s corpse to warn others away from her homestead. There was so much potential to better incorporate conflicts between European settlers and Indigenous people, especially given the story’s focus on the violence of forced assimilation. The narrative is engaging, but this carelessness cannot be overstated.