This Book will Prove the Following Ten Facts:
	Diana Wynne Jones and the World-Shaping Power of Language

===		Introductory Comments

Diana Wynne Jones writes fantasy novels for children and young adults
which are strongly concerned with the power of language.  In her
books, characters who write or tell stories have immense power over
their own lives and the lives of others.  Sometimes the characters'
stories literally shape the world in which they live.  Using the
techniques of metatexts and metafiction -- texts about texts, fiction
about fiction -- Jones emphasizes the controlling power of language in
her created worlds.  

A Jones character begins a novel as a weak individual, whose life
is controlled by often dangerous authority figures.  The
character will be under the domination of government, teachers,
and powerful magicians.  More importantly, the character will be
a child or young adult in a world designed for grown-ups.  The
power to teach, rule, or be an adult is out of the hero's reach,
but nobody can prevent the character from telling stories.
Through storytelling, the hero will gain a strength previously
reserved for adults and authority figures.

Power comes from many different manipulations of language in Jones'
novels.  In some cases, characters control others by clarifying
ambiguous language.  Those who can speak precisely have greater
strength than others who may have more overt power but less ability to
communicate.  Any character who tells stories has the potential to
effect the story told.  Any character who listens to stories has the
potential to be shaped by the stories she hears.  Additionally, all
characters are controlled completely by the author's writing, which
shapes them in all ways.  The writer controls the reader with
manipulative framing stories which create ideas of reality.  

All Diana Wynne Jones novels [Footnote: and non-fiction pieces] are
concerned with these issues of power and storytelling.  I will
explore these ideas as they are presented in three of her books:
Witch Week, Archer's Goon, and Howl's Moving Castle.  These books
represent a reasonable cross-section of her work, depicting male
and female characters of varying ages.  All three are humorous,
though Archer's Goon is more serious than the other two.  Most
importantly, all three use a variety of the metatextual
techniques described above.

I will present a brief introduction to the plot of each of the
three novels.  All Diana Wynne Jones books have convoluted plot
twists, so these summaries are necessary for a reader unfamiliar
with the books.  Following the summaries, I will introduce
various metafictive techniques by which Jones manipulates power
roles in the three novels.  

===		Summaries of the three books

+++ Witch Week

Witch Week is a book for middle readers, and has both male and
female protagonists. [Footnote: I will argue later in this work
that the true hero of the novel is the main female character, but
this is not clear until late in the book.]  The story takes place
in a co-educational school for difficult children, in a land that
seems nearly identical to modern England.  Only the existence of
witches marks this England as different from the real one.  In
this land, it is illegal to be born a witch, and the punishment
for those discovered is to be burned.  Witch Week opens in class
6B in Larwood House, "a boarding school run by the government for
witch orphans and children with other problems" (Witch Week, 2).  (The term
"witch orphan" is introduced in the text without explanation.)
An anonymous note has appeared on the teacher's desk declaring
that someone in the class is a witch.  Through multiple
third-person limited narratives, we see the students in 6B try to
discover the witch, or wonder if they themselves are witches.
The viewpoints are primarily those of the two most unpopular
students in the class, Charles Morgan and Nan Pilgrim.  To a
lesser extent the story focuses on several other characters:
Brian the talented and unpopular teacher's son; Nirupam the
overgrown foreigner; Dan the jock; Theresa and Simon, the
bullying teacher's pets; and Estelle, who seems like a popular
girl but is revealed to be sympathetic to witches and a good
friend to Nan.  

As in nearly all Jones books, the mass of the book is absurd,
constant, chaotic action.  Several of the characters discover
they are witches.  Charles calls all the shoes in the school to
him in an attempt to find his own (hidden by Dan's witchcraft),
and casts a spell on Simon to make everything Simon says come
true.  Brian makes birds appear to rescue him from having to sing
a solo.  Nirupam turns Charles' hidden running shoes into a
chocolate cake and feeds it to Dan.  Nan, suspected by the entire
class of being a witch, does no magic until it's time to flee the
school on suspicion of witchcraft.  When Brian runs away, casting
suspicion on a witch, the school calls in an Inquisitor.  All the
students who suspect they are witches must flee, but Charles and
Brian so dislike everyone else that it seems the suspected
children will be unable to work together.  Jones' recurring
character Chrestomanci, who regulates magic in a series of
related universes, arrives to help, but it is the students in 6B
themselves who put the world back together.  Their world merge
with ours, and the students lose their witchcraft.

+++ Archer's Goon

Archer's Goon tells the story of Howard Sykes and his sister
Awful, au pair Fifi, and parents Quentin and Catriona.  Howard
comes home one day to find a Goon in his house.  The Goon has
come to get 2000 words which he claims Quentin owes to the Goon's
employer, Archer.  Quentin has been sending 2000 words to his
friend Mountjoy for 13 years; he claims it was part of a joke to
conquer writer's block.  When a set of words goes astray, strange
things begin to happen to the family.  Musical instruments speak,
the television proclaims "ARCHER IS WATCHING YOU", and workmen
dig a moat around the house.  Howard and Awful (with the Goon's
help) discover that the Sykes family is being terrorized by a
family which claims to "farm" different elements of the town:
power, sewage, crime, and so on.  The family claim they've been
trapped in the town for thirteen years, and that one of the
siblings is trapping the others using Quentin's words.  Each
member of the family insists that Quentin write them a set of
words so they can discover what's going on, and escape to rule
the world.  Quentin stubbornly refuses.  

Howard and Awful ferret out each member of the family but the two
youngest, Erskine and Venturus.  Each of the siblings they find
-- Archer, Dillian, Shine, Torquil, and Hathaway -- bullies and
manipulates the children in an attempt to get the words.  Though
all of them misuse their power, some are less sympathetic than
others.  Finally the Goon, who by now the children think of as a
friend, reveals that he is Erskine.  He imprisons the children in
a sewage plant.  Confused and angry, they manage to escape.
Howard deduces where he might find Venturus, but when he arrives
in Venturus' home, he discovers that he himself is Venturus; the
Sykes' had adopted him.  He has been responsible for his siblings
inability to leave town.  With the help both of his families,
Howard manages to trick the worst of his birth family (Archer,
Dillian, and Shine, who want to rule the world) onto a spaceship,
which he then sends into permanent orbit.


+++ Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle tells the story of Sophie Hatter, who lives
in a magical land in which "seven-league boots and cloaks of
invisibility really exist" (Howl's, 1).  She's the eldest of three,
and in this land where fairy tale conventions are real life, Sophie
knows that the eldest of three is always doomed to be a failure.  When
her father dies, Sophie's not-at-all-evil stepmother Fanny determines
that the family has become poor, and that the girls must be removed
from school and apprenticed: her own daughter Martha to a witch,
middle daughter Lettie to Cesari's Bakery, and Sophie in the family
hat shop.  Sophie becomes shy and dull in the hat shop, and talks to
the hats for lack of any human companionship.  She tells the hats that
they are lovely or clever or will marry well.  Somehow the owners of
the hats take on the characteristics Sophie had given to the hats.
The wicked Witch of the Waste appears one day and bespells Sophie into
an old woman as punishment competing with the business of a real
witch.  Old Sophie toddles off to seek her fortune, and enters the
castle of Wizard Howl, who is said to eat the hearts of young girls.
She gladly uses her age as an excuse to be crotchety, and she bullies
Howl, his apprentice Michael, and his fire demon Calcifer into
accepting her.  Sophie eventually helps Howl defeat the Witch of the
Waste, but only after her thoughtlessness has nearly gotten them all
killed.  She then rescues Howl and Calcifer from their contract, in
which Calcifer has served Howl magically in return for Howl's heart,
which gives life to the demon.  Sophie frees Calcifer and returns
Howl's heart, literally pushing it into his chest.  Howl, now
stronger, destroys the Witch of the Waste.  Sophie becomes young
again, and Howl and Sophie reveal their love for one another.  



===		Critical Analysis of the Books
"'Good heavens, woman!  I don't want to know what the Structuralists
think!'" (Archer's Goon)

+++  The creation of weakness

As the stories open, the protagonists of these novels are 
specifically portrayed as vulnerable.  In some ways, this
weakness comes from conventional narrative elements: position in
family or society, for example.  Additionally, the characters are
weakened by language and story.  The way others use language forces
the characters into specific roles.

In Witch Week, most of the sympathetic characters are powerless
and vulnerable at the story's opening.  To begin with, all but
one of the eventual heroes are unpopular with both students and
teachers.  The only popular student among the heroes, Estelle,
has a mother in jail for helping witches to escape.  Nan is fat,
weak, and is descended from and named for the hated Archwitch,
Dulcinea Wilkes.  Charles has glasses, and knows he is so
unpleasant that his family chose to send him away.  Brian is a
teacher's kid, with all the torture that entails, and is small,
poor, and a class clown.  Nirupam is an oversized foreigner from
a country colonized by England, his brother killed as a witch,
and his mother killed for the crime of trying to help her son.
Except for Charles, all these children are motherless.  Nirupam
and Brian have fathers, but these fathers are powerless in the
face of a terrifying government which kills parents.  

The characters in Witch Week are students in a school where the
adults have random power and act without thinking.  The school
story, in theory,  "provides a separate world where [the
students'] own interests and interactions can be carried on with
little adult interference" (Mitchell: 95).  [Footnote: Mitchell
is speaking of the girls' school story in particular, though as
an outgrowth of the boys' school story.]  Unfortunately, the
popular students at Larwood House, the students with the power to
act freely, are the enemies of our heroes.  The primary
characters are unliked even by one another, and don't work
together to create the jolly gang of the school story.  The honor
students torture the unpopular -- Nan, Charles, Nirupam and Brian
-- with impunity.  The adults only intervene to punish the
unpopular students for the deeds of the popular, or to bring
random unpleasantness upon them.  

The reader's first introduction to the characters is through
their journal entries.  

  "The journals were to help the children with their problems.  They
  were supposed to be strictly private.  Every day, for half an hour,
  every pupil had to confide his or her private thoughts to their
  journal, and nothing else was done until everyone had."

Later, the book explicitly reveals what the phrase "supposed to be
strictly private" implies, and what the students have known from
the beginning: the journals are not private at all.  When
Headmistress Miss Cadwallader is belittling the students to
Chrestomanci, she reveals in a matter-of-fact fashion that she
knows Nan is a bad girl because of how "she questions everything"
(Witch Week, 189) in her journal.  One of the truths questioned
by Nan is the privacy of the journals.  The hypocrisy revealed
again shows how weak the students are; the authority figures in
their world don't even follow a consistent set of rules.  Dan's
journal entry describes what the entries have done to all of the
characters:

  "Well I mean it's not much good if you've got to write your
  secret fealings [sic], what I mean is it tales all the joy out
  of it and you don't know what to write.  It means they aren't
  secret if you see what I mean." (Witch Week, 3)

The journal entries expose the characters to the prying eyes of Miss
Cadwallader.

Not all adults in Witch Week are controlling and unfair.  When
Chrestomanci, whose "job is controlling witchcraft" (Witch Week, 192)
appears, he does not weaken the children further by controlling
*their* magic.  He makes the children take responsibility for their
own actions, telling them (as Howl tells Sophie in Howl's Moving
Castle) that they've never stopped to think.  By the time Chrestomanci
tells the children that they are thoughtless and selfish, the reader
may well have come to the same conclusion.  The heroes have been
stirring up chaos and wreaking havoc with every careless action.
There'd have been no danger if the students had obeyed the rules of
their world, unfair as they are.  Mr. Wentworth tells Charles that
he's never before had so much trouble new witches not to give
themselves away.  Despite the infantile and dangerous behaviour of the
students, Chrestomanci does not take away from them the responsibility
to fix their own problems.  Once he has made the heroes realize their
own thoughtlessness, he does nothing more than ask provoking questions
and buy them time.  He doesn't control their actions or fix their
world, though he may be powerful enough to do so.  He asks the
children to make up their own minds, and fix their own world -- and
they do.  Chrestomanci plays the role of an exasperated author, come
to knock some sense into characters that aren't behaving as they
should.  He asks them what stories they should be telling, but leaves
them with the authority and responsibility to tell the right stories
themselves.  He takes the right to be weak away from them.

In Archer's Goon, Howard Sykes is similarly powerless at his story's
opening.  His parents, who ought to be protecting Howard and his
sister Awful, are powerless against the random power of "the
seven people who really run [the] town" **.  The seven wizards of
Archer's family rip up the street, take over the television, and
close bank accounts.  Even more frightening, they do this in the
guise of town government, which theoretically ought also to be a
protector.  Though it's dreadful to think that government might
abuse its power to benefit strong individuals, Catriona has come
to expect this unfairness, when she asks if Archer is "a town
councillor" **.

At first the danger and weakness of Howard's position is
emphasized when the Goon moves into his house.  The people who
ought to protect him -- his parents -- are unable even to protect
their own home from the Goon.  He follow Howard everywhere, and
allows him no privacy.  After the Goon becomes Howard's friend,
his menace doesn't work to benefit Howard as it had previously
hurt him.  The Goon cannot accompany Howard into the homes of his
siblings; his menace only hurts Howard but can't help him in any
major way.  Later, the Goon violates the relative security of
Howard's feelings.  The Goon, becoming Erskine, turns on  Howard,
and Howard believes himself betrayed.

Howard can't afford to allow himself weakness, however, despite
all the danger in his path.  He is the protector of his sister
Awful.  In an extremely convoluted plot twist, Howard learns that
the events of the novel have happened once before, and that time
is now repeating itself.  The only difference between this time
and the first is that Awful hadn't been born in the first cycle.
The need to protect Awful is what gives Howard the strength to
help his family, and the strength of character not to abuse his
own power.  Without Awful, he was much weaker, at least in
morals.

Unlike Howard, who always finds some strength to act, Sophie of
Howl's Moving Castle believes herself to be completely powerless.
She begins the novel poor and an orphan.  Though those factors
work against her enough, Sophie additionally believes that she is
doomed to fail as the eldest of three.  She is so convinced that
her position is cursed that she makes no effort to protect
herself.  Weakly and meekly, Sophie does as she's told.

When Sophie does find strength, she is weakened in other external
ways: the Witch of the Waste has cursed Sophie with age.  Though
Sophie know has the strength of personality necessary to follow
her own desires, she lacks strength of body.  She stops
traveling at Howl's castle as much from exhaustion and physical
pain as from curiosity.

Sophie never allows herself to take on a position of unalloyed
strength.  Nan has Chrestomanci to shame her, and Howard has
Awful who needs him.  Sophie, however, is so convinced of her own
weakness that Howl must nearly die before she is willing to admit
that she is powerful.

Jones's autobiography in Something About the Author reads very much
like one her novels: an introduction to powerless children in a mad
adults' world.  She writes about crazed adults who control a world filled
with bewildered powerless children.  She begins the
autobiographical sketch explicitly detailing the relation between
chaos and writing: "I think I write the kind of books I do
because the world suddenly went mad when I five years old".

Though the world went mad for much of Europe in 1939, Jones' perceived
madness was represented by all-powerful adults manipulating her life
in incomprehensible ways.   Jones and her sisters Ursula and Isobel
were evacuated twice, each time to a strange place full of insane
rules.  When describing her time evacuated in Westmoreland, Jones
dwells on her constant confusion with the adult world. Even adults who
ought to be sympathetic with childhood confusion were appalling; Jones
encountered both Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter in the country, and
both "hated children".  Potter hit two of the evacuees who swung on
her gate.  Jones insists: "Fate, I always think, seemed determined to
thrust a very odd view of authorship on me"; fate also seems to have
thrust a very odd view of adulthood onto her.

After her parents opened a rural conference centre for young adults,
they became not only incomprehensible, but absent.  The house was
dedicated to the success of the centre, so the girls were put into a
damp converted shack, with a poured concrete floor, and left alone.
The three children lived unsupervised in this shack with no washroom
and a paraffin stove.  Jones and baby Ursula contracted juvenile
rheumatism from the damp.  Their parents had no time for them, and
only recalled that the girls existed under duress.  Her mother skimped
on clothing for the girls but always had proper clothing herself.  The
girls often weren't fed, and were punished for scrounging food.
Illnesses were presumed imaginary, and Jones was sent to school with
"chicken pox, scarlet fever, German measles and, for half a year, with
appendicitis".  Her attempts to be reasonable backfired.  Her tendency
to "spot flaws in any argument" and her "odd theory that you ought to
be truthful about your feelings" sent her mother into rages.  She was
not allowed to tell her own stories.

Jones' mad childhood is more important to her autobiographical sketch
than her still very odd adulthood.  Once she is away from her
parents, either married or at Oxford, the sketch diminishes to an
amusing recitation of dates and facts.  Her childhood obsession with
mad adults and crazed, powerless situations is told far more vividly
than any part of her life over which she had control.  Once Jones has
control over her own situation, she doesn't write about it.  When she
does write about things from her adulthood, they are things over which
she has had no control. 

Young Diana is also weakened by misunderstandings and ambiguous
language.  Jones and her sister were evacuated to their
grandparents in Wales, where all the adults "would switch
abruptly to Welsh when then wanted to say important things to one
another".  When poor Jones tries to clarify language ambiguities
-- explaining to her mother that her sister Isobel was only
calling Aunt Muriel "Mummy" because Aunt Muriel had insisted --
her mother was so appalled that Jones claims "my relationship
with my mother never recovered from this".

The madness of the world, Jones writes, explains her confusions of
language:

  Considering this madness, it is not surprising that, at the latest
  of many private schools we went to that year, when the forbidding
  teacher announced, "All those children for elocution stand up and go
  into the hall," I mistook and thought the word was execution. I
  trembled, and was astonished when they all came back unharmed. 

In a world gone mad, it is logical that words are incomprehensible.
Both Germans and Germs were terrifying; should she really be expected
to distinguish between them?

+++  The danger of ambiguous language
"If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true
any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever."  (Cart and
Cwidder)

The weakness of Jones' characters is often grounded in ambiguous
language, in failure to understand or to express themselves.
Like Jones who can't see the difference between Germans and
Germs, a hero who doesn't understand the stories she hears will
be unable to act appropriately.  Like Jones, who can't explain to
her mother why Aunt Muriel is called "Mummy", a hero who can't
communicate will always fail.  Sophie, therefore, must learn to
understand before she becomes strong, and when Nan asks vaguely
for "the clothes [she] most wants" *** she ends up in a tattered
pink ball gown.

Ambiguous language works towards the characters' strength as
well.  Awful can manipulate people through artfully misused
words.  Additionally, the characters in all the novels have the
potential to cause great harm through miscommunication.  As their
powers are rooted in language, vague language is a great danger.
In this way, Jones' plots follow the patterns of post-modern
theory, which concentrates on the power and danger of fluid
meaning.

Deconstructive criticism focuses on the fluidity of language.
All language contains within itself meanings which oppose the
presumed meaning, and which ask questions about the
presuppositions of the text.  When looked at in this light, a
text does not have a true meaning that can be puzzled out if only
one asks the right questions.  A deconstructive reading "focuses
on the act of reading rather than on the objective meaning of a
text" (Johnson: 13).  This is not to say that there cannot be
valuable readings which one can work toward; the reader must
simply recall "that the reasons a reading might consider itself
*right* are motivated and undercut by its own interests,
blindnesses, desires, and fatigue" (Johnson: 13).  A
deconstructive reading often undercuts the workings of a genre as
well as a specific text.  For example, it is a fantasy convention
that signifiers as inseparable from the essence of the signified
(Stephens: 266-268) -- that is, that names are tied in some
intrinsic fashion to the things named.  A deconstructive reading
doesn't allow for this static, untouchable meaning.

In both Witch Week and Archer's Goon, characters who forget that
readings can be undercut are weakened.  When a character uses
ambiguous language, the outcome will probably not be what he
expects.  Witch Week presents two kinds of storytellers: the
precise and successful; and the vague and weak.  There are no
deconstructive readers as such in Witch Week, though the laws of
magic certainly favor those who are more careful with language.
In Archer's Goon, on the other hand, every reader must be a
deconstructive reader.

Witch Week's Charles revels in misunderstanding and poor word choice.
He wants to hide his secret thoughts from the readers of his journal.
Rather than simply tell no stories at all, Charles invents a code.
His code is meaningless to a reader who doesn't have the key, and
Charles gives nobody the key.  Instead, he uses the communicative
power of writing to tell a story only he will understand.  The reader
understands, but only because the narrator, with more power than poor
Charles, has revealed his secret.

Charles begins every journal entry with "*I got up*", which means "I
hate this school" (Witch Week, 5).  When he has a particularly bad day
the next day, he writes "*I got up, I got up, I GOT UP*" which creates
potential confusion as it seems "as if he had sprung eagerly out of
bed" (Witch Week, 44).  The confusion gets worse the next day, which
he enjoys: he can write neither "*I got up*" nor "*I didn't get up*
because that made no sense" (Witch Week, 117).  His journal language
assumes unpleasantness.  He has code words for people, but only for
"all the ... people he hated" (Witch Week, 5).  His word for something
he likes is *woodwork*, a class offered to 6B only once a week, which
is the most often Charles can expect to enjoy anything (Witch Week,
6).  Charles' vocabulary is that of a boy who hates everything, and
who doesn't want to be understood.

The desire to be uncommunicative that Charles reveals in his journal
has shaped his life.  Charles' most common facial expression is "that
intent way of his which most people found blank and nasty" (Witch
Week, 7).  That look worries Charles' parents, who think that he may
be corrupting his brother.  They send him to Larwood House when his
brother imitates Charles' facial expressions.   Charles knows that he
is misunderstood by people who have power of him.  He does not try to
make his parents -- or the readers of his journal -- understand who he
really is.  Instead, he intentionally miscommunicates, and portrays
himself as the confusing, unpleasant boy everyone thinks him to be.
Though the words he chooses for his code reveal information about his
character, they are also is why Charles is "best at making his journal
entry boring" (Witch Week, 4).  Charles can only write about the
predictable.  When new things happen, he lacks the code to describe
them (Witch Week, 117).  His journal language has been overspecialized
to deal with expressing misery.  Similarly, he has specialized in one
facial expression -- a "blank double-barreled glare" (Witch Week, 15)
of hatred -- which is all he can show even when attempting "a look of
sympathy"**.  His desire to be misunderstood backfires, since he
miscommunicates his magical desires as well.

Charles lacks the power to tell stories, to convey information
accurately, and thus to make magic.  Though his magic is "way up in
the enchanter class" (Witch Week, 216), his inability to tell stories
makes his spells behave unpredictably.  The only way Charles can think
of summoning shoes is by saying "'Shoes ... Shoes.  Come to my.  Hey
Presto.  Abracadabra.  Shoes, I say! ...  Shoes!'" (Witch Week, 85).
It's no wonder, with such imprecise language combined with great power,
that Charles gets every shoe in the school.  His imprecise language
fails him again with his Simon Says spell, for though the spell is
"fearsomely strong" (Witch Week, 216), it does not have at all the
effects for which he hopes: it makes everyone pity Simon.  Charles
also doesn't know when he must speak, and he sits silently while Nan
takes the blame for his shoes spell.

Brian, like Charles, fails at describing things well.  It's Brian
who's written the original note, and who writes a second note
describing his own kidnapping.  These two notes plunge Larwood House
into the ever increasing circles of chaos that prevent Brian's
successful escape.  His ability to tell the right story is inhibited
by his conflicting desires: he wants to make a clean getaway, and he
is "so anxious to be noticed that he didn't care if he was burned"
(Witch Week, 216).  Even Charles, himself so unable to communicate,
tells Brian how mismanaged his words are: "If you didn't want us, you
shouldn't have written all that rubbish about a witch putting a spell
on you" (Witch Week, 216).  Of course, Brian only wrote the note
because Charles gave him the idea, communicating badly yet again.  His
stories aren't quite lies -- someone in 6B *is* a witch, and a witch
did make off with Brian, in a manner of speaking -- but they are
mistold, and have the effect of lies.

Nan, on the other hand, is a master of "describing".  With great care,
she details real or imaginary situations aloud or in her journal.
When she eats at high table with Charles and Nirupam, she finds
herself describing food in a disgusting manner.  Nan's descriptions of
the food are vile: "chewing gum ... jointed worms ... worms in custard
...  sour armpits, combined with -- yes -- just a touch of old drains
...  small creatures that have been killed and cleverly skinned"
(Witch Week, 26-29).  [Footnote: Four years after writing Witch Week,
Jones published a poem with a remarkably similar tone, in which a
student is convinced she is eating "hair in Tuesday's gravy ... brains
in cheese ... three joints of bone" ("A Slice of Life" in Gaiman and
Jones, _Now We Are Sick_).  Jones seems to have the skill she gave to
Nan, of describing school lunches with utter grotesquerie.]  She does
not describe the food as it truly is, but as she sees it.  Her
descriptions are so vivid that Charles and Nirupam, against their
wills, share in her vision.  Nan has "the gift of tongues! ... [Or]
the gift of foul-mouth" (Witch Week, 28).  Like Jones, Nan is a
storyteller, who cannot help but force others to see the world as she
does.  In doing so, she shapes what is true.  Her point of view
becomes true, after a fashion.

Nan occasionally takes over the author's job, and explains backstory
to the reader.  Her attempt to be boring in her first journal entry is
nonetheless informative, since she explains the origin of Mr.
Crossley's nickname (Witch Week, 4), which the reader would not other
have known.  In her second journal entry, she describes the social
roles of each student in 6B, making explicit relationships which have
only recently been made clear to readers (Witch Week, 43).  In each
case she doesn't write down the opinions and interpretation which are
the sign of her classmates' entries.  Instead she clearly and
explicitly describes a situation as she sees it, in a relatively
objective fashion.  Villainous Miss Cadwallader hates Nan's power of
description, calling them "free-spoken and disaffected" (Witch Week,
189).  Powerful truth-telling threatens Miss Cadwallader's
hypocritical world.

Powerful storytelling is the dreaded enemy to the villains in Archer's
Goon.  Like Miss Cadwallader, they fear stories that can reshape
their reality.  In Archer's Goon, though, storytelling threatens
everyone, because language is always ambiguous.  Though individual
characters try to clarify meaning and make it static, language is too
fluid to allow for much success.

Archer's Goon presents this fluid language from the opening page.  The
author's note emphasizes that language will need more than a first
reading to be fully comprehended.  Language, meaning, authority, and
understood literary conventions are set up to be fluid constructs, and
all before Chapter One begins.  The author's note sets up the "quality
of twisted familiarity" (Rahn, 159) that pervades Archer's Goon, the
sense that although ideas and phrases seem familiar, the reader can
take nothing for granted.

The characters take this slightly twisted language usage for granted.
When Howard enters the story, Fifi nervously tells him "we seem to
have somebody's Goon" (Archer's Goon, 1).  Though Fifi, Howard and
Awful can all be shocked or confused -- they are confused by mention
of the unknown Archer, they're frightened when the Goon throws his
knife at Awful -- they have no problem naming the Goon.  They see him,
they know he's the Goon, he is named, and the name is accepted by all
three.  The Family's concept of "farming" is passed without comment by
all of the characters, as though this is a concept they understand, as
soon as a word is assigned.  When the Goon explains that "Archer farms
power", Quentin's only response is "I know" (Archer's Goon, 11).  Only
Catriona is confused by the word "farms", and she wonders if it means
that Archer is a town councillor (Archer's Goon, 12).  [Footnote: In
the BBC adaptation of Archer's Goon, which mostly holds very closely
to the language of the book, Howard has to explain to Awful what the
Goon means by "farms".  Nobody explains it to Howard, however.  His
knowledge appears to be one of those things that older children simply
acquire.]

Yet language confusions are possible.  When the Goon explains that
"Archer wants his two thousand" (Archer's Goon, 5), the appalled
children assume he means two thousand pounds, not two thousand words,
because 'pounds' would be a more conventional word to place there.
Awful does recognize the weakness in trusting conventional language
structures.  When Quentin rhetorically asks "What does it matter to
Awful that I'm a famous writer and my name is a household word?",
Awful responds, "So is 'drains' a household word" (Archer's Goon, 16).
Awful recognizes the absurdity of the saying that something is a
household word.  The frequency of a word's use adds nothing to its
importance or even to its meaning.  Quentin casually uses language
conventionally, but  Awful reminds him of the fluidity of meaning; he
must be more careful in order to be understood.  Despite Awful's
understanding, she still has the potential to be confused by the Goon.
Fluid language is dangerous and unknowable; only the person who is
controlling the language can really control who receives meaning, and
even then it is difficult.

Initially the Sykes family is careful to avoid the misunderstandings,
since they are clearly used to fluid meanings.  Tea can mean a meal
served at tea time, the leaves of tea, the beverage tea, a cup of tea,
or any of these substances mixed with others, such as (one hopes)
milk.  One of Awful's greatest joys is playing with these multiple
meanings by "making curried tea" (Archer's Goon, 16).  Quentin knows
that when he requests a cup of tea from Awful, he must specify "with
boiling water and two tea bags and only mil in the cup  Curry,
mustard, pepper and vinegar are strictly forbidden" (Archer's Goon,
16). Because of Awful's perversity, Fifi knows to specify "tea in a
cup, I mean, and a sandwich to hold in your hand" (Archer's Goon, 4)
when she offers tea to the Goon.  She knows that the Goon, who appears
daft, may not understand the overloaded meanings of the word "tea".
Awful herself has an overloaded name: "Her real name was Anthea, but
she had been Awful from the moment she was born and first opened her
mouth" (Archer's Goon, 3).  Note that this is an overloaded use of
"awful" as simultaneously a name and an adjective.  Words can have
multiple meanings.  In fact, in this case, the sentence is only
meaningful because the word has multiple meanings.  This sentence is
shorthand for "She has been awful from the moment she was born, and so
they nicknamed her Awful".

Names in Archer's Goon try to carry the same weight as names do in
Witch Week, but constantly fail to be accurate signifiers.  The Goon
is never spoken of as a man, or a person, or as anything other than
"Goon".  Fifi refers to the Goon as "somebody's Goon" (Archer's Goon,
1), and the name sticks.  Later, when asked what his named is, the
Goon responds, "Goon will do" (Archer's Goon, 12).  His name follows
naturally (to the Sykes family) from his personality, and they have no
problem assigning him a label.  They seem to have chosen well, for the
Goon accepts the label happily.  Later, when Quentin refers to him as
a "hired assassin" the Goon protests that label, as he has "Not killed
anyone yet" (Archer's Goon, 10).   Yet the title of Goon is also
inaccurate.  The Goon is really Erskine, much smarter than he looks
and a protector, not a hired attacker.  The other descriptive names
also fall apart by the book's end.  Awful uses her contrived awfulness
in protection of her family, and may well grow up to be lovely.
Venturus (Latin for "going to come") seems at first to be well named,
as Venturus will arrive in the future.  But Venturus will never come.
Howard will remain, and will not permit the arrival of the Venturus
persona, or of the eponymous spaceship (Archer's Goon, 232).  Even the
title of the book is revealed as untrue, for the Goon is not Archer's.
He is Erskine, and belongs to himself.  At first correct naming is
very important to Howard: "And the little girls called names.  It was
being called names that had put Howard in a bad mood" (Archer's Goon,
2).  Even at the book's end, Howard still assigns to names the power
of signifiers.  When he decides he has to grow up well, he tells
himself that "he would have to bring himself up not to be Venturus"
(Archer's Goon, 241).

Howard has learned the danger of assigning the wrong names to
things.  Like Jones herself, who was removed forcibly from Wales
when she called the wrong person "Mummy", Howard now knows the
danger of assigning the wrong names to people.

Unlike Charles, Nan, and Howard, Howl's Moving Castle's Sophie,
never has to worry about the danger of fluid language.
Ambiguity can't happen in Sophie's world; what Sophie says
becomes true.  Sophie does need to be careful that she thinks
about the consequences of her words of power: when the Count of
Catterack makes his dueling opponent sneeze, he is shamed; when
Sophie's stick hits a fire demon, it catches fire.  But though
the consequences of her actions might be unexpected, the actions
themselves, as the result of her words, are predictable.  The
words Sophie uses make magic happen, without ambiguity.

+++ The power of words: speech, writing, names, and storytelling

Conventionally, in fantasy, language is the very stuff of magic.
Spells are built from magic words.  From ancient tales of the Fair
Folk to Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books, storytellers have told us that
to know the true name of something is to control it.  Though Jones'
characters dabble in truly magical language, most of their power
originates in a far more casual speech.  Magic comes from idiomatic
English, not from arcane words of power.  A good enough storyteller,
it seems, can make magic happen without access to any secret words.
Language alone is a powerful device, and needs no extra baggage.

Witch Week begins in the first sentence with the note that
precipitates the trouble: "The note said: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A
WITCH" (Witch Week, 1).  The next sentence stresses the ordinariness
of the note itself, for "It was written in capital letters in ordinary
blue ballpoint" (Witch Week, 1).  That simple, ordinary note, passed
to teacher Mr. Crossley, is powerful enough to throw the entire class
into disarray, endanger the lives of several students, and eventually
reshape the world.  At the very beginning of the book, then, Witch
Week introduces the power of the ordinary written word.  The note is
written in "ordinary blue ballpoint", not in blood from a feather
quill, or something equally portentous.  Nonetheless, the words in
the note touch off every event of the book.

Like the note, ordinary journal entries are powerful.  The journals
are the first introduction the reader has to the students.  Of course,
some students are worse storytellers than others, and their journal
entries may reveal the wrong information.  Additionally, individual
readers can choose to misread intentionally.  Miss Cadwallader uses
the journal to misread the students, so that later, as a bad
storyteller, she can tell Chrestomanci incomplete capsule descriptions
of the students.  A more attentive reader can use the journals to
understand character.  The journals reveal Nan and Nirupam as they
explicitly refuse to write their secret thoughts, Brian Wentworth as
he rambles on in his own private world, and Charles Morgan's bitter
code.  Moreover, they reveal that Theresa has "round, angelic writing"
(which, like the ordinariness of the blue ballpoint used for the note,
is deceptive) and that Nan has "scrawling", that Nirupam writes
"musingly" but that Dan "chew[s] his pen a great deal" and can't spell
(Witch Week, 3-4).

As word choice reveals secrets about the characters, it also reveals
the truth about the world.  Though the characters don't explicitly
state what is different about this world until the nearly the end of
the book, the words they use as they think and talk reveal the few
facts about this society that that residents of modern England aren't
presumed to know, the few things which are different from our own
world.  Mr. Crossley knows that "words like *witch* were not the kind
of words one used in front of a lady" (Witch Week, 9), and Miss Hodge
is "genuinely shocked by ...  coarse language" (Witch Week, 11) when
Mr. Wentworth jokes that the sixth graders might be "all riding around
on broomsticks" (Witch Week, 11).  "Magicking" is the most curse word
used most often in class 6B.  The language has replaced the sexually
oriented curse words of our world with curse words based on
witchcraft, emphasizing its tabooed nature. 

Though the real power of language is not in everyday talk, names in
Witch Week do carry some of the mystical weight that they do in
folklore.  Unlike in Archer's Goon, where names are failed signifiers,
names in Witch Week tell more accurate information.  Nan's real name
is Dulcinea, after the seventeenth century Archwitch, from whom she is
descended.  As the Archwitch led a failed rebellion against the
government, being called Dulcinea is "as bad as being called Guy
Fawkes" (Witch Week, 23).  Other students learn her name -- and her
witchy potential -- when Miss Cadwallader posts it on a notice board.
Nan suspects that Miss Cadwallader "stick[s] a pin in the register"
(Witch Week, 24) to choose her.  By sticking a pin in Nan's name, Miss
Cadwallader has revealed that she is a witch.  In our world's history,
sticking a pin into a suspected witch (to see if she didn't bleed) was
an acceptable evidence of witchcraft.  Nan's name, then, has acted as
a substitute for her person.  Despite her hatred of her name, Nan is
proud of what it describes about her.  She finds herself admitting her
ancestry both to Mr. Wentworth and to Chrestomanci, the second time
"with great pride" (Witch Week, 177).  Nan's name describes her as
someone more than a fat, unpopular girl, but rather as someone with
the potential to be powerful.  Nan is not the only character whose
name can control her future.  When Chrestomanci places his finger on
the name of the teacher Miss Hodge in a future class schedule (as Miss
Cadwallader placed a pin in Nan's name on a register), Miss Hodge is
sent to that written future.  Charles' "Simon Says" spell, which makes
everything Simon says come true, is chosen because of the game "Simon
Says".  "Chrestomanci" comes from the Greek for "divination by means
of being valiant, useful, or trustworthy".  The man who bears that
titles can be called to utility or trustworthiness merely by the
recitation of his name.  He then takes the pseudonym "Chant", taking
as a name a word meaning a form of speech between recitation and song.
[Footnote: In other Jones novels, this Chrestomanci's name is Cat
Chant, and he can be controlled, as Nan and Miss Hodge can be, through
his written signature (which is of his title, Chrestomanci, not his
name, Chant).] Even a building can carry a weighty name: "the Old Gate
House", so named because it was once part of the gate in the old town
wall, turns out to contain a gate into the sister universe.  As Nan
knows how to describe things, so does Jones, giving names that are
part of description, and not mere labels.

With all this power of words, only Nan the storyteller can control the
power and use it well.  She learns the power of names (such as Guy
Fawkes) of speech, and of writing.  After Nan has decided to be a
witch, she feels no need to describe anything, so she writes nothing
at all in her journal (Witch Week, 117).  Nan's only power previously
has been that of a describer.  If she gains the power of witchcraft,
she should no longer need the writer's power of describing.  Yet it is
primarily Nan's descriptive ability, not anyone's magic, which
eventually restore the world to its proper place.  By telling a story
to class 6B, Nan convinces them to use their magic to influence Simon.
Charles, with his "enchanter class" (Witch Week, 216) magic, doesn't
do anything to help until "thanks to Nan, he knew just what to do"
(Witch Week, 236).  Once someone listens to her story, Nan controls
the future.

Nan, the real heroine of Witch Week, barely has any overt witchcraft,
and yet ultimately, she is the true shaper of reality.  By describing
the way she want things to be or the way she sees things -- by being a
true storyteller -- Nan influences the way the more powerful witches
shape the world.  She tells stories to the broom, to Chrestomanci, to
her lunch companions, to her classmates.  Charles tells his malformed
stories in solitude in the auditorium, or the dorm, or in code.  His
stories, not told to others can, never succeed.  Simon, like Nan,
shapes reality by describing to others.  Unlike Nan, however, Simon
doesn't control his power.  Simon's power is Charles' to grant,
Nirupam's to mold, and Nan's to put to good use.  He never understands
it, and never attempts to control it by telling his own story.  

Nan does control her own stories.  In doing so, she creates a new
world, in which she is the only powerful person.  All the witches in
the new world (including Nan) have lost their magic, but Nan had the
more powerful ability in the first place: the power to tell stories.
Charles' magic, so much stronger than Nan's, is gone in this new world
of Nan's creation.  Even when he had magic, though, it was nearly
irrelevant, since Charles didn't know how to tell his magic what to
do.  Nan, on the other hand, has taken a position of weakness and
turned it into ultimate strength merely by knowing what to say.  In
her new world, all the congenitally unpleasant people are at The Gate
House School for Girls rather than Portway Oaks Comprehensive, and Mr.
Littleton the inquisitor has been reduced to a janitor, a figure of
fun.  In her new world, everyone has a friend.  In her new world, Nan
herself has the power to help others, since before she came to Portway
Oaks Comprehensive, "Estelle had been rather lonely before Nan arrived"
(Witch Week, 242).  Mr. Wentworth, as the adult who was most
sympathetic in the old world, is the headmaster here.  Adult power is
no longer concentrated in one place, as Portway Oaks is a day school,
and the children have parents to go home to.   Nan's new world has
authority figures, but they're authority figures she likes.  She has
taken away her own responsibility of power, but not until after she's
made a world in which she doesn't mind yielding that power.  She's
left as an author, which is "as good as witchcraft any day" (Witch
Week, 237).  

In Archer's Goon, words also shape the world.  In this novel, however,
the context of the words is more important than their meaning.
Archer's Goon, they only need context.  As in Howl's Moving Castle, in
which Sophie's spells were in conversational idiom , given power by
Sophie herself, Quentin's words are "really idiotic things that nobody
would want to publish" (Archer's Goon, 18).  In context, however,
Quentin's words have immense effect on his life and the lives of his
family.  The words can be meaningless as long as they fit within the
context of the situation, and as long as their internal context
remains consistent.  Though Quentin's words are based on absurd
premises within the world (old ladies rioting on Corn Street, rabbits
eating meat) they always follow internal logic.  Though the
hypothetical ideas make no sense, the proposed solutions are obvious
when taken within the context of the situations.  If rabbits eat meat,
the solution is "to set them catching mice, of course" (Archer's Goon,
18). 

This contextualizing of power is logical given the relativist stance
enforced by the novel's fluid language.  Language changes meaning, and
some of those meaning changes are contextual in nature.  If "tea"
means different things at different times, then there is no consistent
magic in summoning "tea!" -- or, more conventionally, in asking Awful
to make a cup of it.  The power is held in the manner in which the
word tea is used: "let's sit down for tea" as opposed to "working in
the tea fields".  Again, this context-dependency directly opposes
fantasy conventions of absolute meaning.  Though there is some meaning
inherent in the word, but it must be made clear.  That clarification
can never be perfect, though it can be attempted.

People keep trying to get power over Howard by lying to him, making
words which just aren't true.  Mr. Mountjoy nearly shames Howard into
retreating when he delivers lies with a "sincere" smile and "a
friendly, soothing rumble" (Archer's Goon, 25).  The delivery blinds
Howard to the words until the Goon baldly and repeatedly insists "not
true" (Archer's Goon, 25).  Dillian and Maisie Potter woo Howard with
food, enchantment, and sweet falsehoods (Dillian far more
successfully).  Awful, like the Goon, sees past the delivery to
declare of Maisie Potter "doesn't she tell a lot of lies?" (Archer's
Goon, 42) and of Dillian "She's trying to make us forget" (Archer's
Goon, 52).  Awful, by stating exactly what she thinks, wins battles
with other people who try to be more clever with language.  When
Maisie Potter tries to overload language (responding to  "[Dad] says
we mustn't [read his books] till we're old enough" with "You poor
child!  Can't you read yet?")  Awful ignores the game and is just
directly cruel: "You do make catty remarks. ... Is it because you're
an old maid?" (Archer's Goon, 44)  Howard, still paying attention to
context rather than content, recognizes Quentin's words by the
typewriter fingerprint.

The way to control Quentin, though, is exactly by the methods that
fail with the Goon and Awful.  Howard tells the Goon, "You're going
the wrong way about it ... I know Dad.  You've got his back up by
hanging about trying to bully him like this.  The way to do it is to
pretend to be very nice and say it doesn't matter.  Then Dad would get
a bad conscience and do the words like a shot." (Archer's Goon, 38)
Note that genuine niceness, such as Hathaway's, does seduce Howard.
It's the faked "cross politeness" (Archer's Goon, 41) of Maisie Potter
and sticky seduction of Dillian that backfire (with Awful's help).

As in Witch Week, method of communication is as important than what is
communicated.  Archer's attempt to bully with words, writing "ARCHER
IS WATCHING YOU" (Archer's Goon, 33) on the television screen and
"ARCHER" all over the walls and the schools (Archer's Goon, 38) annoys
Quentin and makes him unwilling to help.  The Family describe their
relationships with one another by who communicates with whom, not by
what is communicated: "Torquil's the only one I can bear to talk to.
Archer speaks only to Erskine, and Hathaway and Venturus don't speak
to any of us, or to each other either.  As for Shine -- words fail,
Maisie!" (Archer's Goon, 51).

In Howl's Moving Castle, even more than Nan and Howard, Sophie makes
great magic happen with everyday language.  It takes a powerful speech
act to change reality, and Sophie somehow manages to do it without
mystical phrases and ingredients.  Where in Archer's Goon the context
is everything, in Howl's Moving Castle the speech act itself is the
source of power.  Speech act theory, in the field of linguistics,
provides insight into the origin of authority in a speech act.  The
theory distinguishes between *performative* and *constative*
statements.  A constative statement is a statement of fact which can
be tested for truth or falsehood, such as "a bird has wings" or "it is
quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three".  A performative
statement is one which effects its own truth as it is stated.  For
example, saying "I apologize" effects an apology, "I dub thee Knight"
causes someone to become a knight, and "have another thousand years"
ensures Calcifer a long life.

Clearly not all performative statements create truth.  *Infelicitous*
performative statements are those which will not be successful.
There exist certain *felicity conditions* which must be met for a
performative statement to succeed:

	A. (i) There must be a conventional procedure having a
	   conventional effect.
	   (ii) The circumstances and persons must be appropriate, as
	   specified in the procedure.
	B. The procedure must be executed (i) correctly and (ii)
	completely
	C. Often, (i) the persons must have the requisite thoughts,
	feelings and intentions, as specified in the procedure, and
	(ii) if subsequent conduct is specified, then the relevant
	parties must so do
	(Levinson: 229)

In the real world, performatives are "just rather special sorts of
ceremony" (Levinson: 230).  As in A (ii) above, the speaker has some
authority over the procedure being performed, which must come from an
outside source: a judge can say "I find you guilty"; a clergyman can
say "I pronounce you man and wife"; a person with extra knowledge of
danger can say "I'm warning you".  As in A (i) and B, the speaker must
be correctly following a conventional pattern which leads to a known
result.

In the fantasy world of Howl's Moving Castle, these felicity
conditions appear not to hold.  There are certainly conventional
magical procedures in Sophie's world.  Michael has to learn
pre-written spells, changing the castle entrances requires arcane
notations and a silver shovel, and Howl's contract with Calcifer is
formed in an age-old bargain.  Sophie, however, doesn't follow any of
these conventions.  Her spells are cast by chatting, making statements
that end up being performative without her intent.  The inadvertent
nature of her magic violates C (i), that she intend the effect she
creates.

Lack of existing conventions notwithstanding, there must be some
convention to Sophie's magic, or she would be unable to make a
constative statement without it becoming true.  As she is able to lie,
not all of her statements are performative.  In fact, any constative
statement Sophie issues to a non-human (inanimate object, fire demon,
animal, or magically animated scarecrow) becomes performative.
Occasionally she speaks perfomatively to an inanimate object but wraps
her real magic in the trapping of more conventional magic, as when she
orders a heap of cayenne pepper to make "a fair fight" for the Count
of Catterack, and makes "what she hope[s] would look like mystic
passes over the heap of pepper" (Howl's, 94).  A statement which has two
parts, one of which refers to a human and one which refers to a
non-human, has that which refers to a non-human become performative.
Sophie tells the scarecrow, "Now if I wasn't doomed to failure
because of my position in the family ... you could come to life and
offer me help in making my fortune" (Howl's, 19).  The first part of the
statement, a supposition on herself, is ignored, but the latter, a
supposition that the scarecrow will come to life and help her make her
fortune, is effected (albeit not immediately and not as she'd
expected).  Throughout the book, Sophie's magic follows this
consistent pattern: whatever she says directly to non-human recipients
of her words becomes true.  Even when she states the ridiculous --
telling ferns and lilies to "be daffodils in June, you beastly things"
(Howl's, 173) -- it's left unclear whether or not she succeeds.  Though the
plants become "wet brown things" (Howl's, 177) as a result of the weed-killer
Sophie's inadvertently created, she does refer to them again as "her
daffodils" (Howl's, 177).

What gives Sophie the authority to make such statements?  What, as
in A (ii), makes her person appropriate to perform the actions
indicated in her speech act?  Sophie is a witch for no apparent
reason.  Mrs. Fairfax says of witchcraft "Not that it necessarily runs
in families, but as often as not --" (Howl's, 82).  Sophie and Lettie are both
witches, but if they've inherited it from someone the story never
tells.  Though her spells do follow a pattern, they are not
ritualistic.  Rather, "In an artfully calculated contrast to the
notion of the Word as power, Sophie ... is depicted as working her
spells in conversational discourse using randomly selected signifiers"
(Stephens: 270).  Her power doesn't come from special knowledge --
indeed, again and again the text stresses her ignorance -- but from
some power that gives significance to her statements over those of
other people.  Something unknown, then, has given Sophie the power to
"talk life into things" (Howl's, 208) -- that is, to performatively make true
what she says.  Nobody in the narrative has given Sophie this
authority.  This power is permissible because of the novel is a
fantasy.  Stephens writes that "In a fantasy it is not inconceivable
that there could be a conversation between a person and a curtain, and
Sophie's particular magical gift is the ability to 'talk life into
things', so while this curtain does not actually speak, the faculties
of hearing and speech are attributed to it" (Stephens: 271).  Jones,
by creating the novel as a fantasy, gave herself the power to randomly
endow Sophie with power just because she, the author, wanted to do so.
In a realistic novel, Sophie would have to have some excuse for the
ability to make performative speech acts; she'd need to be hold an
official position, or have some knowledge, or some extra power.  In a
fantasy novel, a theoretically disempowered character (the eldest of
three poor girls, weak and ignorant) can create stories which give her
power.  Sophie can "talk life into things", as the author, hopefully,
talks life into the book.

In Something About the Author, Jones talks of how important writing
was to her.  As the world's madness (constantly restated by Jones)
continued through various schools, churches, evacuations, parental
jobs, and general continuing confusion, she read voraciously.  When
she told her parents she was going to be a writer, they mocked her:
"'You haven't got it in you,' my mother said. My father bellowed with
laughter. He had a patriarch's view of girls: they were not really
meant to do anything". Writing was something powerful, something her
parents knew she could not do.  Writing was only for the kind of
children her parents would respect -- in this case, boys.

Reading, too, was something powerful, something that had to be
rationed.  Her father, unwilling to spend money or time on presents,
"solved the Christmas book-giving by buying an entire set of Arthur
Ransome books, which he kept locked in a high cupboard and dispensed
one between the three of [them] each year".  To cope with her
"perpetual book starvation", Jones says

 I began writing narratives in old exercise books to fill this gap,
 and read them aloud to my sisters at night. I finished two, both of
 epic length and quite terrible. But in case someone is tempted to say
 my father did me a favour, I must say this is not the case at all. I
 always would have been a writer. I still had this calm certainty. All
 these epics did for me was to prove that I could finish a story.

Like her heroes, Jones eventually finds her own power in the
proscribed act of writing.

+++ Listening to the right stories
"Management is the body who has arranged this Tour for you.  It has
arranged the rules for your comfort and convenience, so that no
Tourist will ever be taken by surprise or shocked by an unexpected
incident.  Management reserves the right to alter the Rules in
accordance with current fashions, and will admit absolutely no
complaints or responsibility.  It wishes you a safe and happy Tour of
Fantasyland."			-- Tough Guide to Fantasyland

The writing of the heroes is a powerful force at work in Jones'
novels.  Additionally, however, her characters (and readers) must deal
with the writings of others within the text.  The intertextual nature
of Jones' stories open each novel up to interpretive possibilities
provoked by stories outside the story.  Theories of intertexuality
approach the relationship of a text to other texts.  A story can rely
on a reader's knowledge of other stories or other fictional
conventions in order to create an effect.  These external stories can
have a powerful effect on the reader and the characters.  This power,
however, is inevitably never as strong as the storytelling power
inherent in the characters themselves.

Witch Week takes place in a school, which ought to place it firmly in
the genre of the school story.  In theory, the reader's experience of
the school story could shape a reading of the characters.  Witch
Week, however, does not play with the implied reader's knowledge of
the genre conventions.  Instead, the novel plays with the reader's
possible experience of having read books in the convention.  When
Charles, as punishment, is ordered by teacher Mr. Towers to write
lines from _The Pluckiest Boy in School_, the book "smelled of mildew
... the pages were furry and brownish" (Witch Week, 95).  The book
parodies both the genre and Mr. Towers' image of Larwood House.  Watts
Minor, the hero of _The Pluckiest Boy in School_, speaks in bizarre
school jargon of his joy in school.  The homo-erotic overtones of the
book, which describes a character as "a boy above all, straight alike in
body and mind" do not even escape Miss Hodge, who refers to "rather an
unfortunate choice of book" (Witch Week, 96).

Despite this parody, Witch Week closes reinforcing the conventions of
the school story.  The heroes have become friends and will now learn
from the good teachers.  The bad teachers and unpleasant students have
been removed from our sphere of influence.  Mr. Crossley's authority
as a teacher is reinforced, as all the students seek his approval.
This conventional ending seems at first to defy the parody of Watts
Minor and his "ripping fun".  Nan, however, stands outside the
normalcy of Portway Oaks Comprehensive.  Nan is brought closer to the
reader of Witch Week as another potential reader of _The Pluckiest Boy
in School_; with us, Nan can watch amused as a parody comes to life.
Further outside the book than before, Nan is made even more powerful.

In Archer's Goon, the primary intertextual device is not the inclusion
of a story within a story.  Rather, Archer's Goon plays with narrative
convention, and parodies the author's note.  This note plays both on
prior knowledge of fictional convention, but also on recognition of
familiar phrases.  A reader who is familiar with novelistic
conventions should recognize that an author's note is generally
extra-textual.  [Footnote:  Jones' explanation of the note's origin
only increases a sense of its extratextuality.  **] Perhaps its
acknowledgements, or a commentary on research the author did, or some
historical facts about the events in the book.  No matter what the
author's note does say, however, it is not part of the story.  This
information is outside of the story, emphasizing the textuality of the
book and separating the reader from the story told.
 
   Author's Note:
 
   This book will prove the following ten facts:
 
   1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
   2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.  
   3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
   4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result
      is a family fight.
   5. Music does not always sooth the troubled breast.
   6. An Englishman's home is his castle.
   7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.  (Kipling)
   8. One black eye deserves another.
   9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.  (Star Trek)
   10. It pays to increase your word power.
 
   (Archer's Goon, author's note)


This author's note hasn't even got a page number, and is placed
before the half-title page, thus emphasizing its place outside of
the story.  This placement confirms that the author's note is not a
cleverly designed part of the story, but is in fact a separate entity,
part of the book but not of the narrative.  And yet the content of the
note certainly seems to be part of the narrative.  The note claims
that the book has a purpose (or at least an effect) of proving certain
facts.  That seems to be an extra-textual context, and yet these
'facts' are mostly proverbs moderated slightly to be somewhat surreal.
Moreover, can a novel (which is a work of fiction) prove anything?

The note is both part of and not part of the narrative, and
questions whether the reader understands what a narrative is, at
all.  This metalepsis, "the transgression of logical and
hierarchical relations between different layers of narration"
(McCallum, 403), draws attention to 

  questions about authority, power, and freedom, such as who has
  control of the story and its characters -- the narrator, her
  narratees, an author, his readers, or the socio-cultural context
  within which stories are told, heard, interpreted, and appropriated.
  (McCallum, 403-404)

The reader knows that an author's note, conventionally, is
written by an author.  A narrator is conventionally distinct
from the author, and is a limited voice within the fiction, with
its own biases.  In Archer's Goon, the reader can't see who has
written the author's note.  If it's the narrator, then that
narrator has impinged on the author's territory and has violated
the walls of the narrator's universe: the narrative itself.  If
it's Diana Wynne Jones, then Jones is giving authority to the
events of her fantasy fiction by treating these proverbs as real
outside the narrative.  

To add to the confusion, there's no exact pattern to the 'facts'.
Their absurdity is funny, but inconsistent.
Fact 6 is a slight modification of ** Coke's "A man's house is his
castle" and fact 7 is from Kipling, but fact 5 is a contradiction of
an existing proverb.  Fact 3 is a humorous restatement of an existing
proverb that bases its humor on the double meanings of the word
"power", and yet which also has meaning in the book.  Fact 2 takes an
already absurd line from Lewis Carroll and increases its silliness.
The absurdity in increased by this fact's apparent randomness as the
only fact with no apparent basis in the book.  In my quest to make
meaning, I find myself stumped by the winged pigs.  Surely they mean
*something*, yet no amount of rereading the Author's Note (disrupting
the convention that it should be read once, initially, as the least
interesting part of the book) explains them to me.  All the facts play
with existing proverbs, increasing their absurdity while also relating
them more closely to the story.  

Fact 10 states explicitly what may be the point of this game (if
puzzling on this note may be called a game): "it pays to increase your
word power".  For the reader to comprehend the ten facts, she should
draw upon knowledge of existing proverbs, absurdity of language, book
construction, and puns.  The more knowledge the reader has, the more
this author's note reveals, both in humor and in connection to the
narrative.  That comprehension gives the reader "word power", and
allows her to better control her relationship with the text.  Stephens
says that this sort of unspoken meaning-making places the reader in a
subject position to the text:  "If, by making inferences, readers
bring assumptions into the process of interpretation, the text exerts
power over them to make them entertain such assumptions in order to
make sense of the text" (Stephens: 66).  Jones, by using her knowledge
of language to create the text, has the most "word power" of all, as
it's her words that the reader must work with.  Later in the book
Archer is presented as very dangerous and important because he "farms
power" (Archer's Goon, 12) -- the electrical kind.  Word power defeats
Archer's electrical power.  

The intertextual in Archer's Goon is used primarily as an introductory
device.  In Howl's Moving Castle, intertextuality pervades all aspects
of the story.  From the beginning, with the traditional format of the
table of contents, to the first sentence which ties the land of Ingary
into the lands of fairy tale, to the Witch's curse in John Donne's
words, Howl's Moving Castle relies on other texts.  These elements
play to the reader's knowledge of conventions and texts.  The
intertextuality of Howl's Moving Castle also works within the book to
support the metafictive.  Like the reader, Sophie must read and write
her world given her knowledge of the world of stories.

The intertextual begins with the table of contents, in the traditional
style.  All entries but one begin with "In which" followed by a
summary of the chapter's events.  Chapter five has a less indirect
(and more directly humorous) title: "which is far too full of
washing".  These chapter titles have a subtle play on words with
"which" and "witch".  The word "witch" is never used directly in the
table of contents, although one heading does contain the word
"witchcraft".  Though one chapter is titled "in which Sophie becomes
Howl's old mother", there is no chapter called "in which Sophie
becomes the witch of Kingsport".  No chapter is called "in which Howl
fights the witch of the waste".  Though there is this subtle interplay
between the language of the table of contents and the language of the
book, the stronger influence of the table of contents is in its
formality, and evocation of an earlier era.  [Footnote: Readers of
children's literature might also be familiar with a relatively modern
use of this style, by A. A. Milne, in the Pooh Books.  The Pooh books
also combine this formal contents style with relatively casual and
modern prose.]

The book's opening paragraph introduces the relationship between the
intertextual and the metafictive.

   In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and
   cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be
   born the eldest of three.  Everyone knows you are the one who will
   fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your
   fortunes.  (Howl's, 1)

The second sentence sentence associates "you", the reader, with "you",
the eldest of three.  Herein lies Sophie's problem -- she shouldn't be
the reader.  The phrasing brings the reader into the character, the
eldest of three, which increases the author's power by helping the
reader to vicariously experience the book.  Unfortunately for Sophie,
this technique also associates Sophie closely with that controlled
reader.  The narrative voice, by telling the reader what she should
believe, is also telling Sophie what *she* believes.  Addressed in the
second person by the narrator, Sophie is powerless to act.  Sophie is
created as a duality: she "simultaneously is a folktale character
dreaming of being a folktale character *and* is reconstituted as a
character in a realistic fiction" (Stephens: 275).  [Footnote:
Stephens is discussing Castle in the Air, the sequel to Howl's Moving
Castle.  The books are written in similar tone, and Sophie's magical
abilities have not changed between the two books, so his discussion of
the one applies to the other.  In fact, Stephens himself uses a
passage from Howl's Moving Castle to illustrate a point in his
discussion of Castle in the Air.  (Stephens: 271)]  As a fairy tale
character, she needs to follow a conventional plot.  As Sophie, the
heroine of a modern novel, her (conventional!) job is to be a person
driven by her own needs and thoughts.

The use of the word "really" brings this introduction of Ingary back
to the implied reader.  The reader knows of stories which contain
seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility, and also knows that no
such items really exist.  The word "really" says to the reader that
those items that you know are false *do* exist in Ingary.  Once the
text initially acknowledges the reader so overtly, it is unclear
whether the reader is explicitly addressed again.  Is the "everyone"
spoken of "everyone in Ingary", or "everyone who knows anything about
magical lands, including you, the reader"?  The second person address
implies the latter, though it is often a figurative device.
Conversely, though the first sentence acknowledges the reader (as
mentioned above with the use of the word "really"), it does
not use a direct address.  One way to determine who "everyone" could
be to read the sentence as "In the land of Ingary, everyone knows".  

So who has this special knowledge?  There's the reader, who knows
fairy tale conventions, and is about to see them subverted.  Perry
Nodleman posits

  Many of us know these same few fairy tales so well that we don't
  know *how* we know them -- where we first heard them.  We just seem
  to have always known them.  (Nodleman, 245)
  
Is it the non-existent "everyone" who told us these tales for the
first time?  Additionally, the people of Ingary, who live by the rules
of the fairy tale, share this knowledge.  Sophie, the heroine, also
shares this knowledge, and therefore knows her fate is predetermined.
Both the reader and the characters are interacting with this bit of
shared knowledge.  Oddly, what everyone seems to have forgotten is that
it's not a misfortune, in the land of fairy tales, to be born the
eldest of three.  It's a misfortune to be born the eldest of three
*sons*.

In the next paragraph, this misfortune is brought somewhat back to
convention, by presenting Sophie and Lettie as elder half-sisters,
which "ought to have made [them] into Ugly Sisters" (Howl's, 1).  Even here,
the narrative voice is a little bit confused about the convention.
Being stepsisters should make the elder two into Ugly Sisters, but the
two are half-sisters, not stepsisters, and villainous half-sisters are
less common.  Villainous half brothers may occasionally fight for the
inheritance; is Sophie confused about whether she should act like a
girl or a boy?   Either way, she has a warped notion of the
conventions to which she is such a slave.  Already, in the second
paragraph, we see this expected convention has been subverted.

  but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though
  Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful.  Fanny treated
  all the girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the
  least.  (Howl's, 1)

Not only is the convention shown to be non-applicable, but the
characters recognize it as such as well.  Lettie is "the one everyone
said was most beautiful".  The residents of Market Chipping attribute
great beauty neither to the eldest, who might conventionally be
recognized as a great beauty by community, or to the youngest, to whom
convention would attribute a hidden beauty.  The wicked stepmother
loves all the girls equally.  In no way does the situation of the
Hatter girls lend itself to slavish following of convention.  The text
presents conventions only to debunk them.  The implied reader,
familiar with fairy tale conventions, will be prepared for more
recognizable tropes, but unsure of their stability.  Sophie, however,
is unable either to distinguish the tropes from one another, or to
recognize their inaccuracy.  She considers herself to be a slave to
stories she has misread; twice over she dooms herself.

These introductory paragraphs, which show the non-conventional
portrayal of the family, do not prevent Sophie from reading herself as
a slave to story.  Sophie "read a great deal, and very soon realized
how little chance she had of an interesting future" (Howl's, 1).  It's
unclear whether Sophie is reading history, or fairy tales, or fairy
tales which, in the land of Ingary, act as history.  In any case, she
can't see that the conventions of her reading already don't apply to
her life.  As Charles and Nirupam find they must believe Nan's
stories, Sophie's beliefs are controlled by the stories she hears.  If
Sophie is ever to become a heroine, she must leave the position of
the controlled reader.

When Sophie is an assistant in the hat shop, she continues to listen
to the gossip of others, as it's the only interesting part of her new
trade (Howl's, 6).  She listens and listens, and has an urge to share
in the conversation.  As there is nobody around with whom Sophie can
share her opinions, Sophie talks "to hats more and more as weeks went
by" (Howl's, 6).  She tells hats that "they have mysterious allure",
will "marry money", or are "as young as a spring leaf" (Howl's, 7).
She's just chatting with the hats because she's bored, but it seems
her words to the hats come true for the hats wearers.  This magic is
never explicitly mentioned, but is implied by the rising popularity of
hats similar to those to which Sophie has been speaking.  Sophie's
power is that of a storyteller, not that of a character in a story.
When "instead of talking to the hats, she [tries] each one on"
(Howl's, 7-8) as if she were a character, she looks ridiculous.  When
she takes the role of a failed eldest child, she acts ridiculous.  When
she tells stories, she is powerful, and shapes her world.

Sophie's shyness makes her feel like "an old woman or a semi-invalid"
(Howl's, 9), unable to speak with anyone.  But when she actually
becomes and old woman, she has the courage to speak.  Her advanced age
give Sophie the courage to speak her mind for the first time ever.
Unconsciously, she keeps the magic on her as a protection for speaking
her own mind.  Howl later infuriates Sophie by admitting that he's
tried to remove the spell and failed: "I came to the conclusion that
you liked being in disguise. ... It must be [disguise], since you're
doing it yourself" (Howl's, 182).  Sophie forgets, though, that she
did in fact first speak her own mind right before she becomes old.
She insults an annoying customer -- and "it trouble[s] her to realize
how very enjoyable it had been" (Howl's, 16) -- and is rude to the
Witch of the Waste.  Within the fairy tale convention, rudeness to a
witch usually results in punishment intended to teach a lesson.
Sophie's punishment, however, doesn't seem to have the intended
result.  Rather than learning the penalty of rudeness, Sophie believes
that age gives her freedom to talk, as "old people often talk to
themselves" (Howl's, 20) and are often "a little mad" (Howl's, 19).
In fact, Sophie takes her age as an excuse to take the mad witch's
role herself.  She's come to this conclusion very early on; by the
time she meets Calcifer the fire demon, the spell is already
multi-layered.  The Witch cast only one layer, so the second layer
must be Sophie's own.  

Once she's found the freedom of language, she begins for the first
time to endow language with meaning that's useful to her.  Old Sophie
tells a young farmer that she's "off to seek [her] fortune" (Howl's,
21), but when she arrives at Howl's castle, she says of a cushioned
chair in front of the fire "My fortune!" (Howl's, 26).  For once she
is using her own definition of fortune, and not what she reads as
society's.  As she takes this control, her language becomes powerful.
When Sophie shrieks "*Stop!*" at the castle, it "obediently came to a
rumbling, grinding halt" (Howl's, 23).  She learns to ignore the
stories other people think she's allowed to tell; at one point, she
says "a word she had learned from Martha, that neither old ladies nor
young girls are supposed to know" (Howl's, 24).

Ultimately, Sophie must learn to rewrite every story she hears, even
Howl's contract with Calcifer.  Howl and Calcifer have made a
contract, an agreement born of words, much as Michael tries to
convince a falling start to join him (Howl's, 90).  Sophie talks life
into Calcifer and into Howl's heart.  She breaks the contract by
ignoring its terms, its vision of the way the world should be read,
and telling her own story instead.

Sophie has to learn to question the text which is her world.
Barbara Johnson defines two aspects of a text, using Barthes' terms:

  The readerly is the aspect of a text through which it is assimilated
  to ideological norms of meaning, while the writerly is a
  hypothetical state of textual resistance to such meaning.  The
  readerly is a product to be consumed by the reader; the writerly is
  a process of production in which the reader becomes a producer.  It
  is, says Barthes, "ourselves writing."  The readerly is constrained
  by considerations of representation: it is irreversible, "natural,"
  decideable, continuous, totalizable, and unified into a coherent
  whole based on the signified.  The writerly is infinitely plural and
  open to the free play of signifiers and of difference, unconstrained
  by representative considerations, and transgressive of any desire
  for decideable, unified, totalized meaning.  (Johnson: 26)

Sophie has learned to open herself to the writerly aspects of her
world.  As a young woman, she slavishly obeyed the readerly aspects of
the stories she was told, the "product meant to be consumed by the
reader".  When she allows herself to see that in the stories which
allows her to produce her own story, she sees the "infinitely plural"
possibilities open to her.

If Sophie learns to read beyond the fairy tale conventions of her
world, is the reader supposed to do the same?  The novel certainly
follows certain fairy tale patterns, though it also follows romance
novel patterns.  In a conventional fairy tale, the princess is lovely
because of "her *manner* of speech [which] is such that she charms the
prince" (Zipes, 24).  Sophie also charms the prince through her
speech, though the content of her speech (talking life into things) is
as important as the manner of her speech (her own voice, not deferring
to others).  And though Sophie's charming of the prince (Howl) is the
culmination of the romance plot, it's nearly irrelevant to the fairy
tale plot.  In the fairytale plot, Sophie saves the day, and the
prince, due to her speech.  Though the manner and content of her
speech have their origins in the same phenomenon -- as Sophie is old,
she feels the freedom to speak both freely and crudely -- she talks
life into hats even when she is young, lovely, and sweet.

It seems that Sophie suffers primarily for her own willful ignorance.
If Sophie learns a moral lesson -- stop to think -- does this moral
bring her back, intertextually, to the original fairy tales which
"everyone" knows?  In Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood", according
to Nodleman, "young girls who *don't* know that lesson deserve to
suffer from their ignorance" (Nodleman, 248).  Wizard Howl is an
intertextual woodcutter, rescuing Sophie from the wolf/fire demon
(disguised as a dear sweet English teacher) she's courted in
ignorance, following the conventional fairy tale pattern.  Yet he's
also a romance hero.  Sophie's subsequent rescue of Howl -- when she
literally and violently beats off the dangerous woman who would steal
his heart, and returns Howl's heart to him, allowing him to defeat the
villain -- follows the conventions of a romance novel.  Despite the
ignorance Perrault would condemn, Sophie has the power and the desire
that let her rescue Howl and Calcifer.  The interweaving of the
textual conventions, allow both forms to be gently parodied while
destroying neither.  Sophie is punished for her willful ignorance
however humorously.  Howl and Sophie do join together as mysterious
hero and plucky romance heroine.  Neither convention is allowed full
authority in the presence of the other.  Sophie subverts the power of
both when she finds her own power, and learns that she can at any
point choose the genre she'll believe.  Jack Zipes writes:

  It follows, then, out of necessity that we write our own texts to
  gain a sense not simply of what has happened in reality but what
  also has happened on psychological, economic, cultural and other
  levels, to free ourselves from the dictates of other
  socio-historical texts which have prescribed and ordered our
  thinking and need to be dis-ordered if we are to perceive for
  ourselves the processes that produce social structures, modes of
  production, and cultural artefacts.  To write an historical
  text (or any other text for that matter) implies that one has a
  world-view, an overall perspective of history, an ideology, whether
  conscious or unconscious, and the writing of such a text will tend
  either to test this view or legitimate it.  Textual form depends on
  the method one chooses." (Zipes, 2)

Sophie has discovered how to free herself "from the dictates of other
socio-historical texts which have prescribed and ordered [her]
thinking".  The stories Sophie tells question some views and
legitimize others, but no longer take anything as a concrete truth.

Jones, like Sophie, has made herself a story out of several genres.
Like the Brothers Grimm, Jones makes her fairy tale by combining "the
supposed best features of the various versions they heard" (Nodelman,
249).  The Grimms rewrite the stories to suit "their own middle-class,
Christian values" (Nodleman, 249).  Is Jones, then, taking what she
likes best of several genres (fairy tale, romance) to suit her morals?
A moral of Howls' Moving Castle could be that a heroine must tell her
own stories instead of trusting in the stories of others.  This not
only explicitly contradicts the power the literary conventions finally
have over Sophie, but reinforces the conclusion I've come to about the
other Jones books.  Howl's Moving Castle's mishmash of textual
conventions, while subverting the power of each individual genre
employed, combines to strengthen the whole.  When Sophie realizes the
weakness of the text, she uses her own storytelling to turn the story
from one which weakens her (the fairy tale) into one which empowers
her (the romance).  [Footnote:  See Radway for a detailed discussion
of some ways in which the romance reader sees herself "participating
in a story that is as much *about* the transformation of an inadequate
suitor into the perfect lover-protector as it is about the concomitant
triumph of a woman" (Radway, 214).]  Like Jones, Sophie rewrites one
convention into another which she prefers -- and which is then
strengthened by the corresponding weakening of the prior tale. 

+++	The narrator's intrusion as a powerplay
"If you read it and don't believe it's real, so much the better."
(Homeward Bounders, 224)

I have been focusing on power and authority in all three of these
books.  Using various metafictional and intertextual techniques, Jones
has created characters who control and are controlled by language.
Metafictive techniques open books to even more complex questions of
authority, as they acknowledges the existence of both readers and
writers.  These books don't just create power structures among the
characters in the stories.  They also call attention to the power
structure that already exists between actual writer and implied
reader.  The power structures within the stories both mirror and help
create the power structures outside of the books.  Textual elements
(such as framing devices and author's notes) also help form the
author-reader power structure.

Different techniques allow for differing levels of authorial intrusion
into a book.  Jones uses, in Luigi Cazatto's terms, both *hard* and
*soft* metafiction (Cazzato: 28).  *Hard metafiction* is "found in
novels which overtly expose their fictionality to unveil their 'real'
reality ... as distinguished from *soft metafiction*, which only
covertly hints at its fictionality and constructedness" (Cazatto: 28).
Direct address to the reader and acknowledgement of the book as
product are examples of hard metafiction.  Cazzato claims that the
author intentionally intrudes to convince the reader "to suspend
his/her belief" (Cazatto: 35).  Robyn McCallum, like Cazatto, says
that all metafictive techniques distance the reader from the text:

  Metafictive and experimental forms of children's writing generally
  use a broader range of narrative and discursive techniques: overly
  obtrusive narrators who directly address readers and comment on
  their own narrational disruptions of the spatio-temporal narrative
  axis and of diegetic levels of narration; parodic appropriations of
  other texts, genres and discourses; typographic experimentation;
  mixing of genres, discourse styles, modes of narration and speech
  representation; multiple character focalisers, narrative voices, and
  narrative strands and so on.  These are strategies which distance
  readers from a text and frequently frustrate conventional
  expectations about meaning and closure.  Implied readers are thereby
  positioned in more active interpretive roles.  (McCallum: 397-398)

I argue that Jones does not "distance readers from a text", as
McCallum suggests, or ask readers "to detect fiction rather than
identify with it", as Cazatto claims (Cazatto: 29).  Instead, she asks
her readers to detect fiction *in order* to identify with it.  In each
of the three novels, authorial intrusion makes the storyteller more
powerful, rather than less.  If the storyteller is a strong figure,
telling a powerful story, then the story told is hardly held at a
distance.

In a tiny open moment at the end of an otherwise tightly closed
narrative, Witch Week's Estelle questions how much power Nan has
really yielded: "When you grow up to be an author and write books,
you'll think you're making the books up, but they'll all really be
true, somewhere" (Witch Week, 243).  Nan has kept her magical
power, just by being a writer.  Estelle's comment questions
whether this book, Witch Week, is really true somewhere, like Nan's
books.  If so, then Jones is a powerful witch like Nan.  If a book can
be come real, then storytellers are the most powerful worldshapers of
all.

In Archer's Goon, the character-as-writer brings the concept of
authorship to the forefront of the narrative.  Unlike in Witch Week,
Archer's Goon raises questions about the author's status as a powerful
being.  Does the author have the right or responsibility to use his
power?  Quentin speaks as an author when he articulates his fear of
writer's block:  

  "Well, it's a terrible condition ... You three are lucky not to know
  what it's like.  You haven't got a thought in your head, or if you
  have, you can't somehow get it down on paper, or if you *do* manage
  to put something down, it goes small and boring and doesn't lead
  anywhere.  And you panic because you can't earn any money, and that
  makes it worse.  It can go on for years, too --" (Archer's Goon,
  17).  

Jones has created a writer character who explains the sense of
powerlessness he gets when he finds himself unable to write.  His
ideas are non-existent or non-communicable, and he suffers not only
because his ideas are small but because his success in society depends
on his ability to write.  It is reasonable to look for the real author
in the character author.  Whether or not Quentin's fears of having his
words be "no good" really are shared with Jones, the idea of an
author, the creator of a fiction, is made prominent in the novel.
Despite Quentin's status as an absurd figure, he is given an immense
creative and magical power to wield.  

At the novel's end, Quentin and Howard are confronted with the moral
problems of authorship.  Howard (as Venturus) has been an ethically
failed author: "in generally giving people their dreams or their
deserts, as he sees them, and placing them in situations which involve
relationships, and hence stories, his role corresponds to that of the
author of a fiction, constructing cause and effect, making moral
judgments, and even plotting his own defeat" (Stephens: 276).
[Footnote: Stephens is speaking of the character Hasruel the Djinn in
the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle.] Quentin, Howard, and the entire
Family have been story-making, and they've all done great harm.
Howard begins to do right by taking the magic away from Quentin, and
from promising himself not to become Venturus.  Nonetheless, Quentin
still has an author's power.  That power may be diminished because
Quentin is an absurd figure, and the only writing of his we've seen
has been absurd writing.  If Quentin's authorial power is diminished,
what of Jones' parallel authorial power?   Is she, too, a figure of
fun?  And though Howard has promised himself neither to abuse his
powers nor to allow Awful, Quentin, and Erskine to abuse theirs, he
has just contributed in shooting his innocently infatuated au pair
into outer space.  Moreover, his conviction that he must prevent the
others from abusing their powers is, itself, a controlling decision.
Howard is left in an untenable position, in which the simple dichotomy
between correct use and misuse of language falls to pieces.  Power
corrupts, but we need electricity.  The author is dangerous but
necessary -- and has more fun.  And wouldn't it be great to have one
of those magic typewriters?  

Howl's Moving Castle shows the reverse side of this power
relationship.  Sophie is the reader, with her life manipulated by
whatever bizarre circumstances an author sees fit to thrust upon her.
Quentin and Howard feel free to send Fifi into space because it suits
their notions.  Similarly, the Witch of the Waste turns Sophie into an
old woman because it seems appropriate.  Perhaps even more similarly,
the novel [Footnote: and the over-eager critical reader] thrust Sophie
willy-nilly into a folk tale, a romance novel, and a humorous
fantasy.  Howl's Moving Castle has almost no overt authorial
intrusion, but the notion of book as product with genre makes itself
felt time and time again.

According to Cazatto, these metafictive techniques should all work to
show the "'real' reality" of the novels.  Instead, these techniques
work to subvert a notion of 'real' reality.  All three books question
what is real and what is fiction.  Both Witch Week and Archer's Goon
raise paradoxes about the nature of authorship of any novel, including
themselves.  Johnson argues that this subversion is the inevitable
result of an attempt for the author to intrude.

  Instead of according moments of textual self-interpretation an
  authoritative meta-linguistic status, deconstruction considers
  anything the text says about itself to be another fiction, an
  allegory of the reading process.  Hence, the privilege traditionally
  granted to showing over telling is reversed: "telling" becomes a
  more sophisticated form of "showing," in which what is "shown" is
  the breakdown of the show/tell distinction.  Far from doing the
  reader's work for her, the text's self-commentary only gives the
  reader more to do.  (Johnson: 18)

In this way a Jones text "subverts the possibility of any
authoritative reading by inscribing the reader's strategies into its
own structures" (Johnson: 18-19).  The narrative intrusions add to the
reality of the narrative.  As Sophie is tied to the readers' position
and is addressed with the reader, she is given a reality tied into the
reader's reality.  If the reader questions Sophie's reality, she also
questions her own.  If the reader questions the authority of the
narrative voice to limit Sophie to fictional conventions, she affirms
Sophie as a character outside of fiction.  The narrative voice has set
up a situation in which any tack the reader takes reaffirms the
reality of some element of the text.

McCallum, unlike Cazatto, does allow for this subversion, when he
speaks of readers in "more active interpretive roles".  But McCallum
insists that these methods "distance readers from a text".
interpreters.  But distanced from the text?  The parodic
appropriations of other genres in Howl's Moving Castle serve to
strengthen what is kept of each genre, and Sophie's place in it.  The
narrative slippage in that book serves to bring the reader closer to
Sophie.  Similarly, the narrative trick at the end of Archer's Goon,
in which it is revealed to Howard and the reader simultaneously that
Howard is Venturus, serves to make Howard's shock one with the
reader's.  Jones is using the distancing tricks of post-modernism, but
she is using them for a more intimate end than McCallum or Cazatto
would allow.  She uses the techniques to control her readers, but
never to distance them.

===		Conclusion
"The management regrets that it was unable to find a Gnomic Utterance
that was sufficiently irrelevant.  It was forced to resort to doggerel
instead."			-- Tough Guide to Fantasyland


Each of these novels reinforces the power of language and writing.
All emphasize the strength of a storyteller or a writer who has the
skill to say the right thing at the right time.  While doing so, these
books bring to fore the weakness and danger inherent in misguided
storytelling.  Badly told stories have no effect, or a dangerous
effect.  All of these stories give the power to the writer and the
storyteller.  With extra-textual elements, give lifelike authority to
events of the narrative, thus giving the real-life author power in the
outside world.  These books give spoken or written storytelling the
power to become performative, to make itself true.   

The books question the safety of a writer's power, and ask what
dangers arise from storytelling misused.  These stories seem at first
to be lessons on how to use language correctly.  Though Witch Week
seems to answer that question, Archer's Goon questions the
answerability.  In Archer's Goon, language is forever fluid, forever
dangerous, and nonetheless not to be abandoned.  It is unreasonable to
ask how to use language, since and the answer is not constant.  It is
more reasonable to "be ready for that day" (Archer's Goon, 241) on
which strength might be misused, and to remain fluid as the nature of
language does.  Barbara Johnson's words about deconstruction can apply
also to Archer's Goon's handling of this question.  Archer's Goon
"both opposes and redefines; it both reverses an opposition and
reworks the terms of that opposition so that what was formerly
understood by them is no longer tenable" (Johnson: 13).  As Suzanne
Rahn says, "Learning the rules, in a Diana Wynne Jones fantasy, does
not ensure mastery.  Rules change without warning; basic assumptions
turn upside-down; the world itself may be unstable, shifting toward
alternate versions of reality, or tilting toward total chaos" (Rahn:
147).  

The paradox of Jones' books is rooted in this fluidity.  Jones, as an
author, maintains control over her works.  When she gives magical
power to storytellers Nan, Quentin, and Sophie, she is giving that
power to herself.  If fictional characters can create magic by telling
stories, how much more could their creator do?  Yet if Jones is a real
magician, she has then created her characters as real magicians with
their own, equally real, world-shaping magic.  To accept the power of
Jones is to accept Nan as an equally powerful storyteller-mage.  This
paradox does not resolve into a tidy ending, as the novels themselves
do not.  Only one thing remains clear when the rubble of order is
swept away: somehow, and in some way, language is power.



===		Bibliography

Cazatto, Luigi.
Johnson, Barbara.  A World of Difference.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
 University Press.  1989.
Jones, Diana Wynne. Archer's Goon, New York: Greenwillow, 1984.
Jones, Diana Wynne. "The Heroic Ideal -- A Personal Odyssey", in The
 Lion and the Unicorn.  v.13, no.1.  Baltimore: JHU Press.  June 1989.
 Pp. 129-140.
Jones, Diana Wynne.  Howl's Moving Castle.  New York: Ace, 1989.
Jones, Diana Wynne.  Witch Week. New York: Bullseye Books. 1982.
Levinson, Stephen. Pragmatics.  Cambridge: Cambridge University
  Press, 1983.  Chapter 5, "Speech Acts", 226-283.
McCallum, Robyn. "Metafictions and Experimental Work".
Mitchell, Sally.  The New Girl.  New York: Columbia University Press.
 1995.
Nodleman, Perry.   The Pleasures of Children's Literature, Second
  Edition.  New York: Longman, 1996.
Radway, Janice.  Reading the Romance: Women,, Patriarchy, and Popular
  Literature.  Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1984.
Rahn, Suzanne. "Vaccine for Future Shock: Diana Wynne Jones", in
 Rediscoveries in Children's Literature.  New York: Garland, 1995.
Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. New York:
  Longman, 1992.
Zipes, Jack.  Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical
  Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization.  New York:
  Methuen, 1983.

I'd like to thank the Diana Wynne Jones Mailing List
(http://suberic.net/dwj/list/) whose members gave me valuable insights
into the ideas discussed above,  and Lance Nathan and Marc Moskowitz,
for the introduction to linguistics and for responding to my frequent
requests for etymologies.