The Use of Multiple Points of View to Emphasize the Effects of the Fantastic in White Is for Witching Alexandra Bayer College

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi uses several different points of view to narrate the story, including those of Miranda, her girlfriend Ore, Miranda’s twin brother Eliot, and with slightly less frequency, the house. The house is, in this novel, alive in a way, and with a very specific motivation. The house describes itself in an omnipresent sense: “I am here, reading with you. I am reading this over your shoulder. I make your home home, I’m the Braille on your wallpaper that only your fingers can read—I tell you where you are. Don’t turn to look at me. I am only tangible when you don’t look (Oyeyemi 61). As it tells in a memory of Miranda’s ancestor Anna Good:

[Anna] spoke from that part of her that was older than her. The part of her that will always tie me to her, to her daughter Jennifer, to Jennifer’s stubborn daughter Lily, to Lily’s even more stubborn daughter Miranda. I can only be as good as they are. We are on the inside, and we have to stay together, and we absolutely cannot have anyone else (95).

The house only accepts the women in the bloodline who carry the ambiguous ‘part’ that is handed down over generations, and refuses anyone who is not included in this description. The house is the true central character...