In 2011, when I wrote the first Pratchett’s Women essay about gender roles in the early Discworld novels, I discovered this about the excellent Witches Abroad (1991):
This is a fantasy novel by a bestselling male author in which all the important characters are women.
We have the trio of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat, travelling to foreign parts. We have the witches/cooks of Genua: Lilith, Mrs Pleasant, and Mrs Gogol. We have Emberella, the hub around which the story is constructed. But the only male characters of any note are a) a frog turned into a prince who rarely speaks and is basically a MacGuffin, b) a cat-turned-human who has no agency, barely any voice, and no personal needs beyond a bowl of fish-heads, c) a zombie, and, d) a dwarf one-note-joke about Casanova, who arrives in the final act and provides some brief comic relief. (Casanunda becomes a far more important character in later books, but is blink-or-you’ll-miss-him here.)
How rare is it to find a book that does this? How rare to have a story with so many women in it that you don’t even need a romance because the women already have plenty to do? In the fantasy genre. This revelation completely did my head in, forcing me to re-evaluate a novel that I had already loved for half my life.
“The Boobs, the Bad & the Broomsticks,” Pratchett’s Women 2011
It was this discovery that sparked the idea of examining the supporting roles of men across all the Witch novels — to examine how Terry Pratchett presents male characters in the novels that are led by women.
Far more than in Equal Rites or Wyrd Sisters, the men of Witches Abroad exist to serve (either literally, providing skills or assistance, or figuratively, pushing forward the narrative) the female characters, and witches in particular. There are still so many speculative fiction stories in the world where women exist as shadows, love interests and vulnerable plot tokens in comparison to the more active male roles; fantasy has come a long way over the decades, but it was a big deal in 1991 to find a story that so thoroughly turned these tables.[1]
I’ve divided the male characters of Witches Abroad into four handy categories: men who listen, men who assist, men who aren’t men, and men who aren’t there.
Men Who Listen
Let’s start with Death.[2]
Death’s role in the Discworld is largely that of the amusing, well-timed cameo, with the occasional foray into protagonist and/or protagonist-adjacent figure. As a character whose job is to observe and, occasionally, to be observed, he turns up several times in Witches Abroad, mostly in a running joke about how authentic his ‘skeleton costume’ looks during the Fat Tuesday celebrations.
Death witnesses three ‘deaths’ towards the end of the book, taking Baron Saturday right on schedule, and providing a riddle for Lily and Esme Weatherwax which shows the difference between the sisters and allows them a rare opportunity to escape their fate.
I was most interested in his first appearance in the novel. Arriving in good time to witness the passing of Desiderata Hollow, Death keeps her company while she makes her final arrangements. We learn so much about Desiderata from this scene, narrating her concerns about dying with her work (and story) incomplete.
Death does not need to be in this scene — he could be a hat rack[3] — but it is a Discworld constant that Death only turns up to a death when it’s narratively important. His presence advises the experienced reader to pay attention. Desiderata’s flurry of words (many of which don’t make sense until re-reading the novel) reference the inevitable conflict between the Weatherwax sisters, the fairy godmother wand, and the all-important theme of how to make witches do things (by telling them not to). Death provides a calm, soothing presence who listens to Desiderata, acknowledges her final thoughts, and provides a passive canvas on which she foreshadows the story to come.
Hurker the poacher then plays a similar role in delivering Desiderata’s wand and letter to Magrat — he provides an outside point of view of one of our witchy main characters, and promptly disappears from the story.
There are little scenes like this dotted throughout the book. Nanny writes endless letters to her eldest son Jason, without receiving or expecting any response. One of the funniest and most character-rich Granny Weatherwax scenes, that of her victory at Cripple Mr Onion, is told from the point of view of Mr Frank, a card sharp who quickly learns the danger of underestimating old ladies. The Duc, hovering in Lily Weatherwax’s wake, provides languid cues for her villainous monologues, but otherwise exists only to be in the room while she talks to herself. Mrs Gogol has her own convenient male listener in the zombie servant Saturday, who performs chores on command while biding his time.
Witches Abroad is a book where women talk, and men listen.
When men do speak in the story, it’s often to provide a sounding board for a witch rather than because they have anything important to say. When men do have important things to say, such as Jason sharing his concerns with Magrat about letting Granny and Nanny looseupon Abroad, or Baron Saturday revealing his return from the dead, they often go unheard.
Men Who Assist
The best definition of a supporting character is one who assists the protagonist, providing skills, services or succour on their quest.
In Witches Abroad, various men assist the witches behind the scenes even without appearing on the page: from Mr Vernissage, the designer of a witch’s hat strong enough to stand up to a falling house (As Approved by Nanny Ogg), to the ‘mysterious’ Lobsang Dibbler whose correspondence course has improved Magrat’s confidence despite being an obvious scam. Jason Ogg, master blacksmith, has even shared the secret of his craft with Granny Weatherwax, which proves to be extremely useful.
We also encounter more traditional helpers, often male, along the path to Genua — the witches stumble through various fairy tale scenes and rural myths which serve to build up Lily as the Big Bad, and give the reader an opportunity to watch the witches in their element. Support is provided by the dwarves (probably men) who offer dwarf bread as a reward for uncollapsing a mine, the head dwarf/munchkin who provides Granny with important information about her sister, the woodcutter who is too late to save the day but necessary to put the poor wolf out of his misery… and all the other woodcutters who are shamed into helping the old grandmother as the witches leave the forest.
Casanunda the dwarf arrives late in the story, offering all manner of assistance without his own agenda (except a desire to make out with Nanny Ogg if she could spare a minute). He starts out as a willing dance partner, transitions to helpful swain, and generally trots around behind Nanny, waiting for more opportunities to lend a hand and/or remind her that he is attracted to women who are older, taller and wider than himself.[4] Casanunda’s dwarfish strength is used to tamper with the midnight clock, and to break the witches out of prison. The author notes it as significant that Nanny is the only one of the witches who would be willing to ask him for assistance:
Then she did what neither Granny Weatherwax nor Magrat would have dreamed of doing in the circumstances. But Nanny Ogg’s voyages on the sea of intersexual dalliance had gone rather further than twice around the lighthouse, and she saw nothing demeaning in getting a man to help her.
From what we have seen of Granny, while she does not object to being helped as is her right as a witch, her pride is such that asking for help (not to mention simpering like Nanny does, making the askee feel important) would be considered beyond the pale. Magrat, meanwhile, has been flirting with a very limited notion of feminism, and is more likely to pretend she has everything under control.
Another key helper character is the zombie Saturday, who is introduced as an indentured servant, though we later learn that he views his relationship with Mrs Gogol as an equal partnership. When Nanny first brings Granny to meet Mrs Gogol, Granny is clearly offended by the idea of zombies. In the space of a single conversation (less than the time it takes to eat a bowl of gumbo) Granny confronts her biases, works through her innate disapproval, and accepts Saturday as a fellow person.
It is rare to see Granny Weatherwax changing her mind about a long-held belief. Here, she must immediately put her new perspective into practice when her hat is lost to the alligators: she goes from being disgusted by Saturday’s very existence to being disgusted by the idea she might use him as a tool to reclaim a beloved but inanimate object. Mrs Gogol’s treatment of Saturday is still on Granny’s mind later on when the witches discuss whether Mrs Gogol can be trusted to rule the city when Lily is gone — or if she likes power far too much.
As for Saturday himself — like Verence I and even Duke Felmet back in Wyrd Sisters, he thinks of himself as an important character, but is given short shrift by the author and the witches alike. When Saturday reveals himself to Genua as the murdered Baron, the witches literally talk over his grand speech in order to debate their concerns about Mrs Gogol who is, to their mind, a far more dangerous threat.
Men Who Aren’t Men
Witches Abroad is full of transformations, thanks to fairy godmother magic. Lily Weatherwax has a taste for transforming creatures into humans, while Granny Weatherwax prefers to merely make people think they have been transformed.
The most significant examples of transformed men in the story are the Duc and Greebo.
The Duc, referred to interchangeably as the Prince, is a shadowy, unpleasant man trailing behind Lily Weatherwax. He is revealed to be a frog who was transformed in order to marry Embers and fulfill the Cinderella story. As with the wolf, the sisters (snakes) and the coachmen (rats & mice), the Duc’s existence proves how monstrous Lily has become in her pursuit of fairy tale endings. Nanny and Granny are physically revolted when they learn the truth about him… and yet they demonstrate few qualms about transforming Greebo into a man.
The transformation of Nanny’s ever-present cat Greebo (a beloved and iconic Discworld character) is barely justified by the witches or the plot. They need him to stop a coach, drive Magrat to the ball in said coach (after which he is left to his own devices) — it’s all pretty thin. But they are “good” witches, so doing this couldn’t possibly be wrong…
The transformation of Greebo from cat into human is largely used for humorous effect, and shown to be a more harmless and amusing transformation than anything performed by Lily Weatherwax. We do not witness the Duc’s transformation, but are encouraged to think of it as being entirely repugnant, especially because he is being forced up on Embers as a husband. In contrast, Greebo’s transformation emphasises his sexuality, in a rare Discworld scene employing the female gaze:
Greebo turned slowly, a faint, lazy smile on his scarred face. As a human, his nose was broken and a black patch covered his bad eye. But the other one glittered like the sins of angels, and his smile was the downfall of saints. Female ones, anyway.
In human form, the leather-clad Greebo pursues and attacks a carriage, slinks around a ballroom in a cat mask (“aaalwaaays waanted to bee ginger”),[5] seduces a random lady in a bathroom, and fills his belly in the kitchen. Later, we learn that this experience has indeed been disorienting for Greebo, who seeks comfort in the company of Mrs Pleasance (the local equivalent to Nanny Ogg), and inhales a pile of fish heads under a kitchen table. Still, he recovers quickly, and later returns to cat form without any harm done.[6] The same can not be said of the Duc, who is dispatched by Greebo in the final act of the story with the same unconcerned violence one might expect in a fight of Cat vs Frog.
Men Who Aren’t There
In considering the use of men as minor characters in this female-centred narrative, I have to acknowledge the men who are defined by their absence. We hear a lot about the dead mother trope in fairy tales, but fairy tales also contain unreliable, missing and inaccessible fathers, whose absence allows the story to take place.
Cinderella’s father is a man who fails his daughter. Depending on the version of the story, he either dies/disappears soon after his second marriage or is simply too passive to prevent his daughter being bullied by his new wife. The reveal of Baron Saturday as Emberella’s father, at the end of Witches Abroad, works well because no one expects Cinderella’s father to show up, let alone to reveal he was there in plain sight all along.
The return of Baron Saturday is brief — after harbouring thoughts of vengeance for twelve long years as a zombie, he returns to the status of Baron for about five minutes, long enough to pass his city over to Ella, who does not even know who he is or why she should care. Saturday is then collected by Death, leaving Mrs Gogol once more to watch over their daughter from afar. Saturday’s desire for personal vengeance is dismissed as unimportant by Mrs Gogol as well as the witches — dealing with Lily Weatherwax is not the job of a man, and he really is surplus to requirements.
Another absent figure is Jason Ogg, whom we only see in person at the opening of the story. As the addressee of Nanny’s effusive postcards, he represents the home left behind and her extended family as a whole. It’s interesting that Nanny directs her postcards to Jason, her eldest son, though he cannot read and his younger brother Shawn can. It doesn’t matter, of course, because the postcards don’t reach home before Nanny… but there’s a nod there to conventional patriarchy, implying that Jason’s role is that of head of the family.
Finally, King Verence, who we last saw at the end of Wyrd Sisters hoping to court Magrat despite his new job, is barely mentioned in this novel. The older witches take for granted that the pair are going to end up together, but there is gaping silence from Magrat herself on the subject of her relationship status.
That relationship status will become hugely important in the next Witch book, Lords and Ladies, in which Verence will attempt a Lily Weatherwax-style scheme to rush Magrat into a pre-arranged wedding, with the full encouragement of Granny and Nanny. I will be employing all the exclamation points in the world when we get to that particular essay!
CONCLUSION
Men in Witches Abroad are not unimportant, but they are kept in the background consistently in a way that feels entirely deliberate. Even those men in key support roles are left out of the spotlight (sometimes quite firmly shoved out of the spotlight) so that the narrative can ricochet between the significant female characters (all witches, except for Embers). Everything in the novel builds towards a satisfying showdown between Granny Weatherwax and Lily Weatherwax, with everyone else stepping out of the way to let that happen…
Even Death.
Notes
[1] The elephant in the room (not the kind the witches went to see) when it comes to Witches Abroad is the theme of race, given that this book includes many people of colour, references to New Orleans culture, voodoo traditions, the folklore around Baron Samedi, etc., and was, after all, written by a British white man in 1991. I won’t be addressing those themes here as it’s not my lived experience or area of expertise.
[2] One can argue that Death is not a man; but as a male-presenting anthropomorphic figure, he’s going to come up a lot in these columns.
[3] “The sexy lampshade” is a famous trope where a female character has so little to contribute to the story that you could replace her with a sexy lampshade without affecting the plot (it’s best not to think too hard about what makes the lampshade sexy). Men as honorary hat racks, being a subversion of this gendered trope and far less common, are nothing to complain about.
[4] He’s my favourite.
[5] The butler is surprised that Greebo chooses the cat mask because it’s “pretty,” and not the type of mask usually chosen by men. When Greebo, supremely confident in his own masculinity, puts the mask on, it takes on elements of his own authentic personality.
[6] He is, however, irrevocably affected; one of the immutable laws of magic in the Discworld is that once an object or person has been changed by magic once, it is easier to repeat the spell in future; in later books, we learn that Greebo has added ‘change into a human’ to the list of options he can choose when cornered, and his future transformations offer more in the way of personal agency even though he can’t always control it.
Tansy Rayner Roberts is a Doctor of Classics, a Doctor Who podcaster, and an author of many science fiction and fantasy books, as well as the essay collection Pratchett’s Women. You can find her at tansyrr.com.