Bobby reads Discworld: Equal Rites

Three novels down in my journey through Discworld! I’ve now read Equal Rites. As the first book not starring Rincewind, this one shifts its focus from wizards to witches, introducing another series mainstay, Granny Weatherwax.

While it’s still obvious from the start that this is set in the same world as Rincewind’s misadventures, Equal Rites immediately feels like a very different book. It still has Pratchett’s comedic flair, but this book is incredibly earnest compared to the farcical tone of the last two books. At first, I was a bit disappointed that this book wasn’t as constantly funny as The Light Fantastic, but by the end I was deeply engaged by its more heartfelt narrative.

You see, with this book, Pratchett has started to move from simple genre parody to satire. Equal Rites still pokes fun at fantasy conventions, of course, but at its heart is an examination of sexism and gender roles. It just so happens that this story is told through witches and wizards.

The story begins when an elderly wizard travels to the rural town of Bad Ass (the story of how the town got its name is apparently interesting, although it’s never shared in the book). On the Discworld, the eighth son of an eighth son can perform magic and become a wizard, and so this particular wizard plans to pass his staff on to such a child before he dies. Except there’s a problem: after the wizard passes his staff on to the expected newborn, he realizes too late that the baby is, in fact, a girl. And then he dies, and the world is left with is first female wizard.

We skip ahead about seven or eight years, and now the young Eskarina Smith wants to learn wizard magic even though she’s a girl. The book feels a bit like a young adult novel at times because its protagonist is a kid, although the narration makes it clear that the book is still written for adults. This is not the world seen through a kid’s eyes, but rather an adult’s commentary on how a kid sees the world. (The need to mark the book as for adults in spite of its young hero is also probably why the opening paragraphs reference sex, and why lots of jokes about adult things that go over Esk’s head are sprinkled throughout.)

Esk is joined by Granny Weatherwax, the town witch who isn’t really related to her but is described as basically being everyone’s granny. For the first act of the book, Granny acts sort of as an antagonist (albeit a very mild one), teaching Esk the differences between witch magic and wizard magic and trying to stop her from learning the latter. Wizard magic is portrayed as being bombastic, changing the fabric of reality and shooting lightning bolts out of their hands and that sort of thing. Witch magic, on the other hand, is more in tune with nature. A lot of it could hardly be described as proper “magic” at all, actually–lots of knowing about herbs and home remedies and things. Another witch in the story reads palms and tea leaves, but most of her business seems to be selling some kind of homemade birth control concoction.

As Granny puts it, a big part of being a witch is “headology.” Witches have to lean into the theatricality of their profession with the pointy hats and the spookiness and whatnot in order to be treated like witches, and that does half of their job for them. It makes people trust that the home remedies work, or believe that a witch could really curse them, or that sort of thing. Of course, Granny does also know quite a bit of “real” magic as well. The main power she uses is “borrowing,” the act of mentally becoming one with an animal–not quite controlling it, but rather “suggesting” its actions. This leads to some fun sequences throughout the book, including one where she borrows the “mind” of an old building said to have developed something resembling a consciousness over the centuries so that she can locate Esk within it.

While there was a good deal of magic in the last two books (even if Rincewind, famously, cannot perform magic), the depiction of wizard magic in these books has already changed. In the first book, Rincewind explained that it took years of studying and a ton of effort to perform any task with magic, making a lot of it seem pointless. But here, with just a staff and no proper training, Esk figures out how to turn one of her brothers into a pig, and teleport her staff to her, and all sorts of other things. Of course, this isn’t some sort of CinemaSins ding or anything. The priorities of the books have simply shifted. In a pure genre parody like The Color of Magic, it made sense to say that magic was actually kind of stupid and pointless. Here, being a wizard needs to be desirable, because Esk’s whole arc is about wanting to become a wizard.

While Esk does do well with her witch lessons, eventually it becomes clear that she’s going to start figuring out how to use wizard magic with or without guidance, and Granny accepts that she can’t change Esk. After a bit of a journey in which they get separated and meet several side characters, Esk and Granny make their way to Unseen University. (While Rincewind is nowhere to be seen, the librarian who got turned into an orangutan in the last book is still around. He’s apparently refused to be turned back into a human and is happier this way.) Esk is humiliated by the wizards and turned down, but Granny manages to get Esk a job there as a housekeeper so that she might be able to pick up some magical knowledge while hanging around.

In the climax, Esk uses her skills to save a fellow student she befriends named Simon from some eldritch horrors that wanted to take over his mind, and as a reward she’s named the first female wizard. But she realizes that being a wizard is kind of silly, and she and Simon go off to develop their own type of magic (which, if I’m understanding correctly, involves a good deal of Not Doing Magic). In the action of the climax, Granny also manages to show the head of the school that witches know a thing or two about magic as well, and is offered a position at the university (although it’s left unsaid whether or not she took it).

Overall, I really, really enjoyed this one. This was the first book in the series that felt like it took its characters and their problems seriously, writing them as people to empathize with instead of just vehicles for jokes. The gender-based conflict is simple, but effective. I really liked that Pratchett didn’t lean into Esk being Not Like Other Girls. She actually still quite likes the feminine witch magic, and uses those skills to her advantage. It’s just that she also wants to learn wizard magic. It’s not about one being better than the other, it’s about the gender divide being silly. The book shoots down the idea that there must be some fundamental physical or psychological difference between men and women that means they’re destined to excel in different fields, which is honestly a refreshing thing to read in a fantasy novel from over 30 years ago.

While it might be a little convenient that the head wizard of the university was swayed to be less sexist so easily, I do think the ending struck a good balance. Sexism is ingrained into wizard culture, so he’s still got some biases against women, and he’s only considering letting a few women into the school to start. He’s taking baby steps. Some might see this as a failure because he only got a little better, but personally, I find this much more believable than if the book had ended with all the wizards deciding that witches were their equals and the school quickly achieving a 50/50 gender split.

People don’t quite change like that overnight. But this book does still believe that people can change, challenge their preconceived biases, and become better. And I think that’s what really sets this book apart from the previous two. It’s the first glimmer of those humanist Discworld themes I’ve heard so much about.

(Also I laughed every time a wizard said women couldn’t study as wizards because it was “against the lore.”)

So yeah, good book. Very good book. Pratchett’s style is already rapidly evolving And next, it’s finally time… for the first Death novel. I couldn’t be more excited.