The protagonists in Diana Wynne Jones’s stories often believe their lives are predestined to follow a specific course, only to discover that what they consider destiny turns out to be a kind of social expectation; rules laid down by someone no more remarkable or extraordinary than they are.
In its opening lines, Howl’s Moving Castle establishes a world where a belief in predestination appears prevalent:
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.
Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie was two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny.
This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least. (p 1)
This idea that her life is laid out for her and she cannot escape fate is one that Sophie Hatter embraces wholeheartedly. Indeed, she takes it to extremes. She believes that she will fail first and worst in spite of her actual experience to date. Unlike her sisters, she swallows society’s teachings—in this case fairytales—whole. As a direct result of this willful self-deception, she finds herself bespelled by the Witch of the Waste. After a series of adventures in which she stubbornly closes her eyes and ears to reality, she is furious when Wizard Howl suggests that she bespelled herself:
“Do you honestly think I don’t know my own business well enough not to spot a strong spell like that when I see it? I had several goes at taking it off you when you weren’t looking. But nothing seems to work. I took you to Mrs. Pentstemmon, hoping she could do something, but she evidently couldn’t. I came to the conclusion that you liked being in disguise.”
“Disguise!” Sophie yelled.
Howl laughed at her. “It must be, since you’re doing it yourself,” he said. “What a strange family you are!”
This was too much for Sophie. Percival edged nervously in just then, carrying the half-full bucket of weed-killer. Sophie dropped her can, seized the bucket from him, and threw it at Howl. Howl ducked. Michael dodged the bucket. The weed-killer went up in a sheet of sizzling green flame from floor to ceiling. The bucket clanged into the sink, where all the remaining flowers died instantly.
“Ow!” said Calcifer from under his logs. “That was strong.”
…”Of course it was strong….Sophie never does things by halves.” (p 183)
Sophie is finally forced to acknowledge what has been glaringly apparent to everyone else all along, and what she has stubbornly denied despite all evidence to the contrary: first that she is an extremely powerful witch, and second that the only thing holding her back from success is herself. She used societal expectation as an excuse to avoid fulfilling her potential and tried to find a safe, unchallenging role instead of one her talents best equipped her for. However, her talents did not disappear because she ignored them, she simply used them unconsciously.
This is made amusingly clear in the scene where she meets with Mrs. Pentstemmon, Howl’s former tutor. Sophie’s gift is talking life and magic into things. In the hat shop, she accidentally charmed the hats by talking to herself as she made them; and each of her charms came to pass. Later, as she mends Howl’s suit she mutters, “Goodness, you’re a fine suit….Built to pull in the girls, aren’t you?” (p 53). When she visits Mrs. Pentstemmon some time later, Howl is wearing that suit.
“Take his whole appearance,” Mrs. Pentstemmon said sweepingly. “Look at his clothes….what call has he to be walking around in a charmed suit? It is a dazzling attraction charm, directed at ladies—very well done, I admit, and barely detectable even to my trained eye, since it appears to have been darned into the seams—and one which will render him almost irresistible to ladies. This represents a downward trend into black arts.”….Sophie thought uneasily about the gray-and-scarlet suit. She had darned the seams without noticing it had anything particular about it. But Mrs. Pentstemmon was an expert on magic, and Sophie was only an expert on clothes.” (p 115)
Sophie likely feels uneasy because on some level she realizes she unintentionally bespelled the suit. Try though she might, she is unable to avoid using her natural talents. Further, following this premise to its logical conclusion—a hallmark of Jones’s work—Sophie herself becomes the person who succumbs to the attraction spell in the suit. She quite literally fails to escape her gift.
The gifts of Jones’s characters are inherent talents, potentials within, not amulets or grails found without. Jones’s heroes are not the meek, ordinary, self-doubting but pure-hearted heroes of conventional fantasy, who are transformed by their quests into wise, powerful forces for good, and whom the reader can admire and look up to. If Jones’s characters do any sort of transforming, it is from one state of awareness to another. They become more conscious of themselves—their abilities and responsibilities. In other words, they grow up. In so doing, they permit their lives to expand to contain the unexpected, the extraordinary, the whimsical, the magical, knowing that their talents will enable them to meet life’s challenges. And because the reader feels kinship with, rather than admiration for, these characters, the reader is encouraged to look within also, for innate gifts and self-direction.