62 pages • 2 hours read
Deborah HarknessA Discovery of Witches
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
American professor Dr. Diana Bishop discovers an unusual book while researching 17th century chemistry at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The book, known as Ashmole 782, is a “thick quarto-size manuscript” bound in calfskin (1), and part of Bodleian’s collection of works by the 17th century alchemist, Elias Ashmole. Diana senses immediately that the book has supernatural power. Diana is a witch, although she rejects this part of her heritage. Diana’s mother, Rebecca Bishop, was a talented witch who married Stephen Proctor, an equally powerful wizard. Diana’s Aunt Sarah, her mother’s sister, is also a witch, and the Bishops can trace their family history back to Bridget Bishop, the first witch executed during the Salem witch trials. Diana resists her own magical powers because she blames her parents’ magic for their disappearance and death in Africa. Instead, Diana relies on research and science to direct her own life. Diana doesn’t need her magic to be successful in the academic world: She is a published author and tenured faculty member at Yale. Another visiting American scholar and fellow witch, Gillian Chamberlain, tries unsuccessfully to get Diana to join the local coven.
While examining Ashmole 782, Diana struggles to treat it as a regular book. But the book sighs and refuses to open until she lays her hand on it. Inside, the illustrations, while beautifully wrought, are alchemically incorrect. There is no accompanying explanatory text, but Diana sees that the book is a palimpsest: a manuscript that has been erased and written over with new text. In Ashmole 782, the original writing is hidden by a spell. Disconcerted and determined not to get involved with magic, Diana sends the book back to the stacks.
Chapter 2 Summary
On the holiday of Mabon, while other witches celebrate the autumn equinox, Diana spends the evening researching in the Bodleian. After locating a book she needs on an unreachable top shelf, Diana breaks her personal rule against using magic and wills the book into her hands. She suddenly feels an icy gaze on her back, and knows a vampire is watching her. While the look of a witch tingles, and the gaze of a daemon feels like a kiss, the stare of a vampire is “cold, focused, and dangerous” (17). Diana quickly spots the vampire. He is tall, with broad shoulders, slender hips, and long, delicate hands. He has black hair, and grey-green eyes. He appears to be in his mid-to-late 30s and is strikingly handsome: a “feral combination of strength, agility, and keen intelligence” (18). Fearful, Diana looks around for help, but the area is deserted. Diana tries to get away, but trips down the stairs into the vampire’s arms.
The vampire politely introduces himself as Matthew Clairmont, a professor of biochemistry. He claims to be a fan of Diana’s work, and invites her to dinner. Diana refuses. Matthew knows she will be in Oxford for the year and promises to meet her again. Flustered, Diana gives up her research and returns to her rooms at New College, locking the door behind her. She opens her window to air out the room and falls asleep, only to awaken in a panic a few hours later. Diana calls her Aunt Sarah and Sarah’s partner Emily “Em” Mather to tell them about the vampire. Sarah wonders what Matthew wants and warns Diana to stay away from him. Sarah wants Diana to take magical precautions but Diana refuses. Em has a premonition, but won’t elaborate.
Chapter 3 Summary
he narrative changes from Diana’s first-person perspective to the third person limited, focusing on Matthew’s point of view. Matthew follows Diana home, thinking that although she looks young and vulnerable, she may not be as easy to frighten as he thought. Diana showed unusual strength under his vampire gaze in the library. Matthew climbs up her apartment building and observes Diana through the open window. When Diana falls asleep, Matthew slips inside and searches for Ashmole 782, believing that as a witch, especially a Bishop, she would never let the book go. As he watches Diana sleep, Matthew notices a pale blue light radiating from her body and is surprised how much power magical power she has. Matthew believes that Diana uses her magic in her research and writing—he was friends with Cornelius Drebbel, Isaac Newton, and several of the other historical figures Diana wrote about, so he doesn’t think she could have understood them and written about them so accurately without using magic. Failing to find Ashmole 782, Matthew assumes it is still in the Bodleian and vanishes out the window.
Chapter 4 Summary
The next morning, Diana returns to the library and finds Matthew sitting in her usual seat. Diana sits as far away from him as possible when he greets her with a smile. She suggests to him that “someone like you” might be more comfortable away from the sunshine (33), though she knows that vampires don’t burst into flames, or have fangs or supernatural powers, but they do have “preternatural senses and abilities” (34). Matthew assures her that their meeting the other day was simply coincidence. Diana grumpily feels that Matthew has taken control of the situation.
Several non-human creatures arrive in the reading room: a confused daemon, a vampire monk, and two female vampires whom Matthew warns off. When an old, scholarly-looking male witch approaches, Diana feels a threatening pressure in her head and hears an indistinguishable voice. When Matthew moves protectively toward Diana, the witch retreats. Matthew wants to take Diana home, but she angrily refuses to be “driven out of this library” (37). Finally, unable to concentrate, Diana goes for a run and a row on the river. The exercise helps her calm down until Matthew appears on her route. Diana asks why he and his “friends” (41) are stalking her. Matthew scornfully replies they are not his friends, but they are interested in her. He explains that Ashmole 782 is something precious that has been lost for a long time, and that many creatures want it back. Matthew tells Diana she is an “unusual” witch (43), with massive potential and warns her to be careful.
Chapter 5 Summary
Diana researches Matthew Clairmont’s background and finds very little about him on the internet, other than his Royal Society Fellowship. Diana does find Matthew’s scholarly literature: He has made scientific breakthroughs with his research on the brain’s frontal lobe and studies of Norwegian wolves. Matthew’s wolf research involved performing blood analysis and tracing family clans and inherited traits. Diana wonders how old Matthew must truly be to have produced so much work.
Diana calls Chris Roberts, a friend and fellow faculty member at Yale who helped her with alchemical research, for more information about Matthew. Chris says that the “elusive, reclusive Professor Clairmont” (47) is a true Nobel prize-level genius who may be keeping a big scientific find under wraps. Chris shares rumors that Matthew has a temper, doesn’t like women, and is an “intellectual snob” (49). Chris is impressed that Matthew is interested in Diana. She scoffs at the idea, but Chris bets that Matthew will ask her out within a week. Diana still doesn’t know why Matthew is interested in Ashmole 782.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The enduring power of real-world history suffuses the narrative of The Discovery of Witches, woven into everything from the novel’s setting to its major themes.
Harkness plays with the ways her novel’s world mirrors our reality. The novel’s opening chapters take place in England’s real prestigious Oxford University, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Diana spends significant time in the Bodleian Library, one of the oldest libraries in Britain, in the Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room, the oldest reading room in the Bodleian. Being grounded in material history, with its familiar scent of “old stone, dust, woodworm, and paper made property from rags” lifts Diana’s spirits (31). For her, the Bodleian is a bastion of rationality, science, and learning: things Diana has come to value above her supernatural powers.
Just as Oxford and the Bodleian have real-world counterparts, so does the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782. Born in 1617, Elias Ashmole was a British historian, astrologer, alchemist, and one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society, of which Matthew Clairmont is a member in the novel. Ashmole amassed a large collection of antiquities and bequeathed them to the University of Oxford. Ashmole 782 is a genuine manuscript currently missing from the Bodleian. In A Discovery of Witches, Ashmole 782 symbolizes hope and contains the secrets of the different creature groups.
Diana research puts her at the boundary between science and magic. She is studying the history of alchemy—the medieval precursor to modern chemistry. Alchemy centered on the search for the mythical philosopher’s stone: a substance that could transform base metals into gold, cure diseases, and grant youth and immortality. Alchemical language relied on the use of allegorical symbols to represent substances and processes. There is a lot of ambiguity behind the symbols, however: They can have different meanings within the same text and interpreting them is challenging. In her studies, Diana is searching for “patterns that would reveal a systematic, logical approach” (12) to early chemical transformation. What she discovers with Ashmole 782 is illogical: “each illustration had at least one fundamental flaw” (12), and flies in the face of what she knows about alchemy.
Diana’s journey to self-acceptance will be a significant theme in the novel. At first, Diana rejects her magical heritage and consciously represses an intrinsic part of her identity. As a child, she was frightened when her mother lost control of her magic while calling up wraiths. Now Diana thinks that her parents died because of their magic (6-7). She believes that by denying her own magical powers, she achieves autonomy. Diana believes magic use to be a “slippery slope” (25-26), and anxiously keeps track of the number of times she uses it per year (16). Instead, Diana relies on scholarship to build her career: She wants to keep her analyses magic-free, like those of her “human colleagues” (3). Nevertheless, Matthew notes that Diana literally shimmers with unrealized potential power (43).
Another of the novel’s major themes is prejudice and its effects. Witches, daemons, and vampires are supposed to avoid human notice and avoid mixing with each other. The result is centuries of fear and prejudicial stereotypes. Sarah reveals her significant bias against daemons and vampires, who she believes are lesser creatures than witches. Diana’s own comment to Matthew that “someone like you” would want to move out of the sun (33), reveals her lack of knowledge about other magical creatures, and hints at her own biases.
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