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 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Miriam guards Diana at the Bodleian, but cannot deter Peter Knox from sitting nearby. Diana is glad when Matthew returns and happy to accept another invitation to yoga class. Matthew would not have left had he known Peter Knox was bothering her. Diana abruptly admits that she has been using magic all along without realizing it and has been fooling herself by thinking she’s kept magic out of her life. She is frightened. Matthew explains he was with Hamish—he had to leave Oxford because he “couldn’t stop thinking about” her (132). Although relieved that he hadn’t disappeared because their last conversation ended coolly, Diana realizes Matthew worries he could hurt her. Both are finally being honest with each other. Matthew wears a new talisman under his sweater—an ancient ampulla shaped like a casket from Bethany, where Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. It is a reminder of “the destructive power of anger” (132).
Matthew keeps Diana safe when she has a panic attack after yoga. He wonders why Diana called him for help instead of other witches or humans. They decide they are friends. Matthew cautions that vampires are so possessive, relationships with them can be “complicated” (135). Diana invites Matthew to dinner the following night.
Chapter 12 Summary
Diana researches the diet of grey wolves and prepares for Matthew a mostly raw dinner. Matthew, dressed all in black and “looking like a prince in a fairy tale” (130), brings wine and white roses. Over dinner, he dispels myths about vampires. Humans created tales of vampires needing an invitation into a home or fearing sunlight to help them cope with their fear of creatures. Diana admits she doesn’t know much about vampires except what she’s heard from her prejudiced Aunt Sarah. Matthew explains that vampires have an exceptional sense of smell, their hearts beat infrequently, and they don’t need to eat or sleep much. Their cold temperature slows bodily processes.
Matthew is over 1500 years old. She asks what he was doing in 1859, something Peter Knox said Matthew wouldn’t tell her. Matthew was reading Darwin’s Origin of Species and looking for Ashmole 782. They discuss Darwin and Lamarck’s theories of evolution and compare them to alchemy. Matthew reads alchemy books searching for the answer to the vampires’ long lifespan and strength. Vampires are like the philosopher’s stone: they possess wealth, longevity, and learning. Vampires fear that if the witches recover Ashmole 782, they will destroy the vampires. Diana confides that Ashmole 782 is a palimpsest. Matthew knows time is running out to find the book. He promises to explain in his laboratory the next day. Diana kisses his cheek, and Matthew kisses both her cheeks “in the French manner” (153).
Chapter 13 Summary
In Matthew’s high-security lab, he is “using genetics to study problems of species origin and extinction” (155). Diana meets Matthew’s fellow researcher, Marcus Whitmore, a blonde, blue-eyed vampire in his late twenties. Miriam also works there. Diana’s sharp adrenaline odor intrigues them. They are predators, reacting to her fight-or-flight response. Matthew shows Diana articles about recent vampire attacks, which make Diana angry. Matthew explains the attacks reveal “species deterioration” (157): Vampire attempts to turn humans into vampires are failing. If vampires can’t reproduce, they will go extinct. Their research reveals that the same thing is happening to witches, who are not as powerful as their ancestors and are not having as many children. Mathew points to the DNA of a powerful 7th century witch named Benvenguda, whose descendants developed mutations that “pushed the magic aside” (160). Creatures now only number 10% of the population.
When vampires make a new vampire, they remove a human’s blood and replace with their own, which has a different number of chromosomal pairs. Matthew wants to discover what in vampire blood causes genetic mutations and generates new chromosomes. Diana offers a blood sample. Matthew warns that it will expose her life, family history, and everything about her parents and female ancestors, but Diana wants to know what her Bishop blood entails. Perhaps the blood from the “last Bishop” will be helpful to their research. Diana wonders if humans and creatures really are four distinct species or whether they share a common ancestor. After yoga, Matthew invites her to dinner the following night. Diana’s heart leaps at the prospect.
Chapter 14 Summary
Matthew takes Diana to his rooms at top of one of the oldest sections of All Souls College. He picks out a selection of wine from his private cellar, including a bottle from 1976, the year Diana was born. Diana loves Matthew’s blend of furnishings from different centuries. Diana is overwhelmed with curiosity about the extent of Matthew’s history with Oxford. Matthew’s dinner starts with oysters and champagne, followed by salad, partridge, and a veal stew over rice. A fine wine accompanies each course. Diana angers Matthew by asking what he thinks she would taste like. Matthew holds Diana so she can’t escape and says that her blood “makes music” and sings to him like a siren (175). Diana is frozen, “unable—unwilling—to move” as his lips trace along her neck (175). Matthew releases her, apologizing for taking advantage of her fear. Diana instinctually knows she is safe with him. Matthew admires her bravery. Diana counters that she is just stubborn.
Matthew explains that moral vampires try not to think about how people taste. Diana apologizes. Both confide that they feel strong emotions for each other, even though as witch and vampire they “aren’t meant to feel this way” (177). Diana explains how magic works: a witch imagines a desire, and it happens. Diana plans to recall Ashmole 782 in this way. Matthew cautions that she is in danger: Knox and all the creatures are waiting for her. Matthew walks her home, leaving her with a kiss.
Chapter 15 Summary
At the Bodleian, Diana submits her request for Ashmole 782. Knox tries to invade Diana’s mind again, furious that she told a vampire about “our book” (185). Diana touches Matthew’s arm to quiet his anger. Knox observes the contact and reacts unpleasantly. Matthew thinks he and Diana should leave. Diana refuses: she wants Ashmole 782. Matthew wonders if she regrets touching him, or having Knox see her touch him. Diana doesn’t regret either. Diana checks on Ashmole 782, but the library attendant says the manuscript has been missing since 1859. Diana declares she saw it recently, but the librarians disagree. All the creatures watching this exchange leave to “regroup” (187). Knox confronts Diana outside, telling her not to mix with vampires, to remember she’s a witch, or she’ll “regret it” (188). Diana panics. Matthew threatens to kill Knox, who responds that Diana “belongs to us, not you. So does the manuscript” (188).
Diana hopes that now that she can’t get Ashmole 782, she’ll be left alone, but Matthew disagrees: Everybody wants the book’s secrets. Diana becomes angry, her fingers sparking. Matthew restrains her. Diana struggles, but Matthew refuses to let her run away and insists they talk. Diana accidentally set things on fire as a child, and now this has happened twice in the last week. Matthew wants her to stay at his house until Knox leaves Oxford. Stopping to collect her mail, Diana finds a graphic photo of her murdered parents. She suffers a panic attack and tells Matthew about her parents’ death and Gillian’s threats. He gives her a tranquilizer, and Diana feels safe and connected to him.
Chapter 11-15 Analysis
Diana and Matthew’s relationship develops significantly in these chapters as the two experience more physical connection and emotional honesty. How they navigate each other’s flaws and work toward a balance of autonomy and control in their relationship will become an important theme in the novel.
Diana is physically attracted to Matthew. She tries to repress her feelings, yet she can’t help but admire Matthew’s appearance and physicality: his “beautiful, ancient features” (139), the snowflake touches of his gaze, and the freezing, burning sensation of his lips against her skin. Matthew helps open Diana’s senses, and to embrace her inner witch by challenging her to describe what she tastes and smells with each wine—and with him. Diana initiates their first kiss, which forever changes the path of her life (153). Diana is also intellectually attracted to Matthew. She respects his lengthy study at Oxford, and the historian in her is curious about his real connection to events she has only read about.
Matthew’s attraction to Diana—an unaccustomed emotion that he shouldn’t (according to creature bias) be feeling—shakes him. As they move from colleagues to trusted friends, Matthew warns Diana against romanticizing him, asserting that Knox is correct, and vampires are “never completely trustworthy” around warmbloods (135), but Diana intrinsically senses that she is safe with Matthew. Matthew offers security, which drives part of Diana’s attraction towards him: Matthew alone protects her and helps her through her panic attacks and her unease and fear surrounding Ashmole 782. Her fellow witches only offer threats. Matthew warns her that vampires tend to be possessive and protective, but at this point in her life, Diana craves that protection. She pictures a rusty chain in her soul becoming shiny and “anchoring” her to Matthew (196), suggesting that their futures are permanently linked.
Diana also moves towards accepting her heritage as a witch. She using magic and offers her Bishop blood for the vampires’ genetic research; both actions suggest she wants to know about her lineage and her powers. Still, Diana craves a human life, preferring to earn things rather than simply use magic to fulfill her desires. Diana also remains closed off from her emotions. Diana doesn’t acknowledge her anger. Despite the sparks flying from her fingertips, Diana tells Matthew “I don’t do angry” (191). She denies the significance of the sudden return of her childhood expression of anger.
The theme of prejudice and proscription against deserting one’s people takes a more ominous tone in this section. Both Peter Knox and Gillian see Diana as a race traitor: She goes against the best interests of the witches by allying with a vampire. When Matthew wonders why Diana calls him for help, she admits she has no witch friends. Diana’s lack of same-species friends reveals both her denial of self and her hereditary independence. Diana and Matthew’s relationship breaks racial barriers, but also spawns hatred. Diana doesn’t regret touching Matthew in front of Knox, even though Knox views Matthew as an “animal” and Diana’s connection to him the height of betrayal (188). Because Diana is a witch, Knox claims a kind of racial ownership of her and her powers: “She belongs to us, not you” (188).
Discovering the origins of humans and creatures through genetic testing or with the help of Ashmole 782 could remove grounds for this prejudice. Understanding Matthew’s research, which draws on Darwin’s theories, makes this clearer. Diana and Matthew discuss two different approaches to evolution. In 1801, the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck theorized that organisms adapt to their environments during their lifetimes, and then pass on those changes to their offspring. He also proposed that nature drove organisms to change from simple to more complex forms. Matthew compares this view of evolution to the alchemist who transmuted base metals into “more exalted metals” (149). In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, setting forth his theory of natural selection. Darwin posited that life forms with variations better adapted to their environments would survive, and others would die off. Matthew adds that Origin is primarily about extinction (159) rather than beginnings. Matthew’s reasoning opens Diana to the idea that magic “really was in everything,” including Darwin’s theory of evolution (150).
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