Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Strange writes letters to his brother-in-law, Henry Woodhope, begging him to come to Venice. He tells Henry that he has discovered what happened to Arabella. His letters are confused about exactly what happened to her, but in the last letter recorded, he says that she is up under the ground in a brugh, a fairy barrow. One of the footnotes mentions that a letter is missing from the series. In Strange’s room, Lord Byron watches with interest the magic and drinking that Strange does at all hours. He makes no motion to help the man. He is gathering material for his epic poem Manfred, a story in verse about a magician overwhelmed by magic. Also in the room but invisible to Strange are the man with the thistle-down hair and Stephen. The man with the thistle-down hair is gleeful at the amount of suffering that Strange is undergoing. He is also worried that Strange will discover that he needs to use the box containing Lady Pole’s little finger. Stephen wills Strange to find the box and even places it in his way, but it is as if Strange has forgotten he has the box.

Henry Woodhope visits Norrell, hoping that Norrell can help him to cure Strange of his illness, but there is no help for Strange from that source. Norrell convinces Henry not to go to Venice to save his brother-in-law and forces Henry to hand over the letters from Strange. Norrell then edits the letters to look like a confession that Strange murdered Arabella. He publishes the doctored letters. Strange’s manservant exhumes Arabella’s body and finds a moss-oak instead of a corpse. The “madness” of Strange soon causes other problems. Italy and Austria, which currently govern Venice, complain about the never-ending darkness in the area around the black tower. The endless night is a violation of “The Natural Order of Things“ (706), and while the English government happily accepted Strange moving around parts of Portugal, they do not want the same to happen in England.

Drawlight arrives in Venice and spreads foul rumors about Strange. Strange brings Drawlight to the Black Tower and forces Drawlight to reveal Lady Pole’s whereabouts in a psychiatric facility at Starecross. Strange takes the tincture, and Drawlight is right alongside him as he begins opening the doors of magic all over the world by waking trees, stones, and water. Strange gives Drawlight three tasks. He must give Childermass the box with Lady Pole’s finger and the truth about the deal with the fairy. He must tell all the magicians in England (including Strange’s old students, Segundus, Honeyfoot, and the York magicians) that magic is quite simple if they remember that “tree speaks to stone; Stone speaks to water” (722). Lastly, Drawlight must tell Norrell that Strange is coming to England for him. Drawlight returns to England. The man with the thistle-down hair feels Strange’s powerful act of magic and grows fearful. If Strange brings back wild magic, the man with the thistle-down hair will lose his power over England, and the allies of the Raven King will rally.

Aunt Greysteel takes Flora to Padua, Italy. One evening a terrible storm comes, and Flora leaves. Flora returns with Strange’s tincture, and a large and ornate mirror appears in their house. Flora lies about where she has been. The gossip in Padua the next day is about how the magician used the storm as cover for his arrival in Padua with his “Pillar of Constant Darkness” (708) and the Black Tower. Alarmed by this news, Aunt Greysteel writes to her husband, the doctor, but before the letter reaches him, he is already there with news about the storm. Flora spends all her time in the house so she can watch the mirror for any change. She goes out just once to a lagoon to set the tincture afloat on a tiny boat.

Magic returns to England, and old spells work so well that people without any education can perform magic. Norrell tries to deny this, even after Childermass shows him evidence. The government calls Norrell in to show him further evidence of magic’s return. People start to perform magic without having studied it, usually as they interact with the trees, the earth, and stones, just as Strange promised. For the first time, the ministers are inclined to listen to Norrell’s talk of restricting the practice of magic and doing something to control Strange. Norrell can’t prevent Strange from returning to England, for anything with a reflective surface—puddles, mirrors, basins of water—can serve as a portal to any other place. The fairy roads have also reappeared, and people can see magical destinations at the ends of these roads. Drawlight returns to England.

Drawlight meets Lascelles at a crossroads, believing that Lascelles is going to give him a horse to help him reach London. Lascelles forces Drawlight to disclose the letters Strange sent and to hand over the little box with Lady Pole’s finger. He then shoots and kills Drawlight. The woods and plants immediately consume Drawlight’s body, leaving just a stone where his heart was and blooms and shoots that look something like his body—the fulfillment of a part of Vinculus’s prophecy. Lascelles sees this as a sign that Strange’s magic is self-defeating and feels no remorse for his actions.

Norrell forces his household to take the long journey to Hurtfew. Once in Hurtfew, Childermass learns through his cards that Lascelles has withheld both Drawlight’s message and a package. Lascelles lies when Childermass asks what Drawlight said, but Childermass knows he is lying. The two get into a fight. Lascelles cuts Childermass from eye to mouth, but Childermass takes the opportunity to pick Lascelles’s pocket and steal the box with Lady Pole’s finger. Lascelles forces Norrell to choose between Lascelles (a gentleman) or Childermass (a servant). Norrell chooses Lascelles. The other servants wish Childermass a tearful goodbye, and he makes them promise to help Norrell and Strange. Strange arrives in Hurtfew, which falls into “Endless Night” (686) just like Venice did. Norrell rushes to defend the library but cannot find it for quite a while because Strange has changed the protective labyrinth spell that hides it.

Childermass goes to Starecross. He can see that Starecross exists in both the mundane and the magical world and that there is a version of Lady Pole in each. He and Segundus perform an old spell to free Emma Pole, and it works. She becomes one person. She intends to punish both Norrell and Strange, the latter of whom she dislikes because of his neglect of Arabella. She tells them that Stephen and Arabella are still trapped in Lost-hope. Childermass and Segundus leave for Hurtfew to help the magicians save Stephen and Arabella.

The servants at Hurtfew abandon the manor. Too proud to go with them, Lascelles strikes out on his own and crosses a fairy bridge that takes him to the Castle of the Plucked Eye and Heart. Killing Drawlight gave him such a thrill that he wants to kill again, so he shoots the young man guarding the castle and is then forced to take the young man’s place. He doesn’t realize the enchantment he is under until someone like him enters the castle yard, and he repeats the same challenge that the young man made to him.

The man with the thistle-down hair tells Stephen that he has discovered the butler’s true name by committing a string of murders to hunt down the last traces of things that were near Stephen’s mother as she died—the ship timbers that heard her cries as she gave birth; a kiss the captain of the slave ship forced on her; and her bones, which the sea crushed and transmuted into the seeds of pearls after the sailors threw her body into the sea. Stephen is horrified and insists that he has no interest in being king, but the fairy won’t listen, for he intends to kill George III and hunt for Jonathan Strange.

Stephen persuades him not to kill the king and Strange just yet, so the fairy conjures his greatest enemy, Vinculus. Vinculus claims he has a book that will defend him, but the man with the thistle-down hair hangs Vinculus with surprising ease. The Lord of Lost-hope senses that the spell on Lady Pole has been lifted. He intends to kill her, seeing it as a fitting punishment for someone who escapes an enchantment.

The meeting between Strange and Norrell is anticlimactic. Strange asks for help to save Arabella. Norrell confesses how he wronged Strange, but Strange brushes these acts aside. The two then fall into their old rhythm of working together. They try to construct a spell to conjure the Raven King, the only person Strange suspects can bring Arabella back. Norrell is less certain that the Raven King will involve himself with mere human concerns, and the other difficulty is they don’t know his name. “Uskglass,” “the nameless slave,” and “the Black King” are not his real names because real names have power, and the Raven King was always careful not to reveal his. The two magicians craft a spell using items that the king touched or interacted with. A great host of ravens flies into the library, transforming many of the books into ravens temporarily. Then, Strange and Norrell cast a finding spell and realize that the Raven King is close by. Norrell also realizes that he is now just as trapped in the Eternal Darkness as Strange is, likely because the person who cast the spell (the fairy) didn’t specify which English magician should be cursed.

Childermass comes across Vinculus, whose body hangs from a hawthorn tree in a field. It looks like the image on his cards of Marseilles. Childermass cuts him down, and he notices that Vinculus’s skin is covered in the script of the Raven King just like the Page of Wands from his cards of Marseilles. In fact, Vinculus’s skin is engraved with the words of Robert Findhelm’s book, the one that explains how John Uskglass will return to England. A mysterious man with long, black hair comes and resurrects Vinculus. He temporarily immobilizes Childermass and then leaves. This man is either the Raven King or one of his deputies. Vinculus tells Childermass his story, that Vinculus’s father (Clegg) ate the book of Robert Findhelm, and when Vinculus was later born, the words of the book were embedded in his skin. The prophecy he told to Black and Strange is one about the restoration of magic in England. He also tells Childermass that the true king of England is a Black man—Stephen—who will be crowned shortly. Childermass doesn’t believe him and declares that Norrell and Strange are the ones bringing back magic. Vinculus says their actions are simply a spell that the Raven King is working.

The man with the thistle-down hair drags Stephen along as he races to Starecross to kill Lady Pole. At Hurtfew, Strange and Norrell decide that the best way to conjure the Raven King is by waking all of England, down to the rocks and roots, to acknowledge him as the king. The spell works, but the fairy’s meddling makes England think that Stephen is the king. Stephen accepts each elemental power and uses them all to destroy the fairy completely. Stephen’s powers over England leave him once England realizes that he isn’t really the Raven King. Stephen enters Lost-hope, only now it is surrounded by light because Stephen has gained the fairy’s powers over Faerie. He tells the people there that they will set the house to rights. In Padua, the Greysteels help Arabella climb from Faerie into the mundane world through the ornate mirror in the sitting room. At Hurtfew, an enormous raven eye that towers over Norrell and Strange peers at them and leaves. They realize that they are no more than specks to the Raven King. They are still trapped in Eternal Darkness.

With the prophecy of the nameless enslaved person and the restoration of English magic fulfilled, the characters on Vinculus’s skin shift to something that Childermass cannot read. Hurtfew disappears entirely, and Strange and Norrell along with it. With Norrell gone from England, York’s Society of Magicians reconvenes. There are now two rival schools of magic—the Strangites and the Norrellites. When Childermass and Vinculus show up at a York meeting they advertised, the old York magicians scoff at them. Common, ordinary people and even women are gathered there, and it is nothing at all like the conclave of stuffy gentlemen who once made up the society. In Padua, Arabella rests and mends. Strange manages to open a temporary door in Padua so he can see Arabella. They are glad to see each other, but it is clear that neither intends to join the other. Arabella is where she wants to be, and Strange is enjoying the scholarship and experimentation he conducts with Norrell inside the Pillar of Darkness.