The Owens women have a very long history of magic in their blood. Magic is a curse their ancestor, Maria Owens, placed on them. Almost three hundred years ago, she was sentenced to hang for witchcraft by the man she loved, the father of her child. As she faced her final moments, she cried out, “To any man who ever loves an Owens, let this curse befall you, let your fate lead to disaster, let you be broken in body and soul, and may it be that you never recover.” Maria lost her faith in love and doomed her family for centuries because of it. Find out all the details of her heartbreaking story in Alice Hoffman’s Magic Lessons.
[Warning: My review of Magic Lessons contains some spoilers!]
We travel back to the beginning of the Owens line in Magic Lessons
The Owens family has always traced their ancestry back to Maria Owens. Most likely because that’s who wrote the grimoire that has been passed down through the family for generations. In all honesty, it’s impossible to find the true “prime” ancestor of a family, but since she’s the one who literally wrote the book for their family, along with building the ancestral home that’s been passed down through the ages, Maria is, for all intents and purposes, the first Owens. And since she’s the witch who cursed their family, she’s always been a very prominent character in their history. In the first two Practical Magic books, it’s safe to say that she’s reached mythical status. But who was she really, and what was her true story?
Maria started life as a baby abandoned in a snowy field. She was found and adopted by a cunning woman named Hannah Owens. Hannah taught Maria about the Unnamed Art, and Maria was an avid student. But Hannah also realized Maria was something special: a bloodline witch, meaning she was born with magic in her blood. Hannah knew Maria would be very powerful, so she tried to teach her as best she could and shared all kinds of life lessons with her.
All the time that Hannah was teaching Maria, she was also helping women from the village. Every night, women would turn up at her door looking for help that only Hannah and the Unnamed Arts could provide, and Hannah always helped. But then the unthinkable happened: men who were angry about Hannah helping women killed her. Maria managed to escape their wrath, but now she was alone in the world. Suddenly, she found herself on the other side of the world, on the little island of Curaçao. And it was here that she met her fate, in the form of a man who claimed he loved her but left in secret one night, leaving Maria pregnant and alone.
Maria could have stayed in Curaçao forever, but she believed she loved John Hathorne, so she followed him to Salem, Massachusetts, with their daughter, believing she could win him over again. But when she got there, all she found was heartbreak. John was already married with a young son. He had been married when he seduced her in Curaçao! Heartbroken, Maria stays around town, thinking to win him back. But all she wins is a death sentence. She keeps expecting John to save her, and when he doesn’t, she pours all her pain into a curse. A curse that echoes through the ages, bringing ruin to any man that dares to love an Owens.
Maria doesn’t die; she is saved by another man who really does love her. But she loses her daughter in the process. As such, a cycle of heartbreak and estrangement, love, loss, and curses begins that the Owens will continue from generation to generation for the next three hundred years. Maria’s pain leaves a mark on her family that may never come clean. But does her life end so bleakly? Maria is the one who added the third rule to the first page of the family grimoire, “fall in love whenever you can,” because she learned that love is the only answer. Unfortunately, future generations forgot that part of the lesson and remember only the curse.
Magic Lessons is a lesson in growing up and learning from your mistakes
There are a few things I learned about Maria and her story in Magic Lessons that changed how I thought about her after reading two books where she was an odd mix of hero and boogeyman. First off, Maria is basically a little girl still when she curses her family. After a pretty dramatic childhood where she saw the woman she considered her mother nailed to a door and burned alive, had to flee for her life, and was sold into a type of slavery by her birth father (without her knowledge). When she’s 15, she meets an old man who seduces her, pretends to love her, then leaves her high and dry to run back to his family.
When she tracks him down expecting to be welcomed and loved, she’s stuffed in an abandoned hunting shack so he can have her around for booty calls. Otherwise, he ignores her. Then she’s arrested and tried for witchcraft by the man who supposedly loves her. She’s sentenced to death, and she only escapes her punishment because another man, who actually does love her, helps her. After all that, her daughter is kidnapped and kept away from her for years. That’s a lot for anyone to deal with, but remember that she was 15 when she was seduced and had her daughter. She wasn’t yet 20 when she let anger get the better of her, cursing any men who were foolish enough to love an Owens.
She was in so much pain; all she could think of was protecting her daughter and all those who would come after her. She wasn’t thinking about how wonderful love was because all she could see was the pain it could cause. And she didn’t think of it as cursing her family because she cursed the men who would fall in love with them, and in her mind that was different. She couldn’t think clearly enough in that moment to see that most likely if a man loved an Owens, they would love that man back, and hurting him would hurt them too. I always thought that she was selfish, but seeing what she went through, where she was when she cast the curse, and the actual wording she used, I get it. I understand that she was trying to protect the people she loved; she just went about it the wrong way.
And really, that misguided love is what comes to define the Owens family. Each generation does what they can to protect the next one; each generation resents the one before for what they do to protect them. The circle of pain just keeps repeating throughout the years. That is the real curse that Maria cast on the family, one of generational love and trauma that just goes on and on. It’s a fascinating read that sheds a different light on the previous two books in the series while being a quality stand-alone story all of its own.
Rating: 9/10
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman is available now!
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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