White Is for Witching

Content Warning: This section of the guide mentions suicide, self-harm, and disordered eating. It also includes racist and xenophobic content, including offensive terms for Black people and undocumented citizens, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotation of the source material.

This chapter, one of the longest in the novel, traces the dynamics of the Silver women and explains the origin of the Silver House’s xenophobic magic. Of the Silver women, Jennifer is the least known and least present in the novel. The mother of Lily, Jennifer hates her life in the Silver House and feels suffocated by her mother Anna and daughter Lily. She wants to escape the dullness of Dover with her Italian boyfriend, a photographer. She can’t escape the house and, like her future granddaughter Miranda, becomes entombed in its walls.

Characterized as beautiful but selfish, Jennifer meets her fate in the walls of the house. The Silver House confesses that Jennifer wasn’t bright, and it just needed to open a new door in her room to confine her. She loses track of time, and her dresses grow dirty. The house slowly allows her to explore, and she confuses Lily’s room with her own because she remains in the walls until Lily is a teenager.