Practical Magic

Despite the closeness of the two sisters, Gillian can be characterized as the novel’s primary antagonist, because her actions and influence upset the status quo of Sally’s life. Like Sally, Gillian seeks validation through her relationships with others. However, Gillian’s personal validation comes from a sense of control: “Even with Jimmy—it was the man who wanted her, and that’s the way she liked it. When you want someone you’re in his power” (156). Through her journey, Gillian grows to care for her niece, Kylie, as a maternal figure, but this, too, is an expression of power: She enjoys the way Kylie looks up to her and tries to emulate her, “wanting” her in a different way.

From a young age, Gillian learns that she can navigate life by gaining power over others. An early example of this is when she pays Sally to do her homework so she can instead go out and live life to its fullest. She keeps her experiences with bullying hidden from Sally, because this would have upset their power dynamic. However, she’s able to take back control from those who abused her by becoming an object of desire as a teenager. After a certain point, she forgets how to be anything else. This is what leads her to her toxic relationship with Jimmy. It doesn’t occur to her to try and leave or question her status within the relationship. As she tells Sally, “I got what I thought I deserved” (136). When she encounters Ben, she pushes him away because she’s convinced she doesn’t deserve happiness. Through both Jimmy and Ben, Gillian punishes herself for the way she treats others.

Gillian undergoes a deep maturation and growth over the course of the novel. Once Sally is compromised by both her depression and her attraction to Gary, Gillian is forced to step into an unexpected matriarchal role. She cares for Antonia and Kylie instead of following her instinct to run away, and she faces her past mistakes by reconciling with the aunts. Finally, she agrees to build a life with Ben, allowing herself a second chance at real happiness.

Antonia is Sally’s oldest daughter, and she is as confident in herself as she is spoiled. She has more in common with Gillian than she does with her mother, luxuriating in her charm and using her beauty to intimidate her sister Kylie. Because she receives special attention from the aunts during her childhood, Antonia enters her teenage years with a sense of entitlement and power. Antonia and Gillian feel a similar sense of entitlement and draw their personal power from a similar source, placing Antonia in conflict with Gillian, a fact that Kylie finds delightful. For a period, Antonia becomes overshadowed by Kylie—an unfamiliar sensation and a learning experience.

For much of the novel, Antonia delights in exerting power over Kylie to make herself feel more in control. Like Gillian, she undergoes a dynamic change in which she becomes more sensitive and compassionate. Unlike her mother and aunt, however, she doesn’t draw this newfound sense of self from a new romantic relationship. Instead, she rediscovers her familial love for her sister. When Kylie comes to Antonia for help after being chased, Antonia receives that external validation in a different way; it forces her to examine her behavior and attitude over the past 13 years of her life. What she sees is both humbling and empowering, because it allows her to grow into a better and stronger person.

Kylie is Sally’s youngest daughter and is three and a half years younger than Antonia. She lives in a constant state of tension and is hypersensitive to the critiques of others. Her sister Antonia is a source of unavoidable torment for much of her life. Unlike her mother and sister, Kylie is deeply sensitive on both an emotional and a supernatural level. She can perceive the emotional struggles of others to a debilitating degree, and she’s the only one able to see, and to a certain point communicate with, Jimmy’s ghost. This sensitivity makes it difficult for her to form connections with others her age; however, she develops a close relationship with her best friend Gideon.

Kylie’s personal journey centers around her 13th birthday, a coming-of-age rite that she believes will turn things around for her. Her first foray into personal transformation is external: Gillian gives her a makeover that makes Kylie look like a younger version of Gillian. This physical transformation creates a period of upheaval and conflict within the Owens family and within her relationship with Gideon. This is also the subtler turning point of Kylie’s internal transformation: She chooses to make amends with Gideon, and she forges a new connection with Antonia. Through this process, she learns to accept herself and feel more comfortable in her own body and mind.

Frances and Bridget Owens, often referred to collectively as “the aunts,” are the guiding maternal forces in Sally’s and Gillian’s early lives. Initially, they are portrayed as relatively one-dimensional, but are given more nuance later as their story is revealed. Neither chose to be a guardian to the two girls they received unexpectedly. Earlier in their lives, they had jointly mourned their lost loves, who were killed on the same day, both trying to prove their love to the sisters. At that point, the sisters had refused to live through any more decimating surprises and planned on an uneventful, orderly life:

The aunts assumed they knew their life and all that it would bring. They were well acquainted with their own fates, or so they believed. They were quite convinced nothing could come between their present and their own quiet deaths, in bed, of course, from pneumonia and complications of the flu at the ages of ninety-two and ninety-four (253).

However, they had to set these expectations aside when their family grew to include a new generation. Despite their household’s surprise expansion, they both love Sally and Gillian deeply—even if they aren’t always comfortable expressing it.

Although the aunts aren’t the most responsible guardians, they are deeply loyal and come to the rescue without question when asked. Unlike Sally, the aunts are proud of their heritage and feel that trying to live up to the standards of conventional society is a waste of time, reflecting the theme of Convention Versus Independence. While this does cause some problems for Sally and Gillian, it also gives them a strong, cohesive family unit. By the end of the novel, this unit has become even stronger as their crisis brings them together and opens the aunts’ minds to the future ahead.