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Hamlet, muses on her future and the future of Willow Springs at the end of the novel. Even George, unlike Ferdinand when he is under the sway of Prospero, is free to reject Mama Day’s benign dominion over his relationship with Ophelia and eventually does. Of course, he pays the price for his objections and convictions.

Like Prospero, Mama Day discourses on her magic: “‘I can do more things with these hands than most folks dream of—no less believe’” (Naylor 1989:294). But unlike her fellow magus, she depends on the sympathetic response of those for whom she works her magic. George, as a self-avowed rationalist, does not trust Mama Day’s powers. George therefore becomes something of a tragic sacrifice, like so many of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines who suffer— with little opportunity to respond verbally—fates cooked up for them by men. In lecture and interview, Naylor claims to have developed a real affection for George, and she wonders aloud about why she had “to kill him off.” The union of Miranda and Ferdinand is imperative to Prospero, of course, for it unites Milan and Naples and reconciles him with Alonso, one of the former conspirators against his dukedom. Ferdinand is powerless against the magic of Prospero, as he learns when he draws his sword in resistance early on in the play (The Tempest 1.2.470), and therefore comes to respect Prospero’s power. Westerner that he is, George dismisses as “mumbo-jumbo” the magic that would have allowed him not only to save Cocoa’s life, but also to avoid his fatal heart attack (Naylor 1989: 295). He renounces Mama Day’s magic, then tries desperately to assist with some of her exotic remedies to find a cure for the malady that afflicts Ophelia after the storm. Cocoa apologizes to him: “‘I’m doubly sorry. ’Cause I know how serious this thing is that you can’t believe’” (287). The magic of Mama Day is—to borrow a metaphor from Shakespeare—like that of Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, as natural and “lawful as eating’’ (The Winter’s Tale 5.3.11). Mama Day qualifies her magic by rejecting the dictatorial control Prospero wields with his book and staff over the inhabitants and visitors to his island, but she does not renounce her magical powers, as Prospero does. At the end of the novel, Mama Day, carrying Prospero’s book and staff— in this case, the ledger with the Day family’s historical record, essentially its deed to Willow Springs— moves through the night, “never allowing the book and the cane to stay in the shadows” (Naylor 1989:293). Mama Day remains the benevolent—and, let us remember—the legitimate matriarch of Willow Springs.

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