Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Howl’s Moving Castle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Destiny vs. Free Will
Appearances and Assumptions
Family
Magic and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
The land of Ingary is a place where invisibility cloaks and seven-league boots exist. There, it’s also considered bad luck to be the oldest child of three: the first child will fail, and fail spectacularly. Sophie Hatter isn’t just the eldest of three; her parents are also well-off (poor eldest kids have a better chance of success) and own a hat shop in Market Chipping. Sophie’s mother dies when Sophie is two and her younger sister Lettie is one. Their father marries a shop assistant named Fanny, who soon has the third daughter, Martha. Fanny, rather than shunning Sophie and Lettie, treats all the girls kindly. But still, Sophie soon realizes she has no chance of “an interesting future.”
The novel opens by establishing that Ingary is a magical place where people can thwart normal rules, such as how fast someone can go and what one looks like. (Sophie’s family even seems to deny another fairytale convention when her stepmother, Fanny, is kind rather than evil.) However, Ingary isn’t without its own conventions, such as the belief that the eldest child of three is destined to fail. Sophie just accepts this as fact, which shows that she thinks of herself as being powerless to change things.
Themes
Sophie, however, isn’t unhappy, as she enjoys being in charge of raising her sisters and breaking up their fights (Lettie always insists that, despite being the second-born, she’ll marry a prince). Sophie regularly has to mend the rips in her sisters’ clothes after these fights, and she’s very skilled with needle and thread. About the time Sophie makes Lettie a gorgeous rose outfit for May Day, people start talking about the Witch of the Waste for the first time in decades. She apparently threatened the King’s daughter, so the King sent Wizard Suliman, his personal magician, to go to the Waste to deal with the Witch—and Suliman died.
Instead of trying to change things, Sophie essentially just makes do with what she’s been given in life. She seems close to her sisters, and this may make caring for them more fulfilling for Sophie than it might be otherwise. Still, Sophie and her sisters are very different: Lettie, at least, seems unwilling to accept that she’s not destined for greatness. The Witch of the Waste’s entry into the story creates drama and intrigue, though for now, her conflict with the King and his court seems very straightforward.
Themes
Months later, a tall, black, smoking castle appears on the hills above Market Chipping. People are terrified that the Witch will start terrorizing them like she used to, especially when they realize that the castle constantly moves. Soon, people discover that the castle belongs to Wizard Howl—which is still bad. Wizard Howl entertains himself by sucking the souls out of young girls or eating their hearts. All the girls in Market Chipping are warned to never go out alone. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha wonder often what Wizard Howl does with girls’ hearts or souls—until the day their father dies suddenly. It turns out that his hat shop is deeply in debt, as he prioritized paying his daughters’ tuition.
Wizard Howl reads as a terrifying figure—however, Ingary is a land where not everything is as it seems, so Howl’s true nature may be different. Initially, it seems like Sophie and her sisters are thinking more critically about what Wizard Howl might be after. However, this stops immediately when their father dies and they’re forced to deal with difficult, practical family matters. Even their father, they discover, wasn’t what he seemed: despite seeming reasonably successful in life, it comes out that he mismanaged his finances.
Themes
After the funeral, Fanny sits down with Sophie, Lettie, and Martha. She explains that the only way to stay afloat is to get each girl an apprenticeship. Lettie, she says, will go work at the pastry cook Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie clearly isn’t pleased, but she doesn’t throw a fuss. Next, Fanny turns to Martha. Fanny says that Martha is going to be apprenticed to Mrs. Annabel Fairfax, an old friend who’s a successful witch and who can help Martha be just as successful. Sophie thinks Fanny’s choices seem very sensible: Lettie can marry and live a mediocre life, while Martha can flourish. Sophie isn’t surprised when Fanny then says that Sophie will inherit the hat shop, so she’ll be Fanny’s apprentice.
Fanny reads as an extremely practical and caring woman. She wants her daughters to have the best chance to find success. And like Sophie, she believes fully in the idea that each girl’s birth order will dictate how successful each girl will be. Again, though, Lettie’s obvious displeasure at being apprenticed in a bakery shows that not all the Hatters are interested in just accepting the hand they’re dealt. Additionally, apprenticing Martha to a witch suggests that magic and witchcraft aren’t evil in Ingary—it’s just Howl who’s seen as evil.
Themes
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Sophie helps Martha pack the next morning. Lettie refuses help and seems happy to leave the hat shop for the bakery. Over the next week, the girls send notes to Sophie, saying that they’re both happy. Sophie doesn’t hear much from her sisters for months after this, as she begins her own apprenticeship. Having grown up in the hat shop, Sophie already knows the trade, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. All she really has to learn is how to sell hats. But Fanny doesn’t let Sophie sell much, as she makes Sophie trim hats instead. Sophie is good at trimming hats and she likes it, but it’s dull work and she’s isolated in a little alcove. The one bright spot is that Sophie gets to listen to customers gossip about Wizard Howl, the Witch of the Waste, and the unattractive local girl Jane Farrier.
The problem, Sophie discovers, is that she’s already mostly prepared to run the hat shop in full—but what she’s best at is trimming hats, and this job is about as boring as it gets. Prior to this it seemed like Sophie had fulfilling relationships with her sisters, but now she’s isolated. Note too that Sophie expresses no interest in trying to advocate for herself or change anything about her apprenticeship. Fanny seems kind enough to want to make Sophie happy—but perhaps because Sophie feels so strongly about just accepting her lot in life, she never asks for help in improving her situation.
Themes
After a month, Sophie hears gossip about Lettie: Lettie is drawing gentleman customers to Cesari’s, where they buy lots of cakes and ask to marry her. To the bonnet she’s working on, Sophie says Lettie sounds very sensible for telling the boys she’s not old enough to marry. As the weeks pass, Sophie talks more often to the hats. Eventually, Sophie finishes each hat by putting it on a stand and telling it what kind of a lady should wear it. For instance, Sophie tells one plain pleated bonnet that it has a pure heart and will attract someone powerful to fall in love with its wearer. (She feels sorry for the fussy bonnet.) Jane Farrier buys the bonnet, to Sophie’s surprise.
As Sophie grows increasingly lonelier, she turns to the only things she has to keep her company: the hats. The hats, of course, aren’t great conversationalists, but talking to the hats gives Sophie a chance to dream and think about what life might be like beyond her little alcove. She also shows the hats a great deal of sympathy, as when she tells the bonnet it will do great things when there’s no reason to expect that. Indeed, it seems doomed to fail when unattractive Jane purchases it.
Themes
Business is picking up, and Fanny almost regrets sending Martha and Lettie away. Sophie spends her nights trimming hats in the house just to keep up. There’s a sudden demand for bonnets like the one Jane Farrier bought when Jane runs off with the Count of Catterack. Sophie stops talking to the hats and starts trying them on—a mistake, as none of them suit her. She wants a more interesting life, but Sophie believes she’s far too busy to change anything, or even to go visit Lettie. Her inability to do anything begins to disturb her, so she swears to go visit Lettie when the hat shop is closed on May Day.
Interestingly, Sophie expresses no curiosity about what Jane Farrier might have had going for her to attract a count’s attention, or about why business is picking up. Readers already know that Ingary is a magical place, so it seems possible that Sophie herself might be imbuing the hats with magic—but because Sophie believes she’s destined to fail, this never occurs to her. Further, she’s feeling more and more stuck in her unfulfilling life, and she justifies this by insisting it’s just what it is. However, the fact that she’s upset that she can’t do anything offers hope that Sophie will be able to change her situation for the better.
Themes
Gossip begins to circulate that the King fought with his brother, Prince Justin, and that Justin is in exile. Justin even came through Market Chipping in disguise, and the Count of Catterack was supposed to be looking for Justin when he ran off with Jane Farrier. This gossip makes Sophie even sadder—interesting things happen, just not to her. So she vows to go out when May Day rolls around. Before she leaves, Sophie trims a few more hats, reasoning that Lettie is working today so there’s no hurry. But when Sophie finally goes out, she’s in shock. The crowds are loud and overwhelming, and Sophie feels like working on hats for months has turned her into an old lady. Especially when Wizard Howl’s castle appears near the town and shoots flames out of its turrets, she’s terrified.
Sophie continues to act resigned to her fate: of course, she reasons, nothing interesting happens to her, since she’s the eldest of three. Readers, however, have no way of knowing where Prince Justin, Jane, and the Count of Catterack fall in their families’ birth orders—they may be first or second children, suggesting that Sophie could be overly invested in her belief that nothing interesting can happen to her. Once she leaves the hat shop, Sophie learns that there are huge consequences for letting herself stay shut away: she can no longer enjoy the crowds or the celebrations.
Themes
As Sophie runs, she tells herself she doesn’t actually want life to be interesting—this is what happens to the eldest of three. In Market Square, a man in his 20s, fantastically dressed in a blue and silver suit with scalloped, trailing sleeves, offers to buy Sophie a drink. Sophie shrinks away, declines his offer, and then runs off. Finally, she reaches Cesari’s, where the crowds are just as bad inside as they are outside. Lettie is behind the counter bagging cakes while a gaggle of admirers crowds the counter. When she catches sight of Sophie, she screams for Sophie to come behind the counter to a room lined in racks of cakes. Lettie pulls out stools, hands Sophie a cream cake, and then says she’s not Lettie. She’s Martha.
Sophie’s anxiety and fear is palpable—now, she’s too afraid to seemingly even consider accepting this young man’s offer to buy her a drink. However, Sophie seems to feel somewhat better inside Cesari’s and close to Lettie (or Martha), suggesting that she draws strength from her family members. It’s a shock, though, to discover that this is Lettie, not Martha. This forces Sophie to consider whether she misjudged her sisters, or failed to see them for who they really are.
Themes
