The Charmed Circle, Parts 1-2 Summary
While everyone who has seen the corpse believes that Dr. Dillamond was murdered, the official story is that “the doctor had broken a magnifying lens and stumbled against it, cutting an artery in the process.” The only one who might be able to contradict this story, Ama Clutch, says nothing, only talking to the various objects surrounding her.
Galinda, as a belated apology to Dr. Dillamond for her initial rudeness, begins calling herself “Glinda,” as he called her, but she refuses to visit Ama Clutch or discuss her condition. Elphaba, however, continues to visit, and it is Elphaba who comes up with a solution when Madame Morrible says that without a chaperone, she and Glinda will have to move to the dormitory.
Soon after this, Boq picks up Nanny at the station. Along with her comes Nessarose—“gorgeous, pink, slender as a wheat stalk, and armless.” With another’s steadying hand and her own careful footing, Nessarose can keep her balance, but she requires constant aid. She was not expected at Shiz until the following year, but with Nanny summoned to step in as chaperone to Elphaba and Glinda, Nessarose must come along too.
Upon their arrival they meet with Madame Morrible, who says she will set up Nanny and Nessarose in a room adjoining Elphaba and Glinda. When Glinda questions what will happen when Ama Clutch recovers, Madama Morrible brushes aside this possibility, saying, “You have already told me of the long-standing recurrence of this unusual medical condition. I can only assume this has deteriorated into a permanent relapse.”
Boq, who witnesses the whole exchange, realizes how much Glinda has changed. Still, he looks forward to seeing her the following week in life sciences in the first coeducational lecture to be offered at Shiz; now that prohibitions are in place on Animal hiring, the colleges have decided to jointly give assembly lectures to all the students.
In the following chapter, Glinda herself ponders how much she has changed: “She had come to Shiz a vain, silly thing, and now found herself in a coven of vipers.” She worries that what has happened to Ama Clutch is her own fault, for “she had invented a nonsense disease for Ama Clutch, and Ama Clutch had come down with it.”
She certainly no longer trusts Madame Morrible, and she sees Pfannee and Shenshen for the “shallow, self-serving snobs” that they are. She does, however, make the decision to specialize in sorcery—and she realizes Elphaba, who is still her roommate despite her decision to study sorcery, has “all the potential of becoming an actual friend.”
One day, she finally gets up the nerve to ask Elphaba about her sister. Elphaba relates that Nessarose was born at Colwen Grounds when Elphaba was about three. They had gone there for a short stay before moving to Quadling Country. Her birth coincided with a temporary respite from the drought in the area, following a time of pagan dances and human sacrifice. The human who had been killed was the Quadling Turtle Heart after a crowd was incited to violence by “some rabble-rousing pfaithers and a prophetic clock.”
They next moved to Quadling Country, where their mother died five years later giving birth to their younger brother, Shell. Nanny came to help raise them as they moved from settlement to settlement. All the while, the Wizard’s men began draining the badlands to get at the ruby deposits, killing many Quadlings in the process. Once they had raked up all the rubies, they left—leaving the land spoiled and Frex “barmy.”
Glinda pushes to know more about Nessarose, and Elphaba says:...
(This entire section contains 887 words.)
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“Nessarose is a strong-willed semi-invalid. She’s very smart, and thinks she’s holy. . . . She isn’t good at taking care of other people because she has never learned to take care of herself.” Throughout her childhood, Elphaba was expected to take care of her—and she supposes she will be expected to care for her again once Nanny is gone.
As she gets to know her, Glinda does not find that she especially likes Nessarose; she finds her bossy and demanding. More and more, Glinda begins to retreat into her studies of sorcery, where she is being taught by a new but not especially talented instructor, Miss Greyling.
When asked by Elphaba how sorcery came to be taught at a school whose original charter was unionist, Glinda replies that sorcery is not really religious—“It’s all entertainment. It’s theater.” When Nessarose objects, saying her father always claimed magic was the devil’s trick to distract the masses from true worship, Glinda says that may be true of charlatans and street performers but that sorcery does not have to be that way. It can also be helpful to the community.
After Glinda succeeds in exploding Elphaba’s sandwich, which she had been trying to elevate over the nearby canal, the whole group breaks into laughter. But when Elphaba says she does not believe in anything—that she’s “an atheist and an aspiritualist”—Nessarose becomes angry and defensive. She complains that Elphaba is just trying to “shock and scandalize” the group and is putting down Nessarose’s faith in the process. She eventually turns away from the group and devotes herself to silent prayer.
