Seeking community but finding a cult in the compelling 'Las Brujas de Bellinas'

In the coastal town of Bellinas, California, cult residents follow Max, a tech billionaire turned charismatic founder of an arts community. “The Witches of Bellinas,” the debut novel by J. Nicole Jones, is the confession narrated by Tansy, a recent transplant to Bellinas, as she awaits the judgment of the town after her refusal to conform leads to disaster. Jones, whose memoir, “Low Country,” received critical recognitionhas written a compelling book, drawing on our chaotic reality to create a dystopia in which individual thought is extinguished for the sake of the harmony of the art colony.

Although Bellinas is imaginary, a similar situation artists colony It existed at the beginning of the 20th century in a Carmel torn by jealousy, love triangles and a suspicious suicide. In Bellinas, the tech mogul-turned-leader announces that the city is a new Bohemian Club, where he and his influential wife, Mia, welcome their friends to live their “best, creative lives” while worshiping “the mysteries and splendors of the natural world”. .”

Tansy's new marriage to her long-term boyfriend, Guy, is off to a rocky start, and after an initial visit to Bellinas, where her cousin Mia lives, the couple decide that leaving the hated jobs in New York City behind and starting over will solve the problem. her dissatisfaction. And despite some misgivings about this “bohemian Eden,” with “expensive dresses and avocados instead of apples,” Tansy is drawn. “[W]When faced with a repetition of circumstances, I, as a woman since Eve, always refer to the mantra that we are born knowing by heart; Maybe this time it will be different.”

Guy accepts their new lives, but Tansy struggles to feel like she belongs. The other women come to her rescue and offer her companionship in place of the alienation she feels from her. “That's how it happens to most people who are part of cults that pass through communities, either because of their own ambivalence or because of the trappings of circumstance,” she Tansy says. “Who wakes up and says, 'Today I'm joining a cult'? “Almost no one, that’s who.” Instead, Tansy points out that cults arise due to everyday interactions: “Unspoken agreements are made between acts of kindness or oaths of friendship. Between the act of sharing vague dreams of a community that will bring love and light and whatever else to the world…”

Among the wealthy white residents of Bellinas, money will never be an issue. The men spend their days illegally harvesting abalone and bonding through friend activities. The women's time is spent caring for their multitude of perfect children while embracing creative arts such as weaving and sculpting, and practical skills such as gardening and sheep husbandry. The gender hierarchy is in full force and, except for Tansy, all the women have adopted this “tradwife” lifestyle.

However, the leader, Max, insists that in Bellinas women are at the top of the social structure. “The most important thing a woman can be is a creator of life,” he preaches. “A creator of pleasure for her husband. For her community. That's when women are most empowered. Empowerment. That's the name of the game. That's what it's about here. Worship women like the goddesses they are. The best way to be a goddess, to be your most powerful self, is to let your husband worship you too.”

But veneration easily turns into degradation. Objects that can be worshiped can also be torn down. In Bellinas, women are the embodied creatures who provide men with sexual pleasure and emotional comfort, but lack the power to effect change in the patriarchal community. When Tansy objects, Guy dismisses her, insisting that her criticism will get them expelled and ruin their chances of having the perfect, happy life he wants. Jones brings a marked irony to the way Guy dismisses Tansy's realist concerns as annoying. Max insists that Bellinas is a “high vibe” community; Tansy's dissatisfaction is all her fault: her negative thoughts are harming the community. These moments in the narrative show Jones's ability to depict the power dynamics in top-down marriages and how women's words are seen as direct threats to communities built on gender hierarchy.

Manifesting evil and subverting the social order are age-old accusations against women labeled “witches.” And yet, in Bellinas, Tansy discovers that the other wives seek positivity in a nature-loving coven where they seek to influence their husbands' decisions. They feel empowered, conforming to the language of self-actualization and embracing the seductress's ability to control men through sex.

While witchcraft has been romanticized as a means of resistance for the powerless, historically it was a deadly accusation, largely against women. It was not an identity to accept. To be accused of witchcraft, especially on the European continent, was to be forced into a cruel and dehumanizing system in which torture was used to extract increasingly fantastic stories of powers gained by consorting with demons.

Which is not to say that there weren't healers and women offering solutions to those seeking remedies for everything from infidelity, unrequited love, and unwanted pregnancy to physical ailments and disputes with neighbors. Searching for signs and wonders as omens for her future, Tansy joins the other wives and waits for the answers to be revealed.

Jones' writing reflects Tansy's growing anxiety, the author wonderfully easing the tension as her heroine uncovers the community's secrets. Tansy is not without will (she knows she should just leave), but she continues to move toward impending disaster. “As I remember my first steps, which I took freely, towards the house in Rose Lane,” she says, “I remember how Iphigenia must have felt walking to the altar in Aulis. Her emotion, despite the circumstances surrounding her were not at all ideal. She continued walking even after realizing that she was not heading towards a happy marriage, but towards her own murder…”

In telling how a cult comes to replace groupthink with a rational engagement with the world, Jones's power as a storyteller burns bright. Tansy hesitates, even as she smells the smoke created by the friction of her thoughts sparking against the colony's monolithic thought. When the flame finally catches fire, the fire threatens to consume it.

Although many have sacrificed themselves in the attempt to live in utopias, they only exist in fantasies. Similarly, fantastical thinking about women's control over men lit the pyres of those who were burned as witches.

Lorraine Berry is a writer and critic in Eugene, Oregon.