The Charity of Witches: Watching the Edges in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching Novels

Terry Pratchett’s final novel, The Shepherd’s Crown, was published months after his death in 2015. The novel concludes the story arc of Tiffany Aching, hero of the Discworld children’s/young adult novels that include The Wee Free Men (2003), A Hat Full of Sky (2004), Wintersmith (2006), and I Shall Wear Midnight (2010). The arc follows the heroine from the age of nine through her teenage years and although classified as children’s or young adult novels, the novels merge seamlessly with the adult Discworld series. The novels’ status within children’s literature is sustained by a thematic core: Tiffany grows up. Her negotiation of childhood and adolescence, however, is shaped less by the valorisation of youth and desire for fame and fortune than by the example of old women and their dedication to public service. These old women are witches and they mind the margins of their community, as renowned witch Esmeralda Weatherwax explains of their work: “There’re a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong...an’ they need watchin’. We watch ‘em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important” (Pratchett 2010c). This article investigates how Pratchett draws on the history of fairy tales about witches and old women with their varied traditions of care and preservation, and reaches a narrative conclusion for the young heroine that rejects traditional fairy tale resolutions of romance, fame, or fortune. Instead, he endorses the heroic and everyday work performed at the ‘edges.