"Brightness falls": magic in the short stories of Mary Butts

Studies in Short Fiction, Fall, 1999 by Roslyn Reso Foy

With the introduction of Dr. Corandel, and the seemingly meaningless play on his name with Coromandel, the spice coast at the southeastern tip of India, we are reminded of the narrator's opening statements, "There is no head or tail to this story, except that it happened. On the other hand, how does one know that anything happened?" (203). We do learn that Cynthia has been having an affair with Dr. Corandel and that Parmys doesn't approve of it "for some reason that was probably a mask for jealousy" (211). From this point, when Max next encounters Cynthia, he no longer sees her as "a queen and a huntress" (211); she and Parmys, however, retain their psychic connection and continue to commune with their goddess/priestess past. Beside Cynthia's "extreme distinction and beauty," Max notices that "Parmys looked coarse; and again that was because Parmys was like an archaic goddess stored with raw power" (213).

Stirring up their goddess/priestess power is the focus of the story. There is a sensuous interchange between Parmys and Cynthia, and Max tells us that they needed him to "mind them." What exactly takes place, we never fully understand. The magic, supernatural power they possess, as witches and goddesses capable of changing and shaping experience, somehow seems to lift them out of this world, and Butts's notion of living in two worlds at once comes into focus again. Max narrates the experience:

   I saw her [Parmys] take her left wrist, putting her arm round her, holding
   in her right hand Cynthia's right hand. "Look now," she said, "look again.
   It is here." Her voice was like strings of gold and silver, love and
   something detached, or even matter of fact.... They took a step forward;
   indeed, through all of this were walking very slowly across the grass, into
   the wind, I beside them. But this is true also, that I couldn't stay beside
   them, because they were half in, half out of another world. Also, they
   changed. Before there had been Parmys resolute, and Cynthia distressed; now
   there were two shapes, abstractions. (214)

Although Max manages to walk "up to and along with a place I could see in flashes. Up to and along with" (215), he remains divided from the magic of the experience. Parmys and Cynthia are attempting to use their power to effect change, to perform magic and correct the situation between Cynthia and Corandel, but although Max sees part of what they see, he cannot explain it. Since Max is the narrator of the event, we also cannot see what takes place, and the mystery of these two "charming" and "enchanted" children, "drenched with some abnormal radiance" (216) remains indecipherable to us as well, but we sense it is what Butts identifies as "one description of a state evoked, of consciousness enlarged" ("Ghosties," Jan. 1933, 389). By the end of the story, Parmys and Cynthia appear physically refreshed by the experience, and we know that we have been invited to skim the edges of a mystical and magical experience without understanding what that experience was or how to conjure it for ourselves. Parmys and Cynthia invoke their goddess past to move temporarily out of reality, to let their brightness fall over the event so that they can maintain the upper hand they possess as initiates of a secret power they are just beginning to discover.