Conjuring woman

The Conjuring woman is an old woman who can work magic and who briefly detains Gerda in a flower garden while hoping to keep her as a companion. Her refuge is warm, beautiful, and seemingly outside the seasons, but its comfort depends on Gerda forgetting Kay and the roses that connect her to home. When a rose inadvertently restores that connection, Gerda recognizes that she has been delayed and escapes into the autumn landscape.

Identity and First Encounter

The Conjuring woman first appears beside a cherry orchard, in a small red house with red and blue windows and a thatched roof. Two wooden soldiers stand outside, presenting arms as Gerda’s boat drifts past; Gerda calls to them before realizing that they are not alive. The old woman comes out leaning on a crutch, walks into the water, hooks the boat with it, and draws Gerda safely to land. Her first action is therefore practical kindness: she saves a child who has arrived alone on a fast-moving stream.

Once Gerda is on shore, the old woman asks who she is and how she came there. Gerda tells her about her journey and asks whether she has seen Kay. The woman says he has not passed that way, though he may come, and invites Gerda not to grieve. She offers cherries and flowers, describing the flowers as storytellers whose beauty exceeds that of a picture-book. This welcome is sincere in its hospitality, but it also begins to redirect Gerda from her search.

The narrative distinguishes the Conjuring woman from a simply wicked witch. She can conjure, but usually does so a little for her own amusement. Her actions toward Gerda, however, turn that playful power toward possession: she wants the child to stay with her. The character’s conflict lies in the gap between the gentleness of her welcome and the deliberate magic by which she tries to make that welcome permanent.

A Beautiful Refuge and Its Hidden Cost

Inside the house, colored daylight falls through high red, blue, and yellow windowpanes. The table holds cherries, and the Conjuring woman lets Gerda eat as many as she likes. As Gerda eats, the old woman combs her long flaxen curls with a golden comb until they fall on either side of her round, rosy face. She tells Gerda that she has long wished for a dear little maiden and that they will live happily together. The combing is a tender domestic gesture, but it accompanies the gradual weakening of Gerda’s thoughts of Kay, whom she regards as her adopted brother.

The old woman knows that roses might bring Gerda’s home and Kay back to mind. She therefore goes into the garden and stretches out her crutch toward its rose-trees. They sink into the dark earth, leaving no visible trace of where they stood. This is not simply the creation of a lovely place: it is a selective removal of the very flowers that might restore Gerda’s memory and purpose. The Conjuring woman then leads her into a garden where flowers of every season bloom together, in colors more beautiful than those in any picture-book.

Gerda delights in this garden and plays among its flowers until sunset. She sleeps in an elegant bed with red silk pillows embroidered with colored violets, and for many days afterward she plays in the continual sunshine. She knows the flowers, yet senses that one is missing without being able to name it. The garden’s abundance thus conceals an absence: its unchanging bloom keeps Gerda comfortable while withholding the rose that could reconnect her to her former life.

The Rose and the Return of Memory

The missing flower is revealed by a small oversight. The Conjuring woman has removed the rose-trees from the garden but has forgotten the painted rose on her own hat. When Gerda notices it, she understands what has been excluded and searches the flower beds. Finding no rose there, she sits down and cries. Her tears fall on the place where one of the buried rose-trees had stood, and the warm moisture makes it sprout again, blooming as before.

Gerda embraces and kisses the roses. Their appearance brings the roses at home to mind, and with them Kay. The scene reverses the old woman’s magic through a chain of concrete recognitions: the painted flower exposes the absence, the tears reach the buried plant, and the living rose restores memory. Gerda asks the roses whether Kay is dead. They answer that he is not, having been in the ground where the dead lie but not found him there. The answer does not locate Kay, but it gives Gerda a reason to resume the search rather than accept the garden as her whole world.

Escape and Narrative Role

Gerda realizes that she has been detained from the purpose of seeking Kay. When the flowers offer stories, the narcissus describes a dancing girl in a small room: she washes her clothes with water from a teapot and admires her reflection. Gerda dismisses the account as irrelevant to her search and runs to the garden’s door. It is fastened, but she presses the rusty latch until it gives way. The door springs open, and she runs out barefoot into the wider world.

She looks back three times, but sees no one following her. After running until she can go no farther, she rests on a large stone and discovers how much time the enclosed garden has obscured: summer has ended, and autumn is far advanced. Her feet are wounded and sore, the willow leaves are yellow, and the world appears cold and bleak. The contrast makes the cost of the Conjuring woman’s refuge visible. Its perpetual flowers offered comfort by suspending Gerda’s awareness of time; outside, she must face the season that has passed and the difficult journey still ahead.

The Conjuring woman functions as both rescuer and obstacle. She does not harm Gerda physically, and her garden offers real pleasure, yet she tries to secure companionship by weakening the child’s attachment to Kay and removing reminders of home. Her failure turns on what she overlooked: one painted rose survives her attempt to erase the others. The escape does not resolve the search, but it restores its governing purpose and sends Gerda back into the changing world.