54 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer McMahonThe Winter People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Geographic Context: Rural Vermont
The Winter People takes place in a fictional quintessential small town in rural Vermont called West Hall. Vermont is a state in the Northeastern United States, located along the Canadian border south of the province of Quebec. In an average year, Vermont might receive between 7.5 and 12.5 feet of snow. In the novel, the characters live in an isolated farmhouse three miles outside of town. They are forced to reckon with the extreme winter weather which creates a sense of danger, urgency, and claustrophobia.
The Washburne family live as homesteaders on this land. Homesteaders are people who live self-sufficiently off-the-grid. The Washburnes grow their own food, do not own a computer or cell phone, and homeschool their eldest daughter. Alice and James Washburne were in part inspired by Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing (1954). The Nearings were highly-educated leftist vegetarians, who left their lives in the city to live self-sufficiently in a rural area. Similarly, the Washburnes met at Columbia University and gave it up to live a “hippie utopian dream” (109). In the 1960s and 1970s, Vermont was a popular location for idealistic hippies seeking to live off the land. The Washburnes fit into this mold and so their atypical lifestyle does not raise any suspicions among the locals.
To the north of their property is a rock formation known as the Devil’s Hand. This rock formation in the shape of five fingers has a cave system underneath. Although the Devil’s Hand is fictional, it is similar to many actually existing geologic formations in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Cultural Context: New England Folklore
New England, including Vermont, is known for its long history of local folklore. The Winter People plays on this history. It incorporates supernatural elements, gothic themes, and local legends. Locals in fictional West Hall, both in the early 20th century and in the present day, share stories about the Harrison farm property and the Devil’s Hand that imply it is a magical place. This mix of truth and fiction revolving around magic and the natural landscape is typical of New England folklore.
Although the idea of “sleepers,” or people resurrected from the dead for seven days, is fictional, it is based on existing New England folklore. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was a vampire panic in New England which began in 1793 in Manchester, Vermont. Rachel Burton was believed to be a vampire after her husband’s second wife died of tuberculosis. Her body was exhumed and burned. The story of Gertie as a child who feeds on the flesh of living people to survive is resonant with these kinds of tales.
The novel contains other references to classic New England folklore as well. For instance, in southwest Vermont is an area known as The Bennington Triangle, where there were a number of unexplained disappearances between 1945 and 1950. Ruthie Washburne similarly refers to the “West Hall Triangle” because of all the unexplained disappearances in and around their town. Perhaps most famously, New England was also the center of the witchcraft panic in the early American colonies. During the Salem witch trials and related incidents, dozens of suspected witches were executed. The fear and ultimate banishment of Auntie under the charge that she is a witch is evocative of this panic.
