Spinning Silver

Mirnatius is deeply frustrated by how Irina’s plain face is perceived as beautiful by their subjects. While his original deal with the demon Chernobog for “beauty, crown, and power” was negotiated by his mother, he clearly values physical appearance (286). When Irina defeats Chernobog, expelling him from Mirnatius’s body, he looks at her as if she were “the most beautiful thing in the world” (455).

The novel also asserts that even beautiful things are dislikable. Just as Mirnatius’s handsome face does nothing to tempt Irina, the Staryk lands and people hold little charm to Miryem upon her first arrival. The frustrations of her stay and longing for the normalcy of home make them both more frightening than enjoyable to look upon. As Miryem says, “The Staryk didn’t look so terribly strange at first; that was what made him truly terrible. But as I kept looking slowly his face became something inhuman, shaped out of ice and glass, and his eyes like silver knives” (68).

The pride and determination that enable Miryem to survive also lands her in situations she is not prepared for. Her pride not only leads to her boast that attracts the Staryk’s attention in the first place, but it also leads her to demand payment for her services, resulting in an unwanted marriage and a massive shift in her life’s trajectory. On the Staryk’s end, pride prevents him educating Miryem about his culture and high magic, and it causes him to dismiss Miryem’s value as more than a means to an end. It is only after swallowing their pride that both characters achieve success and happiness.

Miryem’s strength of will preserved her mother’s life and the rest of her family when she assumed her father’s moneylending business. It saved her own life again when she resolved to save the Staryk from Chernobog. Wanda’s persistence helped her to survive her father’s abuse. Irina’s will to resist temptation enabled her to kill Chernobog—if she had accepted any of the rewards he offered her, she could not have declared that he could not harm her and hers. The Staryk king’s strength of will enabled him to survive Chernobog’s torture long enough to be rescued by Miryem and save his people.

Wanda’s kindness in rescuing Sergey is repaid when he saves her from her father. Miryem’s kindness in hiring, teaching, and paying Wanda, though she perceives this as good business practice, is repaid when Wanda refuses to release the Staryk king. Miryem’s kindness in paying and feeding Sergey for a job he could not do is repaid when he saves her life, defending her from the guardsman after she rescues the Staryk king from the tunnels. The Mandelstams’ kindness to Wanda, Sergey, and Stepon is repaid when the siblings invite them to live on their lands and share their home.

Miryem’s skill with high magic does not emerge simply because she asks for it. She fights for it with everything she has and must take any available loopholes to make her claims true. Miryem also discovers that she is able to call forth Staryk winter trees using a Jewish blessing for fruit trees in bloom, something which she has no reason to expect to work. Similarly, Wanda is able to bind the Staryk king, but she has no way of knowing this until she tries to do so. She summarizes this important lesson herself: “I was strong enough […] But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing” (381).