100 Cupboards

The central villain of the story and a powerful witch who destroyed FitzFaeron Hall, Nimiane was exiled to the dark world of Endor until Henry and Henrietta accidentally let her out. She is blind and ugly but can spellbind others to see her as beautiful and do her bidding. When Henry fights briefly with her at the cupboard wall to protect Henrietta, he cuts himself, and the witch tastes his blood and feels revived. Her purpose, once out of Endor, is to find and consume Henry for his vitality.

Witches are common figments in literature, myth, and lore. Most often, witches represent a type of femininity that falls outside of society’s accepted bounds of womanhood. Perhaps they are too old, too confident, too unattractive. They often transform themselves into figments that make them more socially acceptable as wily tricks to convince their audience to do their bidding. We see this in 100 Cupboards when Nimiane transforms herself into a more beautiful, younger woman, abandoning her frightening visage to manipulate the characters.

As mentioned above, Wilson pulls many of his narrative elements from history and legend. FitzFaeren Hall is destroyed in the name of the witch Nimiane. She’s later described as “not tall,” and though she refers to the faeren as “faeries,” it’s possible she was once one of them and has a grudge against her own people. Nimiane has a counterpart in the Arthurian legends: the lady Niniane, Nimane, or Nimue, who is imbued with magic powers and commonly known as the Lady of the Lake, a sometimes good, sometimes bad witch. Her acts in Arthurian legends include bestowing Arthur with his sword, Excalibur, and eliminating the wizard Merlin.

Like many evil characters in fantasy, Nimiane has a weakness that requires a hero’s strength to overcome it. Henry’s blood would revive the witch’s deteriorating body; this pits them lethally against each another. The damaged evil magician is a common symbol in the fantasy genre, and the disfigurement usually represents the price of wickedness when it backfires on the evildoer. At the very least, the bad person grows ugly under the relentless darkness of continuing greed, hunger for power, and contempt for others. The mangled emperor in Star Wars and the witch in Hansel and Gretel are identifiable representatives of this trope.

The middle Willis child, perhaps a year younger than Henry, Henrietta has “thick brown curls and green eyes” (7), and she takes a keen interest in Henry’s progress with the 100 cupboards, sometimes helping him figure them out. She’s way too adventurous for Henry’s taste, sticking her hand in a dangerous cupboard and nearly getting kidnapped by something on the other side. She finds a human-sized cupboard in Grandfather’s room and promptly disappears into it; Henry searches for days before finding her and helping her return home.

Henrietta, whose name immediately connects her to Henry, functions as a foil to the protagonist throughout the course of the novel. Henrietta’s easy courage upsets Henry; as cautious as he is, she’s equally overconfident. Their relationship serves to bring friction and conflict to the narrative; without Henrietta complicating matters, the storyline would stall. Her actions also drive Henry’s personal growth. She pushes him to be braver, more adventurous, and even function as her rescuer after she is lost within the cupboard.

Henry also serves as an equal counterweight to the willful Henrietta. They meet in the middle and manage to resolve most of the problems they uncover in the cupboard universe. In Henry and Henrietta, the reader learns the value of collaboration and teamwork and finds that difficult problems often require the differing opinions and approaches of multiple people. These are common plot points and narrative lessons imparted by hero’s journey works mentioned above.

Eccentric Frank pursues interestingly goofy ideas, especially for making money, his bountiful imagination spreading out into all areas of life in search of its wonders. He treats Henry warmly, and, if he’s not exactly a father figure to the boy, he’s certainly an excellent and entertaining uncle. Frank tends to be open and truthful—when he fails disastrously to break into Grandfather’s room and Dotty asks if he’s okay, he replies honestly, “My pride’s on the lower end” (79)—and his name symbolizes that emotional openness.

Like Henry, Frank comes from one of the cupboard worlds. Unable to return there, he’s made a life in Kansas and has tried to forget the cupboards, but he half-hopes Henry will reopen them and discover a pathway to his homeland. Frank’s similarities with Henry make his character somewhat prophetic; it could be that he is a vision of Henry’s future if he remains in our world. His similarities also provide Henry with a level of knowledge other characters would be unable to share. Only Frank understands what it’s like to adapt to our world after the life in a different one, and although Henry doesn’t remember his life before this one, Frank’s guidance still leads him to make more educated decisions.

Warm, loving, and patient, Dotty may be smarter, or at least wiser, than her husband, Frank, but she’s also smart enough to know when to let him try out his goofball ideas. She also knows his history with the cupboards, and she worries that Henry, another cupboard immigrant, might poke around in the cupboards too much and get them all into trouble.

Dotty serves as a central voice of reason within the novel. Where Frank is too whimsical and her children and Henry too young to easily navigate the trials before them, she serves as an anchor to center them and their actions. Other characters might be reckless or impetuous, but Dotty is a calm presence that steers their actions.

Youngest of the Willis children, nine-year-old Anastasia has freckles, reddish-brown hair, and much of her sister Henrietta’s defiant curiosity. She’s also a meddler, sniffing around in everyone else’s business. Though a minor character, she ferrets out secrets that, once revealed, force the others to make decisions that help protect them from the dangers of the cupboards.

Short for Penelope, black-haired Penny is the oldest daughter of Dotty and Frank, a bit too old to play with her younger siblings but willing to try. Penny has a crush on Zeke Johnson, the best baseball player in town. Like Henry, she tends to be cautious; like Anastasia, hers is a small but charming role that helps fill out the Willis family.

Dead two years, Grandfather—his given name was Simon—explored the cupboards built by his own father and left journals for his daughter, Dotty, and son-in-law, Frank, to find. His writings warn them against venturing into the cupboard world, but he knows they’ll try anyway, and he offers advice on how to minimize the risk. In his analysis, he recognizes and shares important character points for Frank, Dotty, and their family. Grandfather points out that they are adventurous and curious, dangerous but ultimately enriching attributes from which the storyline is built.

After his death, Grandfather’s room mysteriously becomes locked, and no amount of effort by Frank can reopen it. The locked nature of the door implies from the outset that it—and what lies behind it—are integral elements of the narrative. Grandfather’s room is in this way immediately established as a central stage upon which the story will take place. When Henry and Henrietta make it inside the room, they find it's still in use, and a human-sized cupboard lies within, available for travel to other worlds. The cousins find Grandfather’s journals, and they use his notes to guide them on their own cupboard journeys.

A mysterious, elderly, bald man who’s been staying in Grandfather’s room, Eli is from the cupboard that leads to the Faeren world. His ancestral home was destroyed by Nimiane’s minions decades earlier, and Eli searches Grandfather’s library for information that might help repair the damage and guarantee that the old witch never causes harm again.

Like many of the other characters and themes, Eli is a common figure in traditional myths. Like Grandfather, who guides his family even through his absence, Eli is a source of knowledge and insight into the many realities occurring behind these doors. Archetypal mentors like Eli can be found everywhere from Arthurian legends (Merlin) to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Richard Leeds is “a skinny, white-faced boy” (187) who lives in an alternate version of England in 1989 when Henry steps into his room in search of Henrietta. Henry doesn’t find her there, but he acquires Richard as a companion in the quest to solve the riddle of the cupboards. Richard’s parents, too, are gone, and he’s cared for by servants who tend to restrict him to his room. Like Henry, Richard longs for a bigger life and better friends. He proves loyal to the Willis family, and though he’s not much help, he becomes a member of the group.

Richard serves as a mirror to Henry, reflecting many of his attributes and circumstances. He also contributes to the narrative’s lessons of collaboration and teamwork, as the success experienced at the novel’s end required the contributions of many of the characters, including Richard.

The best baseball player among the boys in town, Zeke befriends Henry and helps him improve his baseball play. Zeke’s decision to support, teach, and help Henry with baseball foreshadows the role he will have later in the book. On a visit to the Willis house, Zeke becomes entangled in the battle between the family and the witch Nimiane; his baseball skills come into play when he swings his bat precisely into Nimiane’s skull, abruptly ending her attack. For his heroism, Zeke becomes an auxiliary member of the Willis household.

In fantasy novels, a small cadre of heroes often expands into an ever-growing gang of assistants. For example, while Harry, Ron, and Hermione are the primary agents in the Harry Potter series, it is only with the assistance of further characters—Dobby, Hagrid, even enemies-turned-allies like Draco Malfoy—that they can successfully execute their expansive plans. With the addition of Zeke and Richard, Wilson begins to establish this broad range of auxiliary characters that will help the Willis household on their adventure.