In this first chapter we are introduced to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches - at the top of a high mountains surrounded by a pine forest - and learn a little about its traditions and rules sand how there seemed to be tests and exams every week. We are also introduced to Mildred Hubble a first year who is one of those people who always seem to be in trouble with he hat on back-to-front or her bootlaces trailing along the floor and her best friend Maud who stays loyally with her through everything, however hair raising. It's half way through Mildred and Maud's first term and Cackle's and is the night before they will each be presented with a back kitten. Which they will have to train to ride behind them on the broomsticks they have only just mastered riding themselves. They are sitting in Mildred's room talking about their plans when their terrifying form-mistress Miss Hardbroom interrupts and sends Maud to bed. Once Mildred is left alone we learn her secret - she is scared of the dark....
Humility seems a very appropriate theme for two first years at the very start of their education in witchery (witching? witchcraft? I'm not actually sure if witches are who they innately are or something they have to learn how to be?). They are very aware of being the youngest and least experienced class in the school. They have to learn to ride a broomstick, one of the most basic and defining characteristics of an adult witch and it's takes quite a long time and isn't near;y as easy as it looks. While the older pupils (and presumably teachers) are flitting like bats above the playground wall That must be a humbling experience? Or does being surrounded by the older classes who have successfully learned all these things act as more of an encouragement rather than something to compare yourself with unfavourably? The idea of having a "beginners mind" is a humble position but not a humiliating one. (I'm struggling to fully untangle humiliating from humility - they obviously come from the same root but have ended up in different places).
The whole system of the school with its dingy black uniforms and identical bedrooms and all thee rules, traditions and exaptations seems designed to take away some of their individuality - but also to give them a sense of belonging. I'm not sure if that leads more to individual humility or group pride? Probably both at different times. An institution like a school needs to have more formal rules than a family home might in order to run smoothly but the traditionalism and strictness of Cackle's does seem particularly harsh. There are lots of interesting questions about how institutions and groups can establish normals and have enough homogeneity and harmony to function with crushing individuality and risking humiliation for newbies and those who struggle to fit in.
For Mildred school seems to be a particularly humbling/humiliating experience she couldn't walk from one end of a corridor to the other without someone yelling at her, and nearly every night she was writing lines or being kept in. Have been an untidy, sometimes chaotic schoolchild who often inadvertently broke rules without meaning to I really feel for her. She's self-aware enough - or has internalised the teachers low opinion of her enough - to anticipate trouble at the kitten presentation. This feels like a different kind of humility to the systemic "being put in your place" I discussed above. It only really counts as humility if it's an accurate self-assessment - worrying too much and being convinced you are the worst person in the world is actually not a humble self-concept even though it's a negative one! Maud thinks that Mildred is being silly and tries to reassure her, she's got a way with animals and some of her worst predictions like treading on the kitten's tail are physically impossible with the set up of the ceremony. Maud is being a good friend but I think Mildred's self assessment is slightly closer to the truth than Maud's reassurance that there's nothing to worry about. Mildred doesn't get to reply because this is the point when they are interrupted by Miss Hardbroom. But I find it interesting that it would necessarily be un-humble of Mildred to agree that she is good with animals - I think I have been conditioned to think of being humble as being self-critical but reflecting accurately on your strengths isn't always boastful.
After Miss Hardbroom sends Maud away and makes it clear (by glaring meaningfully) that Mildred must blow out her candle we learn something that is definitely both humiliating and humbling for Mildred. She is scared of the dark and even though she was drowsing while Maud was still in the room now she is unable to sleep and aware of every sound.The narrator (who seems to be a slightly more knowing third-person version of Mildred) makes it very clear how very humiliating it would be for any one at the school to find this out and is almost reluctant to admit it to us To tell the truth, Mildred was afraid of the dark, but don't tell anyone. I mean, whoever heard of a witch who was scared of the dark?
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