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Howl’s Moving Castle is the rare story that centers around a girl’s imaginative abilities without succumbing to mere whimsy. Sophie’s imagination is powerful, even when used unconsciously. Yet discovering her magic isn’t just about finding her power—it’s a perspective shift. She’d been so convinced of her path as the eldest daughter that she limited her own possibilities. In the novels, however, Sophie accidentally uses her own powers to perpetuate her own curse, partly because she prefers being old. Reading Diana Wynne Jones’s novel Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) might have been the first time I felt a deep connection to a protagonist. Sophie Hatter, the book’s main character, is a plain young woman cursed to live as an old woman. She’s also a character who falls victim to fairy tale tropes simply because she believes in them. The “curse” that Howl is under, which Sophie originally misidentifies as a spell, is really a poem by John Donne, written on a child’s homework assignment. (“‘Go and catch a falling star, / Get with child a mandrake’s root, / Show me where the past years are, / Or who cleft the devil’s foot, / Teach me to hear mermaids singing, / Or to keep off envy’s stinging, / And find / What wind / Serves to advance and honest mind.’ Tell what this is about and write a second verse yourself.”) Even Donne’s poetry, even curses, Wynne Jones seems to be saying, are not above revision.
At the beginning of “Howl’s Moving Castle,” Sophie Hatter is first seen wearing a sun hat with a red ribbon, a pink brochette and a pastel green dress with a white collar. After Sophie is cursed, she continues to wear the same hat with her hair in a braid alongside a blue dress, designed similarly to the green, and a long-skirted yellow dress by the very end of the film. Sophie’s dress is reminiscent of a day dress from the 1890s that takes from older Victorian wrappers . In the film, she actually mentions that right after she is cursed into a much older version of herself, her clothing “finally suits her,” indicating she dresses rather “old” for her age. With a later Edwardian period as the setting, it would make sense for Sophie to describe a Victorian wrapper-like dress as old-fashioned. At the beginning of the story, Sophie’s character is shy and quiet, believing herself to be ugly. Unlike her mother and her sisters, Sophie tends to dress more reservedly in clothes that do not resemble the popular fashion of the time. Her clothing reflects the view she has of herself as having a place only in relation to the people around her instead of having a distinct place of her own. Her dresses throughout the film are all quite similar to one another as iterations of the same dress, the only significant difference being in color. The selected range of garment design was intentional so that Sophie’s dress essentially became part of her character. When her dress became a solidified piece of her character design, the garment did not have the ability to further influence how she developed, but rather she herself determined the worth and level of importance of the dress. The dress being seemingly plain as well allowed it to accompany Sophie’s journey into her character development. The dress’s design worked alongside Sophie’s personality and her growth as a character. The article “Fashion Analysis in Hayao Miyazaki’s Films” by Darlyn Granja describes how it goes from being a simple dress to “a symbolic piece that is shaped and personalized by Sophie and her character development, rather than the dress shaping Sophie.” The gown itself did not provide beauty for Sophie. Instead, her growing self-assurance resonated in her clothing. Meanwhile, the titular wizard upsets fairy tale gender norms. Howl is proud and haughty, obsessed with chasing women, and overly precious about his looks. He’s petulant and throws tantrums when things don’t go his way. He knows there’s a curse or prophecy hanging over his head that hinges on a certain date, and he still goes out and gets drunk with his rugby team the night before.
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But rather than falling into despair, this transformation frees Sophie from the expectations she’d mapped onto her life—there are no stories about old ladies seeking their fortune, so she’s free. She tells herself in the mirror, “This is much more like you really are.” Sophie's appearance in the movie depicts her as a young, innocent-looking girl with brown eyes and long brown hair worn in a plait that is tied with pink ribbons. She is typically seen wearing a sun hat with a red ribbon and a pink brochette, and a pastel green dress with a white collar and three buttons on the chest, all of which contribute to her plain appearance. In the movie, Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie is the eldest of two sisters, and the daughter of an unnamed hat maker. The store is managed by her mother, Honey Hatter, of whom Sophie is a hat-making apprentice to. Howl Jenkins Pendragon (wizard): At first, they don't seem to like each other much, and simply view each other like strangers. But later, the two fall in love, and marry at the end of the movie. In the sequel (novel), they have a son.
After Sophie is cursed, she retains her same hat and continues wearing her hair in the same fashion. Although her dress remains the same style, it is now pastel blue in color. However, she gains a significant amount of weight, and obtains both a wrinkled appearance and silver hair from age. Items for one time wear or indoor use like shoe covers, boots tops, costume shoes, etccan not be returned.Calcifer (fire demon) Sophie and Calcifer are relatively good friends as he is the first one to know about her curse. The plot really begins when Sophie’s father dies and Fanny sends the older girls to make their fortunes, leaving Sophie to work in the family hat shop. She takes to it in her resigned fashion, convinced it’s the best she can do, and starts wearing only gray and talking to the hats she’s trimming, rather than to the customers. When the book’s glamorous villain, the Witch of the Waste, appears in the shop one day, an altercation ensues and the Witch puts Sophie under a curse that transforms her into an old woman. Throughout the novel, Sophie juggles these kinds of fantastic perceptions while battling the truths of her fanciful world, and, as such, nothing is quite like what you’ve read in fantasy stories before. Sophie's magical talents attract the attention of the Witch of the Waste. Mistaking Sophie for her sister, Lettie Hatter, and believing that Sophie was withholding some information she needed regarding Howl, the Witch of the Waste curses Sophie into becoming an old woman. With a desire to lift the curse, Sophie travels to the moving castle owned by the Wizard Howl, despite the rumors that Howl is renowned for stealing the souls of beautiful girls.
Honey (mother): A loving mother, a loving daughter. They have a good relationship but betrays Sophie at the end, which she truly regrets doing. The Story of Yanagawa's Canals (1987) • Miyazaki and Kurosawa Fireside Chat (1993) • Ghibli Was Born This Way: A Birth Story Spelled Out With Reproduced Images (1998) • World Journey of My Memory / Journey of the Heart (1998) • How Princess Mononoke Was Born (2001) • Lasseter-San, Arigato! (2003) • Hayao Miyazaki Produces a CD (2004) • Yasuo Otsuka's Joy of Motion (2004) • Hayao Miyazaki and the Ghibli Museum (2005) • Ghibli: The Miyazaki Temple (2005) • The Work of Toshio Suzuki (2006) • Scenery of Ghibli (2006) • A Ghibli Artisan – Kazuo Oga Exhibition – The Man Who Painted Totoro's Forest (2007) • How Ponyo Was Born (2009) • Poppy Hill - 300 Days of War Between Father and Son (2011) • Ghibli's Bookshelf (2011) • The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013) • Until The End of The Creation of When Marnie Was There (2015) • Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016) • NHK Image File: I Want To Meet This Person - Isao Takahata, Animation Film Director (2018) • 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki (2019) In the book, Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie is the eldest of three daughters of hat maker, Mr. Hatter, in the magical kingdom of Ingary, where many fairy-tale tropes are accepted ways of life. When Sophie's father dies, her step-mother, Fanny Hatter sets her to making hats in the family hat shop. She turns out to spend all the money while Sophie makes the hats.
House of Many Ways takes place three years after Castle in the Air. Sophie is a sorceress who is invited to help in the search for the kingdom's missing treasury, mainly because she is Howl's wife and one kingdom cannot ask the help of another kingdom's Royal Wizard. So while they asked for Sophie instead, Howl chose to come along as well in the disguise of an adorable young boy named "Twinkle", claiming to be Sophie's nephew. In the end Sophie helps solve the crime from the prince, and Howl discovers the location of the mysterious Elfgift. Another theory says that the curse was weakened and started frequently changing Sophie's age until it could only change Sophie's hair color when the Witch of the Waste lost all of her powers. And stating that when she was seen the first time sleeping, Howl must have known of her curse and wanted to see her true youth, and that the second time was only a dream. It is also possible that the spell weakens if Sophie is not focusing very much on it, whether actively or unconsciously. For example, Sophie was probably not dreaming about being old, so she returned to her proper age in sleep. Another example could be her visit to Sulliman, since she would then be thinking about Howl rather than herself.
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