The last piece of the narration that seems to point to the text being a mental illness narrative is the inclusion not only twins, but oppositely gendered twins, in Miranda and Eliot. Miranda muses that “eliot is me we were once one cell” [sic] which highlights the ultimate closeness that the siblings shared in the womb. This closeness is highlighted throughout the story but at the same time, there is the traditional pressure of patriarchal versus matriarchal lives. By representing both the male and female, Oyeyemi is able to explore and press the ideals of the traditional gender roles while also showcasing the “relationship between pica, Victorian feminine illness […] given these figures and practices are gendered. Eliot appears to be free of the burden that the Silver matrilineal line imposes upon the Silver women but there is the looming question of if the house is truly the one that is imposing this mental illness. We witness the differences between an able body and a mentally ill body in the comparison of Eliot and his sister. We also are able to infer what that means in conjunction with female and male genders and societies expectations of both. 
Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching explores and exploits what we know about mental illness by using a combination of pica, an extremely strong matrilineal line, casual horror, and the use of multiple narrators. Oyeyemi’s use of mental illness feels metaphorical in use but the implications on persons with mental illness are real. Females that suffer from mental illness have suffered a long history of unnecessary medical procedures to “cure” mental illness and we must be careful to show the lived experiences of those with mental illness whenever possible. Mental illness being used as a narrative prosthesis can be helpful to other with mental illness but it can also be used as a way to hold back those within the community. I believe that the use of mental illness in conjunction with female characters in the novel marks those characters for more intense scrutiny while the male characters fade into the background of the story. The juxtaposition of the twins, Miranda and Eliot Silver, clearly demonstrates the difference between male and female characters within White is for Witching, as Miranda suffers from pica and Eliot does not. The character of Eliot serves as both an outlier and a complication in the storyline of the matrilineal Silver blood. This complication serves to draw attention to the differences of the female characters and bolsters their connection to not only each other but to the shared mental illness within the family. Oyeyemi has marked the Silver matrilineal line as “Other” by connecting generations of Silver women with the disability of pica while the use of pica cements the strange connection between the Silver family home and the Silver women. 
