I just finished reading an excerpt for my Teen and Children's Lit class at college. The excerpt is from The Witch in History by Diane Purkiss. I doubt this will be the first article/excerpt I blog about from this class. This excerpt looks at the cultural representation of the witch, and what it meant to New England societies during the witch hunts in the first part, and in the second there is a conclusion about the overall portrayal of witches in culture.
For the first part, I would like to look at a question the excerpt made me think of. It proposes two ways that witches are culturally signified during the sixteenth up until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. The first is that of disrupting the domestic sphere that is the provence of the woman in the society. A witch would cause a cow to stop giving milk, cream not to churn into butter, or sicken a child or animal. The second is that witches, in their actions are "leaky". Women in general are more "leaky" than men. Her definition is that there is a fear during this time period that women, due to their feeding of infants, are able to "absorb" in some way others, and that infants even are fighting between this need for food and fear of absorbtion, and that the witch, in causing inappropriate intimacy through her actions absorbs in some manner. My question is how much of the second signifier we see in the anti-feminist literature, or is it more exclusively the first, or is it yet others not discussed in the excerpt I read.
For the second part, there is a quote that I think summons up the critical issues for feminists:
"For despite the subtleties of radical feminists, historians and modem witches, the dominant image of the witch is still of a shrieking hag on a broomstick, the Wicked Witch of the West."
How has that view, that of the "wicked witch" affected the culture? Is it a significant part of Patriarchy, or is it a more minor part of the overall culture?
And, overall, is the discussion of the portrayal of witches in particular something there should be a feminist discussion, or is it best subsumed into the larger discussion of the portrayal of women in general?
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Oh, yay! I love this stuff. I have to recommend that you read an article by Anne Carson called "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire." It's in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, and it's fabulous. Actually most of the articles in that book are great.
This idea of women being "leaky" and therefore dangerous is a carryover from the ancient Greeks, who thought that men were hot and dry while women were moist and cool. Women were thought of as dangerous because they couldn't maintain their own boundaries and were thought to be "leaky" and go around polluting everything because of it. This leakiness was more than just physical - a woman's alleged inability to control her emotions was the much bigger issue, and her physical leakiness and lack of control was just a metaphor for the much more troubling emotional and psychological leakiness.
I think that the modern obsession with controlling women's bodies - cleaning them, shaving them, controlling their "feminine odor," etc is also a remnant of this idea. Women's bodies require a lot more "discipline" than men's (as Foucault would characterize all the washing, plucking, cosmeticizing, styling, odor-covering, dieting, exercising, nail grooming, etc that women are expected to engage in on a daily basis), which is a dynamic you expect given that women are lower in the hierarchy. The idea is that the lower you are in the hierarchy the more "discipline" you require.
It also serves as a plausible explanation for all the hysteria involving breastfeeding in public. People often compare breastfeeding to peeing or shitting, either explicitly or by asking you to go do it in the bathroom. People often use the words "gross" and "unsanitary" to describe it too. So this seems like a fear of pollution from the "leaky" woman as well.
I'm currently reading a very interesting book on the matter of witches and witch hunts. It's called Witchcraze by Anne Llewellyn Barstow. Absolutely fascinating, highly recommend it. In it she described the witch hunts as basically a 200 year persecution of women. 80% of accused witches were female, and 85% of those killed were women. And though there are economic and other factors, a significant factor was the reconciliation of power into the church. Back then women, even though they had by no means legal or civic import or standing, they had a great deal of social power as local healers and witches. Then the church demonized them and destroyed them, and it's left its mark on european and american women since then, in violence toward women, stereotypes of women, and just a whole host of things. You really should read it if you're interested in more about witches and the effect on women today.
Have you read the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches)? You can probably just Google it. It's a 14th century text describing how to discern witches and the types of horrible things they do. My understanding is that it was written at least in part to keep witch hunts from going out of control, by putting some criteria out there. Of course, it's about as scientific as any New England witch hunt...
Anyway, the thing is hysterically (!!!) funny, I mean a riot, if you're in the right frame of mind for it. But alongside the hilarity it's a really good example about what you've brought up. It's essentially a whole list of reasons why women are completely terrifying and not to be trusted, from leaky (and poisonously so) to emasculating to treacherous to sinful.
I've been reading Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood by Bram Dijkstra, and it's fascinating, if you would like another reference (haha I'm definitely writing down the authors and titles that have been listed here, these sound great).
I think witch-y allusions (even the most indirect kind) are everywhere. This is certainly something relevant to feminist discussion...
Could you clarify what you mean by anti-feminist literature? Do you mean literature that has particularly harmful meanings for the women actors inside them, or the style of the works themselves? I am used to calling most literature patriarchal, unless the form or style is somehow considered 'un-traditional.' And even then, I feel like un-traditional or experimental forms are still influenced by the dominant patriarchal way.
Oh! PS- I actually just read a fabulous essay on zombies, witches and immigrants, if you are interested. Jean and John Comaroff's "Alien Nation" is concise and brilliant, though their research is located in South Africa, and it sounds like you're focusing on witches in 'Western' culture?
If you're interested in the way witchcraft & feminism plays out in pop culture, check out Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No I'm not kidding-- Joss Whedon (the creator) does a lot of gender play & feminism issues, and one of them is making Willow (a main character) a witch--and a lesbian. We're watching Season 4 in my Fem & Gender Theory class and it's absolutely fascinating.