how the witch became a feminist icon (and how it failed)

hello everyone my name is Leoni and welcome back and if you're new here welcome uh for this video I kind of went through my closet for my most witchy items and I think it's especially the sleeves I've got my witch's brew ready it's a cup of ear gry tea and today I want to talk with you guys about the many faces of the witch specifically as a feminist icon so when I was a child the which was an evil villain that incited fear they were hated unlike the demure and pure girls that they tormented and this is the archetype that the witch embodied in stories for centuries the evil stepmother that comes to curse you or feed you poisoned apples the Monstrous babayaga that will eat your children the elderly Crone on a broomstick adorned many Victorian Christmas cards and just as a side note Victoria Christmas cards absolutely amazing we need to bring that back anyway it was a far cry from the Beloved witches of stories today the empowered women the feminist icons it all kind of started to change in the 60s when the idea of Witchcraft became kind of glamorous with the rise of popularity of wika and of course there was second W feminism and the emergence of feminist history and then the 19s you had third W feminism there were a lot of conversations about sexual autonomy the Anita Hill hearings conversations about Monica Lewinsky it all made people look at the vilified witches in kind of a different way and we can see this kind of reflected in the Pup Culture witches from the '90s witches are now allowed to be main characters not just villains and young women can relate to them and see them as like empowered women and this is is also reflected in the stories that we nowadays tell about witches we're a lot more empathetic towards these witchy women like retellings of classic evil villains retellings of the witch trials from the perspective of a young and insubordinate woman cute and cozy witches in small towns surrounded by herbs and spell books and I noticed that there's this new trend going in Romance Books where there are suddenly a lot of romance books that center around witchy main characters in small towns that are looking for romance it's very similar to your typical small town Romance of a big city girl going to a small town except now they're witches and this adds like this added element of coziness and also Whimsy to the story it's almost paradoxical if you think about it you know the witch is on the one hand dark and full of Rage but on the other hand she is cozy and comforting she is both hor horror and romance she is both persecuted victim and self-possessed Modern Woman either way I I do love them but in this video I kind of want to dig a little bit deeper into what's going on with the witch as like a feminist icon we'll talk about the witch trials the misogyny we'll talk about these feminine rage revenge stories but also you know the small town romance girly stories um and I think most importantly ask herself the questions were or are witches as characters really as empowering as we think that they are so to understand the witch as a feminist character and archetype we must first understand the real world history of how witches became associated with feminism I must interrupt this video with a message about protecting your Vibe and protecting your ears because this video is sponsored by loop ear plugs they are a wonderful company that I've been loving working with and I've been using their product so much they make earplugs that are both stylish and very very useful and I'm very excited for their new product which is the loop switch the loop switch allows you with just one earplug switch between three different modes the engage mode that just kind of take the edge of noise but you can still stay engaged in conversation The Experience mode which also reduces noise even more but really retains the sound quality and then the quiet mode which reduces noise the most which is really when you want to like study or keep it really quiet and with the the loop switch is going to be super easy to just always have the right level of noise reduction with you it's an earplug that's truly ahead of its time Loop is certified hearing protection they are completely reusable and Planet friendly um and they have the loop switch in four different colors I got mine in pink and of course I cannot resist a beautiful air accessory so thank you to Loop for sponsoring this message and now let's get back to the witchy talking so I think when we think of feminism um and witches one thing comes to mind and that is witch hunts the great age of witch trials ran between the 1550s and 1700 it started in Europe and then through the colonization of the American continent taking the Puritan religion with it the witch hunts were also brought to the US people always talk about the Salem Witch Trials the Salem Witch Trials but the Salem Witch Trials were only like one event in like a centuries long tradition of witch hunts in total 80,000 people were tried for witchcraft and an estimated half of those were killed whereas the Saleem Witch Trials was like 10 people something like that was in total there were like tens of thousands of people killed for witchcraft and a little side note this video is going to be focusing on like this European and US idea of the witch and the witch trials and also Western stories but of course witchcraft is something that exist in any culture and also the witch hunts aren't over there are still witch hunts going on in India and parts of Africa so this is not like a done part of History like I said at first witches were very much deemed as like evil devilish women and one of the factors of turning this image around was feminism and like revisiting history from a feminist lens and seeing that these women that were hunted for witchcraft were really not that evil one of the big turning points in the representation of like evil witches was The Wizard of Oz which was published in 1900 oh 1900 what a nice round number witchcraft anyway this book didn't only have wicked witches like most kind of fairy tale stories would at the time but there was also Glinda the Good Witch and because of this the book was even banned in some library and really came under Fire because there were like good witches represented in it and that was like really not done the author of The Wizard of Oz was Frank Bal was he a feminist icon I don't know but his mother-in-law definitely was a Matilda Joselyn Gage and she was one of the first to equate wish hunts with misogyny Matilda JN Gage was born in the US in 1826 she was a Resolute abolitionist a steadfast sist a stange Advocate and activist for women's rights and equality and an unyielding critic of the church for being the primary force in the subordination of women and she fought for the equality of women Beyond beond just voting rights which was kind of the focus for first wve feminism and suffer Jets and she could also be considered one of the first women's historians but for a long time MAA Justin Gage's contributions to feminism were kind of swept under the rug Justin Gage was pushed out for her continued criticism of the church and its role in the subjugation of women she was disappeared from history this is not unlike the fate of the learned women during during the era of witch trials so in a sense Matilda Justin Gage was just like a witch punished for going against the Norms of the time so because of that I thought it would be interesting to highlight her thoughts and her criticisms of witch hunts like obviously a lot has been written you could make like a 10-hour video about witch hunts and feminism and everyone's different perspectives on it but we don't have all day and her main thesis was basically that witches or women accused of Witchcraft were very often educated women who questioned the existing power structures just like she did so in 1893 she published women State Church in which she dedicated an entire chapter chapter five to witch hunts and misogyny which I read and I will tell you about it she remarked that those accused of Witchcraft were very often women even though the idea of Witchcraft is not inherently gendered she mentions that there were barely any accounts of evil wizards it was always the women who are full of sin and we do know now that this is mostly true yes not all those evicted were women but most of them were Natalie Dawn a member of the Scottish Parliament who fought for the pardon for all the women killed during the Scottish witch trials says not everyone at all who was executed or convicted were women but it was 85% many were raped brutally tortured brutally assaulted and then ultimately executed and I just think that these women have gone almost ignored and Matilda JN Gage has a few of her own theories of why it was mostly women that were the target of witch hunts first of all she mentions that a lot of the beliefs in the church were just very focused on this idea that women were inherently more sinful than men of course it was Eve who caused the fall of men by eating the apple and all of modern women supposedly like bore this kind of sin in them priest had to be celibate because just being in close proximity with a woman could make them supposedly more vulnerable to demon infestations these doctrines allow the church to solidify its power and commit the foulest of crimes against women the original book of witch hunting was uh very negative towards women so the book that influenced a lot of like witchcraft hunts was the malas maleficarum I always think that I'm saying it wrong but I'm I think I'm saying it right the malas maleficarum or the hammer of witches so although the man who wrote this was a bit of a wo dude and he wasn't taken very seriously at his own time this book that he wrote on witch hunting they become pretty influential later on in like the Protestant and Catholic church but apparently this dude was a weird guy uh and basically wrote the entire thing because he was angry that a woman rejected him so he wrote a whole book about how women are evil witches are we surprised at this no uh but anyway one of the things that it says is when a woman thinks alone she is evil they are more credulous they have slipped tongues the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man those among ambitious women are more deeply infected she is a liar by nature and all these kind of things together showed joclyn Gage that there was definitely a lot of misogyny going on in the witch trials and joclyn Gage goes on about how dangerous it was for women to be accused of Witchcraft the endless violence that came with it these centuries of wrongdoings towards women and she traces this pattern of witch hunting all across Europe and then later also in uh us Puritan small towns uncommon Beauty was as dangerous to a woman as the possession of great wealth which brought frequent accusations in order that the church might seize upon the witch's property for its own use little girls of 10 8 and seven years are mentioned blind girls infants and even young boys were among the number of thus perished everywhere the most helpless classes were the victims and about a rule in Massachusetts a law ordering suspective women to be stripped naked their bodies to be carefully examined by a male witch pricker to see if there was not the devil's Mark upon them but it wasn't just any women that were accused of Witchcraft and her main thesis is that it was mostly women who were not knowledgeable and challenged existing power structures that were accused of Witchcraft and that hatred and envy and fear of these kind of women could fuel these accusations she mentions the origin of the word which Veen which is to prophesize for which you need a kind of superior knowledge and that it was also often women who had knowledge of medicine and herbs that were accused of Witchcraft so since the change in perspective that witchcrafts were actually practices that disproportionately hurt women were rooted in misogyny we can kind of understand how this also viewed how we perceived witches just like as an archetype she's not an evil stepmother in her Tower she's just a woman who people think is evil because she possesses some kind of knowledge that people are afraid of nowadays we have this image of the witch as a feminist icon that is the role that she plays in a lot of modern witch stories Pam Grossman for The Huffington Post remarks that witches are a very rare archetype where a woman is in control traditionally female archetypes get power from other people think about things like the mother the Queen the daughter they are all lovely archetypes for women and yet they're deriving their power from the relation to other people whereas the witch she has power unto herself it is not because it's in relation to someone else she is self-defining in the same way women are defining themselves today and Grace Gallery in her essay on Modern depictions of witches says witches are perceived by many feminists and people who have felt others as symbols of self-actualization self-empowerment and self-love witches are people who transcend the binaries and the oppressive forces that hold them down I was listening to a podcast by BBC Radio 4 on like real life Witchcraft and people who consider themselves uh witches in real life which isn't something I'm going to go into in this video too much cuz that's like a completely different area I think oh my God I keep almost swapping swooping my sleeve into this candle what was I saying oh yeah podcast in this video I'm really focusing on like the archetype and like stories about witches but in this podcast there were interviews with like a lot of people who consider themselves witches and one of these people romal Swan at some point talked about being called a witch by others from a very young age even when she was a child and she says about this it's a way of othering isn't it at the same time what somebody is inadvertently saying when they call you a witch is that you are powerful the witch in stories is a woman with power and this may very well have something to do with the rise of like real life witches Katherine Spooner when she's talking about the Resurgence of witchy characters in '90s media says this I think that's partly to do with the rise of wiah it was becoming much more well-known much more popular and much more acceptable and in turn the programs made it more more acceptable it seems to be that there was kind of like a merging of a bunch of different things like people were using more witchcraft in real life as like a way of like self-empowerment for women started seeing that women were victims of witch trials and not like evil little Crohns and the narrative around witches right now is that she is this like heroic self-empowered woman with magic um but also that she's like a victim of the witch trials like a lot of stories about witches aren't just about witches who have this like magic and are like very like self-empowered but they also add to it that these they kind of like merge it with history kind of like a speculative history that these witches were also burnt at stake these are stories about women who really are genuine witches and have like magical powers and they are also or their ancestors were also victims of the Witch trials and so they must keep their powers a secret because otherwise you know the people will come after them with their pitchforks I think this is like the most common depiction of the witch nowadays where this idea of like this Pagan Witch is kind of conflated with like the victims of the witch trials but there is a difference between the self-identified witch and the accused witch when I say accused witches imposed witches es I mean the people who were accused of Witchcraft and therefore killed and when I say self-identified witches I mean witches who people who are witches basically people who practice Witchcraft and what a lot of witchy fiction does is create a narrative in which this imposed Witch is also a self-identified witch that the woman accused of secretly harboring magical powers is indeed secretly harboring magical powers and that basically the people with the pitforks are right but the question is are these women in like real life history who were accused of Witchcraft actually witches did they actually have this power that they were accused of having the answer is no so before we move on to talk more about witches in books and movies I just want to highlight the fact that people accused of Witchcraft were not witches Diane perkus Australian professor of History who has written a lot about witches in history says nobody was goddess worshiping During the period of the witch hunts or if they were they've left no Trace in the historical records there was no real Pagan witchcraft there was some residual paganism in very few trials the point is that women persecuted for witchcraft were not witches these women had very little to do with what we would nowadays consider magic or witchcraft Zoe vendit tazi who is also fighting for Scottish pardon for the women persecuted in the Scottish trials talks about how she wants to get rid of of this idea that women accused of Witchcraft had anything to do with the dark arts she says these were mostly just women who were leading their lives and for whatever reason they got accused of Witchcraft they could have been you or I similar campaigns are happening in Spain in Catalonia 150 history professors are signatories to a petition no ER bries they were not witches to educate cathaline children about their provinces femicides of Witchcraft were accused of having magical abilities tapping into the power of the devil like the evil witches of fairy tales they would use their powers to hurt others but like the evil witches of fairy tales this was fiction an illusion an illusion of power there is a clear distinction between being powerful and being perceived as powerful and persecuted as a result so who were the women persecuted for witchcraft they were first of all older women we don't know a lot about the age of the witches persecuted but from what we know most of them were over the age of 50 which back then was considered like really old it was also women that lived a little bit like outside of society and relied on neighbors for help maybe she was a widow and often needed to ask her neighbors for like a cup of sugar or a little bit of food and because of this she would be resented Slowly by her neighbors as an economic burden and only like a little thing went wrong she would be a clear Target to be accused of Witchcraft then there was also sick women women with deformities or who for some reason didn't really fit into the ideas of beauty women that somehow did not conform to the expectations that were put on women in this like very Puritan Era you know get married have babies raise kids in that order and lastly it was women who would be described as determined and confident women that weren't afraid to express their opinions a common misconception is that it was also midwives who were accused of Witchcraft but this is actually a myth I don't want to go like fully into it because it's a little bit complicated but I'll link to a podcast it's two historians talking about how basically just like this long chain of not properly citing sources or just citing the wrong sources caused people to believe that it was mostly midwives that were accused of Witchcraft but now that we've looked into more trustworthy and primary sources historians have found out that midwives were not more likely to be persecuted for witchcraft at all so women accused of Witchcraft were vulnerable women the witch as a Fantasy character may be powerful but women accused of Witchcraft were not they were accused of dangerous competence but you cannot tell me that the children that died in the Salem Witch Trials were powerful that the women who were sick deformed or old held any actual power even the iconic women that did go against established dander roles by being ambitious learning and acquiring medical knowledge were still held under the boot of patriarchy they were still expected to be demure get married have children and you know were killed for their ins subordinates can a woman really be considered to be in a position of power when she is killed for speaking up so to bring it back to like current ideas of like the powerful witch archetype I want to reiterate what a lot of witchy fiction does is create this narrative that these women accused of having other worldly Powers really did actually have other worldly powers and I think it is a little bit sad that although don't get me wrong I really love cool stories about epic sorceress I do think it's a little sad um that we may kind of forget that these women that were accused of witches really were weren't powerful at all they were very vulnerable women actually all these narratives about how people accused of witchcrafts were actually secretly witches kind of undermines the historical facts which is that these women were falsely accused it tells a story of like oh hey you know all these religious zealots that went after women and thought that they were evil witches well I guess they were right given this I'm not against witchy stories that do this at all I actually love them I love witchy stories I eat them up maybe precisely because of this I mean I'm sure there are many many reasons why people love witchy stories but maybe we do have some kind of desire to read stories about women who were accused of having superb magical abilities did indeed have superb magical abilities like that's a really nice fantasy to indulge in you know what's a more fun story to read about like a woman who's accused of Witchcraft and then turns out to just not be able to do anything and she just dies or a story about a woman who is accused of Witchcraft and then actually turns out to be a witch and has these amazing powerful magical abilities that she uses to just rage revenge on everyone oh that would I think that would be like one of my favorite books of the year if I read that it's getting so dark it's getting so dark women get accused of secretly harboring some kind of power in society all the time there are so many men that accuse women of like actually having the power because you know men are expected to pay for everything or this idea that women are actually the ones with power in society because they I hate talking about this because of this idea that they like hold the key to who gets to have sex and who doesn't have sex this is like inel rhetoric that is obviously complete bogus I don't want to go into that but there are many instances of men accusing women of like secretly holding the power in society and then using that as an excuse to at best be shitty to them and at worst kill them I'm sure there are many more examples of this that you can think of if you have any let me know but it can be especially frustrating when you were a woman and you you were very aware of the fact that you do not in fact hold power because you're a woman it can be extra frustrating when people like accuse you of having some kind of power that you don't really have and I think this may be contributing to why witchy stories are so fun because it is like oh hey what if all this power you're accused of having what if you did in fact have that what if all this magic that you supposedly have what if you had it don't you want to indulge in a little story about a woman using all her beautiful magical abilities yes I would thank you whether she uses all of the power to rage revenge on her enemies or start a cozy little Bakery in a small town both are fine with me it's getting really dark in here we're really getting more witchy Vibes as the video goes along my personal favorite example is sloot the book that I just mentioned which is about this girl and this Pur in Village who gets accused of Witchcraft for all the typical reasons she doesn't want to marry she doesn't want to be subordinate to men and then she is actually indeed contacted by some kind of devil and she gains all these extremely strong powers and like spoiler alert uses it to carve out you know her own little life and kills a lot of people in the process very very satisfying to read I love witchy Horror in my Reviews of This Book I called this book um kind of like a Power Trip a power fantasy and I would say that maybe all witch stories like the feminist witch stories are in a way a power fantasy it's indulging in the fantasy of having some kind of power some secret power in society and this puts the witch in a very interesting position story-wise because she is both the victim the persecuted woman and an empowered magical woman in her essay about modern depictions of witches Grace Gallery says in modern rep presentations of the witch in literature film and feminist Theory especially radical feminist Theory the witch assumes the role of both victim and heroine she is idolized as a symbol of Triumph self-actualization and power while also serving as a figure of victimhood and oppression Justina sruk who wrote a whole book about the fantasies of gender and witches as a feminist icon also has a similar sense sentiment and she says as a radical feminist identity the witch strategically represents both the historical object figure subjected to torture and death and a radical fantasy of renewal in the form of a female figure who desires and articulates a cultural transformation and there are all kinds of ways in which a woman can create a fantasy that a races patriarchy that puts women in a position of power the example s gives is as follows the herbalist wi represents clearly such a fantasy of a superwoman the feminist heroine of the 1980s and 1990s a professional woman who has a beautiful country garden bakes her own bread makes her own Kilts and demonstrates unconventional sexuality with this we can start to see that what constitutes a self-possessed and self-actualized woman is very open to interpretation because the power of the witch is mostly fantasy authors can come up with their own ideas of how this power comes into fruition maybe she's a herbalist witch that makes her own bread and a perfect Cottage core lifestyle maybe she has natural magic Beyond Her Imagination as a bond with nature that is rooted back to her ancestors and she slays all her neighbors maybe lean into the fact that intelligent women were often accused of Witchcraft and she is a bookish woman maybe she owns a witchy shop in a small town in the Midwest and she's a girl boss and capitalist Queen don't get me wrong I do love a good small town witchy shop owner story but it is interesting to note that the power fantasy created in these kind of stories is perfectly in line with what in like our modern Western capitalist Society is deemed powerful and the epitome of independent Womanhood she sells things Boss more like boss witch and it is precisely because of this that Grace's gallery has some criticisms of some Modern witchy stories although I agree that the witch is a fantastic symbol of overcoming oppression I'm troubled by the fact that so many modern depictions of the witch fail to impact and challenge the societal structures that the witch occupies in her article for the classic Journal she noted that a lot of witches and stories are white middle class women and she calls for more intersectional viewing of the archetype a witch generally is an AR type is like a woman who transcends oppression through gaining her own power but Gallery makes the observation that in a lot of modern witch stories this gaining of power is not equally distributed she says that we must question who gets to have power in these narratives uh for example she looks at the very famous ' 9s movie The Craft it's about a group of young women that form their own coven and then start using magic to like get back at the people who have abused them in their family and at school then one of the main characters nany becomes the antagonist because she basically becomes too power hungry and starts using too much of her power which is bad and at the end of the story she also loses her witchy Powers as opposed to that our protagonist Sarah is the only one that at the end of the movie gets to keep her witchy powers points out that the evil witch Nancy also happens to be the poor character she lives in the Traer Park whereas Sarah our main character is very well off she comes from a wealthy family and she's the one that gets to keep her magic and it kind of falls into this common Trope where like poor people shouldn't get power or money cuz they're just going to use it for bad things they always go too far with it and then use it to hurt others this Narrative of the poor SL oppressed individual gaining power and using it to the detriment of themselves and others is quite a common Trope in myths stories and legends globally of course the rich well-dressed conventionally attractive white girl is deemed pure and good and the poor dark makeup wearing greasy-haired white trash girl is deemed evil and corrupted The Writer's choice to have Nancy become the villain is heavily informed by their own and by society's prejudices and ideologies about what poor people look like and how poor people act especially if given access to power or money and this feels kind of weird for a witch story right if there's supposed to be these power fantasies for women isn't the witch narrative supposed to be allegorical isn't it meant to signify people with no power who seek gain and use it to better themselves and in other witchy stories it is also often the wealthy or well off or white women The Good the selfless women that get to gain the most power so witchy stories about women gaining power often inadvertently also contain a narrative about who is allowed to gain that power which women are allowed to gain that much power and which women aren't so I think I do really agree with this article that although I think which stories are great as like feminist Tales of women standing up against like sex is oppression we should always remain critical of what these stories do with other types of Oppression whether it is class race gender etc for example I really love the small town witchy stories but very often they kind of ignore that you know small towns in the US not the best place to go against the norms and this is often ignored in those stories you know like the small towns are just made out to be like the coziest and best place and happiest places on Earth again no hate to small town stories I love them I eat them up I'm a big Gilmer girls fan but it is kind of ironic that the settings of like Witch Hunt atrocities are now seen as like the epitome of witchy coziness you have to see the irony in that using the last bits of sunlight I will give you my own little theories of why I think this irony kind of came to be first of all stories about witches are often about women who kind of escape to like the outskirts of society you know having your homestead baking your own bread being exiled to a remote island so you can turn men into pigs and the setting of a small town kind of works for this idea with like living with nature leaving the big city to small town is kind of the modern equivalent of like escaping civilization also witches often lived on the outskirts of society they didn't just want to escape it they also just lived there also a lot of witch stories are really about like these witches that just live on the outskirts of society on like a Hut on the hill but nowadays the outskirts of society isn't necessarily A Hut on the hill although I would love to read a witchy story about someone going to a Hut on the hill I guess the secret society of a regular witches is kind of like that but nowadays living in a small town is considered living on the edge of society you know but it's still ironic that we've put witches back in the places that they were persecuted let me know your theories anyway it has gone fully dark right now I think witches are super interesting there's definitely difference between like the witch as a archetype as a character the witch as like an actual Pagan person who practices like Pagan Witchcraft and then the people who were persecuted for witchcraft in history but most of the time I had nothing to do with witchcraft at all and I always find it interesting to look at witchy stories and just think about what it's says about Society you know what are the power structures that are created in these witchy stories if you like story media character analysis you should subscribe to my channel most of the time I talk about books but I like making these little deep Dives once in a while made a playlist of all of my deep Dives I'll link it in the description so you can easily find all of them and now I want to give a very special thank you to all of my patrons who are members of my book club with a special shout out to all of the elite members and warm welcome to the newest Elite members Tamika Cameron and Alie welcome that being said I hope you enjoyed this video hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I will see you soon next week [Music] goodbye

Channel: The Book Leo

Views: 129,304

Keywords: book, books, booktube, reading, booktuber, peruseproject, paperbackdreams, review

Id: 41xsfut3mIM

Length: 40min 1sec (2401 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2023