Early Modern Witchcraft Theories
Fabrication and Fantasy – The Witch as Malevolent Mother
Sep 8, 2009 Christopher Mansour
According to Olwen Hufton, the witch is "an amalgam of popular beliefs and involute theories" framed by "scholars, theologians, and lawyers"(339). Such theories invariably influence villagers who "elect the label 'witch' for someone they mistrust, credit...with evil powers and convince her that she is...what they say she is"(339). Deborah Willis states that English witchcraft is often "described in terms of the maternal"(ix). To the Early Modern person, a witch is a malevolent cunning woman--a mother–who uses maternal agencies against "neighbours" who arouse her spite (Willis ix).
Witchcraft as Worldwide Ideology
Both intellectual and layperson transform witchcraft into a politicized ideology. Adults "induct" children in a fear that "witches could be after them and, like Baba Yaga, [use]...their flesh for consumption or [slavery]"(Hufton 348). Both European governments and the Christian Inquisitions construct a "model witch" supported "by torture, framed questions, [and answers] to conform to that model"(348). The Church, while catering to its own economic and political agenda, like the laity, contributes to an anti-witchcraft crusade eventually birthing the popular representations of witches in folklore and literature.
English Witchcraft and the Law
During the Sixteenth Century, England establishes "the basic features"(Willis ix) of Protestant witch-hunting. Several witch trials suggest witchcraft becomes a "distinctively female crime", one punished for being "a perverse use of maternal power"(ix). Anti-witchcraft laws state that a person accused of witchcraft can only be executed if her sorcery "[murders] someone"(Willis 3). If found guilty, a woman would join the "many hundreds...executed for witchcraft in England between 1563 and 1736"(3). Generally speaking, a woman's maleficium (dark magic) must cause actual harm to an individual before legitimizing community action against her.
The Witch and the Village Network
The witch, however perversely, is part of "an informal village network in which women [offer] each other aid and advice about child care, sickness, and...domestic management"(Willis 35). They "mother each other,...act as substitute mother for each other's children", and even "[mirror] each other"(35). The offered aid could involve "magic" or folk remedies (Willis 35). But such trust could be misplaced. One woman might use her knowledge to injure or kill her neighbours (35). Witches, therefore, exemplify maternal "anxieties" about children. A witch brings her "envy, anger, and hatred"(Wilis 35) into the community network and destroys lives and property.
In Russian fairytale "Vasilisa and the Witch", the dying mother epitomizes motherhood-ideal. She leaves Vasilisa "something wonderful that will always protect [her] from harm"(Kaye 194)--a magic doll that will, "if ever trouble came", offer its "advice"(194) and protection. Here, saintly motherhood contrasts with the diabolical motherhood of the Yaga and stepmother. The stepmother always "[finds] excuses to send" Vasilisa "into the woods, hoping that Baba Yaga...[will] gobble her up"(Kaye 195). All three women, Baba Yaga, stepmother, and dying mother, form a network of women who use their knowledge or magic against others to further their own ends.
The Witch as Mother
The witch becomes "associated with mothers", says Willis, because she recalls "that period of life when women dominate the lives of their male children"(6). A witch or "witch-like woman" is one who "makes the adult male feel he has been turned back into a child again, vulnerable to a mother's malevolent power"(6). All witchcraft persecutions, she believes, "encode fantasies of maternal persecution"(Willis 8). The monstrous mother, like Baba Yaga, holds power over "life and death", toying with victims like puppets in the hands of a wicked puppeteer.
In village disputes, young accusers often "confer upon the older woman the attributes of an invasive and malevolent mother who...[supposedly]...nurtures child-like demonic imps"(Willis 15) to gain magical power to use against neighbours (15). Baba Yaga, whose hut sits on chicken legs, becomes the penultimate punisher of wicked children whom she devours "as if they were poultry"(Kaye 195). An unrepentant cannibal, she probes Vasilisa for any "appetizing nasty trait"(Kaye 197). God-like, even Satanic, the witch has moral authority to judge the innocent from the sinful.
But Baba Yaga's "fence of human bones surmounted by skulls"(Kaye 196) also implies she is the primitive mother in its crone aspect--one who takes the dead souls and casts the body aside after death. The bones also symbolize necromancy, the witch's power over the living and the dead. That the witch threatens to eat Vasilisa's "tender flesh"(Kaye 198) equates her with the cannibalism of the Satanic witchcraft formulated by the Medieval Church. Baba serves a moral purpose; slothful and gluttonous, she exemplifies Vasilisa’s moral choice—to be sinful or benevolent.
Constructing the Mother--and the Witch
The English witch hunts predominately reflect "anxieties about mothers and the maternal role"(Willis 17). Then, women could make decisions about "wealth", "property", and "law suits"(17). The idea of an empowered woman provokes some men. Patriarchal England believes women's sole role is motherhood (Willis 14) and that any woman who "assume[s] caregiver duties", is by proxy, a mother. The witch is an older woman brutally punished because she could not accept that her neighbours denied her request for food or assistance (Willis 30). The ensuing neighbour, feeling guilty, sometimes experienced vivid dreams and hallucinations about the old woman. This becomes the evidence that leads to her execution especially if misfortune befalls the neighbour (30).
To early modern people, there is something scary (and unfeminine) about the older woman's cursing--later misfortune such as a death, illness, or unturned butter only confirm the woman's unholy witchcraft (Willis 31-32). The only power such women have is in their "association" with the motherly body of "childhood" – the one who can pass judgment and deal punishment (Willis 64).
The witch becomes a way for the society to ratify gender roles and differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable conduct. Her presence heralds the crossroad between an intellectually-developing society and its pagan origins.
Works Cited
Hufton, Olwen. The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe 1500-1800. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Kaye, Marvin. Ed. Witches & Warlocks: Tales of Black Magic, Old & New. Garden City: Guild America Books, 1989.
Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.
The Wicked Witch
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The White Witch
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