Something wicked this way comes...
Hey, horror hottie.
Feels like witches are firmly on the collective brain at the moment, doesn’t it? And sure, it might have something to do with the upcoming release of Wicked and the recent release of Agatha All Along. But I have a hunch there’s much more to it.
This edition of She’s Got Guts is inspired by this LinkedIn post by Nishma Patel Robb and this issue of The Herstorian newsletter by my good friend Kaye.
They’ve given me serious food for thought over the last few weeks. And now I’m going to regurgitate that food back up for you. Open up, little birdy…
Dissecting the witch
Let’s start by digging into the ‘witch’ archetype. Folklore, fable, and myth depict witches as ugly, haggard old women who live alone in the woods.
Witches fly on broomsticks and make potions in cauldrons. They eat/steal/entrap children and trick people with devious contracts or lure them into danger with enchantments. Witches are also frequently depicted dancing naked under the full moon, making pacts with the devil or taking demons as lovers.
A witch gets her power from an unseen force; sometimes the devil, sometimes the earth, sometimes from a magical artefact, and sometimes she’s just born different. She uses that power to suit her own ends (usually evil).
Would you agree with this assessment?
I think it sounds pretty fair. And what’s interesting is that I’ve just described the antithesis of what a ‘good woman’ should be.
In my humble opinion, a ‘witch’ is the perversion of the patriarchy’s idea of acceptable womanhood.
Instead of being young and beautiful, she’s old and ugly. If she does happen to be young and beautiful, it’s by design to lure victims (usually men) to their deaths.
Instead of birthing and rearing children, witches eat them. Rather than being chaste and respectable, witches are sexually liberated. Even the witch’s brooms and cauldrons are a perversion of domestic tools.
Worse yet, the witch has power — independently gained and used for her own benefit. This flies (pun intended) in the face of a woman’s role in society and within the family dynamic — one of selfless service and sacrifice.
If you think about it, girls are trained from infancy to be mothers and carers. We’re given baby dolls, toy kitchens, and doll houses. We’re expected to help around the home, assisting with rearing our younger siblings, all in preparation for marriage, where we’ll serve our husband and our children.
So, when a woman seeks independence and power, she fundamentally undermines her societal role.
And now that I’ve warmed you up with a bit of backstory, shall we start tearing into some of our favourite horror movie witches?
Breaking the spell
When you look at the horror archetype of the witch through the ‘perverse woman’ lens, you’ll exhume a whole new layer in some of your favourite witchy films.
Let’s take Andrew Fleming’s The Craft as our first example. The four witches at the story’s core are outcasts who gravitate towards the craft to regain power and control. And they pay the price for it — each spell they perform backfires horrifically.
On the surface, The Craft teaches a pretty important lesson about using power responsibly and being careful what you wish for. But underneath, we’re shown how easily women are corrupted.
The four witches use their power to subvert society’s expectations of what a young woman should be. Instead of being chaste, they use magic to trick and seduce men. Instead of being kind, they use their unfair advantage to take revenge or gain domination, and instead of being submissive, they seek power. The end of the film sees them firmly back in their place, under control and docile.
And since we’re on the topic of society’s deep fear and concerns when it comes to teenage girls and their virtue, let’s look at Robert Egger’s The Witch.
Things take a dark and unnatural turn for a Puritan family banished from their village, eventually causing them to accuse the eldest daughter of witchcraft. Although the accusation is false, by the end (**spoilers!**), our protagonist signs her soul over to the devil in exchange for living ‘deliciously’.
The deep fear and mistrust of the entire family towards the blossoming young woman is overt — her changing body and liminal state make her the ideal scapegoat for their fear. She finally submits at the very end when all hope is lost.
“The idea that the witch unconsciously was the dark side of humanity but mainly the dark side of women and everything that female power represented in men’s fantasies and fears and ambivalences about women and their power but also women’s fears and ambivalences about their power in a male-dominated society. That’s what this is,” Eggers told Vice.
Bonus points to The Witch for also including the ‘solitary old crone eating a baby and transforming into a beautiful woman to bewitch men’ trope.
When looking at men’s fears around femininity, there’s no better example than Anna Biller’s The Love Witch. The titular Love Witch, Elaine, desires nothing more than to be loved and to give her man exactly what he craves — a pretty woman to love him and make him feel like a man. She is the patriarchy’s vision of a perfect woman…gone horribly wrong.
Elaine enthrals almost every man she meets, allowing her to get away with almost anything. This is lucky because, throughout the film, her intense love magic kills several unfortunate men.
“The Love Witch is about how bewitching the female is and how that destroys men,” Biller told FrightFest.
Although written as a love letter to the power of feminine glamour, The Love Witch also reads as horror through role reversal. Instead of a woman using her power to escape the confines of patriarchal society’s ideal female archetype, she is the embodiment of that archetype and uses her power to trap men within their own fantasy.
What’s at (the) stake?
As the world devolves into a hell hole that steadily strips the rights of women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people of colour, the archetype of the witch has been reclaimed as a feminist icon.
Scores of marginalised people are flooding to witchcraft as a way of reclaiming their power, not to mention the distinct spread of South Korea’s 4B movement, which protests the tightening chokehold of patriarchy. The witch has once again become a symbol of feminist and femme power.
“It’s no coincidence that the reclamation of the witch as a symbol of female power and persecution started with the suffragettes, and later saw a renaissance in the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s,” says Kristin J Sollee in her book Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive.
“In this new age of sexist turmoil, it’s fitting she be resurrected once more to teach us, inspire us, and remind us how far we’ve come — and how much further we have to go.”
Thanks for reading, boo. Until next time, sleep tight!
Cowners x