Where are the Women?
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Thu Apr  1 11:38:18 1999
If you've been reading my lists of recommended books, you've probably noticed a huge, gaping hole in them:  there are no books here that discuss the role of gender in the trials.  75% - 80% of all witches were women.  Surely this is an important subject, one that deserves study?*p*Yes, definitely!  I think it's a critically important issue.  But here's the problem:  most of the books on this subject are flat-out lousy.*p*There's a disturbing paradox in witchcraft studies.  Books that are well-researched generally don't pay a lot of attention to gender.  Books that DO discuss gender tend to be the worst books on the market, ones that consistantly get their facts wrong.  Writers tend to put their politics before their history, and they produce works that are essentially propaganda.  Anne Llewellyn Barstow's _Witchcraze_ is a good example of this.  Fully half the book, the part that deals directly with gender, is 100% pure fantasy.  Even the first half is misleading, full of ethnic and sexual stereotyping, mistaken assumptions, and grievous omissions of evidence.*p*So while I'd love to recommend books on the gender issue, I don't know of many that are worth reading.  There's one, Diane Purkiss' _The Witch in History_, which I'll recommend in the advanced books section.  But it's not aimed at beginners!*p*I've also picked up copies of a couple books on the subject that have been recommended to me, and I'll be re-reading Carol Karlsen's _The Devil in the Shape of a Women_ (which I remember liking, but want to re-read before I recommend).*p*Hopefully within a month or two I'll be able to plug this hole!*p*Jenny*br*