The Witch in History (the rest of it)
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Tue Apr 13 13:42:20 1999
_The Witch in History:  Early Modern and 20th Century Representations_ by Diane Purkiss*p**br*This is a tough book to review adequately.  Half of it is positively brilliant... half is garbage.  But the good half is so damned good, I'm going to put this book on my list of 5 texts advanced students ought to read.  It's NOT for beginners.  It assumes a lot of knowledge, it makes no effort to tone itself down for non-experts.  Some of the sections on early modern theatre, for instance, went right over *my* head.  However it's one of the few books I've read in the last few years that had a dramatic impact on my understanding of historical witchcraft.  When Purkiss hits her target, she hits HARD.*p*Purkiss is a feminist literary critic who specializes in the study of early modern literature and stage productions.  Her book focuses on witches as symbols:  what "witchcraft" means to us, today;  to early modern women;  to early modern artists and writers, like Shakespeare.  She's not concerned with any "reality" that may have lain behind this image.  Purkiss explores what people *thought* (and think!) witches are.*p*Part I looks at modern image-makers:  feminists, Neo-Pagans, and historians.  A long time ago I did full-length reviews on the feminist and Neo-Pagan chapters.  (The book reviews section of the library got cut loose when we changed to this new software -- Deb and OD are looking for it, so it should be available again in the near future.)*p*The critiques of pop-feminists and historians are positively brilliant -- the best I've seen written on the subject.  Purkiss lambasts her fellow feminists for their shoddy research, and for the stereotypes and assumptions that their works depend on.  Historians get taken to task for excessive dualism (splitting the world into irrational believers and rational skeptics) and for concentrating too much on the elites' views on witchcraft.*p*The Neo-Pagan chapter, by comparison, was abysmal.  So bad, in fact, that I put the book down and didn't pick it up again for almost a year!  Purkiss seemed completely incapable of understanding what magick meant to us modern Witches.  For instance, she claimed that Wicca re-inforced traditional sex-role stereotypes because it didn't allow (unfeminine) cursing.  She didn't seem to realize that if you believe magick works, cursing isn't just a way to release your anger -- it's the psychic equivalent of assault or murder.  After reading this chapter, I gave up.*p*Well, I'm glad I went back, because the rest of the book is great.  Spotty and erratic at times.  But again, when she hits her target, she nails it.*p*Part II examines what witchcraft meant to women in the Burning Times.  And this was the section that was truly eye-opening for me.  Purkiss points out a painful irony in "feminist" accounts of the Burning Times:  they silence women.  Pop-feminist books (like Anne Barstow's _Witchcraze_ or Selma Williams' _Riding the Nightmare_) are based almost exclusively on male accounts of the trials:  manuals, pamphlets, sermons, etc.  Half of the trial evidence comes from women, but feminists tend to ignore this, because it shows that early modern women were just as prejudiced as their men-folk.  Many feminist writers dismiss this evidence, claiming that the evil men forced the good women to say these horrible things.*p*But did they?  Purkiss examines women's testimonies in detail and comes up with a stunning insight:  women's descriptions of witchcraft aren't like men's.  Women are not simply parroting the beliefs of male elites -- or even of their male counterparts.*p*In the '70's, anthropologists demonstrated that throughout the world, the "witch" is often the symbol of the Evil Other.  What is not like us.  Everything bad in the world.  *p*Since people see themselves differently, they see their Shadow differently too.  Again, since the '70's, historians have noted that the different classes had different stereotypes and fears about witches.  Elites defined themselves by their religion and their loyalties, and therefore to them the witch was a Satanic rebel, a traitor to both God and king.  The lower classes didn't fixate so much on religion and nationality.  To them, the witch was a malevolent evil-doer who killed children and animals.  The witch was an anti-farmer, not an anti-cleric.*p*Purkiss goes one step further and asks, what did women see when they looked at witches?  And the answer is, the anti-housewife!  A dark and twisted inversion of the nurturing mother and good wife.  A creature who threatened a woman's control of her house and her ability to bear and raise children.  (Men, by comparison, worried more about impotence and a witch's ability to attack his farm animals, fields, and means of livelihood.)*p*Because of these differences, Purkiss argues that early modern women were not simply repeating whatever the elites forced them to say.  They, like men, feared their Shadows.  They, like men, were perfectly capable of hating and attacking witches.*p*Unfortunately, there were bad parts in this section, too.  Like Lyndal Roper, Purkiss believes in psychoanalysis and uses it to "explain" why witches were usually women (it's those damned pre-Oedipal complexes again, babies getting mad at breasts and what-not).  In doing so, she falls into the same trap as other feminists:  her explanation treats witchcraft as an exclusively female experience.  What's funny is that Purkiss chastises other writers for making this mistake, and then does it herself.*p*I didn't find the psychoanalytical stuff convincing, at all.  I mean, what can you make of statements like, "Once we cease to see the breast in terms of the male gaze which gives it solidity as an object and begin to talk of the breast from the woman's point of view, the breast becomes blurry, mushy, indefinite, multiple, and without clear identity..."  Sorry, but when I read that, all I thought was, "My breasts aren't mushy.  Okay, they're not as perky as they used to be when I was 20.  But they definitely don't dissolve when guys stop looking at them."*p*But despite these flaws, the rest of the book is superb.  Purkiss does what we feminists should have been doing all along:  she listens to what early modern women said, and she takes their fears seriously.  Her book goes a long way to giving women back their voices.  And if those women chose to say politically incorrect things that shock us modern feminists, well, we'll just have to cope!*p*Jenny