Representations of witches and witchcraft in literature and in popular culture generally are incredibly useful to us, providing a way of critiquing the situation of women under patriarchy that is both effective and accessible.

Children’s literature is particularly rife with such representations. From the wicked women of Grimm and Perrault and folkloric creations like Baba Yaga and Ceridwen, through C.S. Lewis’ Jadis and the maleficent creations of Mary de Morgan to 20th century inventions like TH White’s Madam Mim and the female students of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, lady sorcerers – both good and evil – have never been far from the pages of the books we have used to educate and entertain our children.

The witches of the classic fairytales and of the stories of the Victorian era are usually monstrous and spiteful, using their magic in service of the Devil – or worse, their own self-interest. They taunt because they can and have few, if any, redeeming characteristics.

In recent decades the image of the image of the witch in popular culture has undergone a transformation, in no small part due to the witches that have appeared in juvenile literature. Since the 1970s, the stories our children have read have overwhelmingly featured good witches (though the frequency with which they are presented as inept deserves some attention). These are my favourites of the modern circle.

Mildred Hubble

Created when Jill Murphy was a teenager, The Worst Witch series follows the adventures of Mildred Hubble as she navigates the social and academic challenges of Miss Cackle’s Academy, a draughty old castle that perches atop a thickly forested mountain and ‘looks more like a prison than a school’.

It’s an uncomfortable enough environment for a youngster to be in, but Mildred has an added disadvantage, being marked as an outsider by her unkempt appearance and her tabby cat (given to her when the rest of the girls receive sleek black kitties).

She was one of those people who always seem to be in trouble. She didn’t exactly mean to break rules and annoy the teachers, but things just seemed to happen when Mildred was around.

– The Worst Witch

The young witch is thoroughly well-meaning and a little too clever for her own good, but she’s also bumbling and frequently wrangling with authority figures. Despite her perceived inadequacies, there’s an air of serendipity that follows her around; her failures and misdeeds inevitably lead to a positive outcome of much greater consequence than the proceeding mishap.

Perhaps this is why she is so well-loved by young readers and so fondly remembered by adults. Often we can see a little of ourselves in Mildred – from her practical incompetence to her trailing shoe laces, she’s a reminder that you don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Mary Newbury

The only work of historical fiction on my list, Celia Rees’ Witch Child is an overtly feminist text. The protagonist of the book (and its sequel, Sorceress) is Mary Newbury, an adolescent witch forced to flee to the New World following the violent death of her grandmother at the hands of
witch-hunters.

Caught between a desire to be true to herself and the hypocrisy of Puritanism, Mary is headstrong, smart, empathetic and brave. She exhibits a tolerance that is unusual for her era and generally makes herself an excellent role model for young readers.

For Mary, independence poses a threat – she lives in a time that fears capable women, and her agency and determination could lead her to the same fate as her grandmother. But still she forges onwards, using her wit and her alacrity to light the way and finding friendship and love among another marginalised group.

I should flee, get away. They will turn on me next unless I go. But where to? What am I to do? Lose myself. Die in the forest. I look around. Eyes, hard with hatred, slide from mine. Mouths twitch between leering and sneering. I will not run away into the forest, because that is what they want me to do.

– Witch Child

Tiffany Aching

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is often lauded as feminist; he ridicules misogyny and satirises stereotypes, he writes Strong Female Characters. But there is an incongruency to Pratchett’s feminism which undermines his intended message and ultimately, Discworld is, whisper it, not that feminist.

Tiffany Aching is, to paraphrase her creator, the most feminist of the feminists that he does not have. A child savant, she begins her witching career at nine years old when she embarks upon a quest to save her brother from a sinister fairyland a la Labyrinth. She’s got common sense and amazing chutzpah. While remaining a completely believable pre-teen, she’s shrewd, smart and she will not be condescended to.

‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it?’
‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronising is a big word. Zoology is quite short.’

– The Wee Free Men

As Tiffany grows up (she is approaching 16 at the time of I Shall Wear Midnight) It becomes clear that she is the natural successor to Granny Weatherwax, the number one witch of the Discworld series, as she begins to display magical abilities rare in people of her age as well as exhibiting characteristics she shares with her mentor – gravitas, knowledge, a tendency towards literalism and the belief that a witch should remain single. Tiffany will ultimately become a better witch than Granny, and it is a pleasure to watch her get there.

Minerva McGonagall

Transfiguration Mistress – and latterly Deputy Headmistress – at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall is both wise and motherly, embodying a binary that women are frequently told they cannot.

McGonagall cares for her charges deeply, but not blindly. She is fair and ethical and has gained great respect within the Hogwarts hierarchy. She’s often sharp with students and teachers alike, she’s a keen believer in rules – without being mindlessly bound to them – and she’s a fan of order in her classroom.

With a witty remark or condescending quip never far from her thin lips, Minerva McGonagall is a force to be reckoned with.

‘Oh, I can’t wait to see McGonagall inspected,’ said Ron happily. ‘Umbridge won’t know what’s hit her.’

– Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Though she is a slight woman in her seventies, McGonagall is a fearless combatant in the battle that rages at the close of the series, directing the action and engaging directly with Voldemort in defence of the institution and the people that she loves.

There are many women in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series that display fine qualities – caring and protective Mrs Weasley; book-smart Hermione; fearless Tonks; even Delores Umbridge can be admired for her sheer bloodymindedness and determination. But McGonagall seems to embody all these qualities and then some.

Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch lived in a black house in the forest. The house was black on the outside and black on the inside. The carpets were black. The chairs were black. The bed was black and it had black sheets and black blankets. Even the bath was black.

Winnie lived in her black house with her cat, Wilbur. He was black too. And that is how the trouble began.

– Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch – not to be confused with the 1970s Charlton Comics character of the same name – made her first appearance in 1987.

Created by Valerie Thomas and illustrated by Korky Paul, she’s a comical character by design, gangly and tall with an unruly mane of black hair and a reddened nose that I like to imagine comes from a fondness for gin. When we first meet her, she is the only colourful thing in a very dark world. A series of books for middle grade readers featuring Winnie is also available, written by Laura Owen.

But Winnie has no qualms over using her magic to amend the world around her to suit her own purposes without considering the consequences. Winnie is heedless and impulsive, with a catch-all cry of ‘ABRACADABRA’ that, predictably, gets her into scrapes.

She learns from her blunders, though, and she puts things right with grace and unerrring joy. Winnie the Witch lives a hedonistic life and she makes mistakes, but she’s always got a genuine smile on her face and that’s what makes her so refreshing.

Bonus Material: HERE IS THE ACTUAL MASTER READING WINNIE THE WITCH.

• Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN. Her blog, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature. Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

Synopsis

When her father dies, thoughtful, solitary Laura moves from their home in the country to the house of her brother and his family where she spends decades in a pleasant but stultifying routine of needlework, small talk and dull family holidays. Laura settles into being “useful and obliging” Aunt Lolly, but can never escape the feeling that there is something missing from her existence.

While her body sat before the first fires and was cosy with Henry and Caroline, her mind walked by lonely seaboards, in marshes and fens, or came at nightfall to the edge of a wood. She never imagined herself in these places by daylight. She never thought of them as being in any way beautiful. It was not beauty at all that she wanted… Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience, a something that was shadowy and menacing, and yet in some way congenial.

St Nicholas Church in Idbury, where Sylvia Townsend Warner lived in the 1920s. Photo by Jonathon Billinger

One day, aged 47, the insistent voice within overwhelms her. She claims her rightful income from her brother and moves to a village in the Chilterns where she revels in her newfound independence, solitude and connection with nature. When her freedom is threatened by the arrival in the village of her dear but demanding nephew Titus she does what any of us would do: makes a pact with Satan to send him on his way.

A problem as common as blackberries

There is a feminist thread that runs brightly through this gentle, surprising and occasionally sinister story. Just have a look at the Austen-worthy comment early on, describing Laura as a young woman:

Being without coquetry she did not feel herself bound to feign a degree of entertainment which she had not experienced, and the same deficiency made her insensible to the duty of every marriageable young woman to be charming, whether her charm be directed towards one special object or, in default of that, universally distributed through a disinterested love of humanity.

But I suspect Laura’s plight will strike a chord with anyone who prefers their own company. All she wants is to be left alone. She is forced to take radical steps (going against her family’s wishes, negotiating with her brother for the return of the money she is owed, moving to a place she has never been, living alone and, um, becoming a witch) simply so that she can be left to her own devices. And she sees that countless other women are locked into the same comfortable cage:

I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. If they could be passive and unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must be active, and still not noticed. Doing,  doing, doing, till mere habit scolds at them like a housewife, and rouses them up – when they might sit in their doorways and think – to be doing still!

Although the description of Laura’s first witches’ sabbath and her conversations with Satan are delightful and strikingly original even now, the novel isn’t about witchcraft. A far greater proportion of the book is devoted to Laura’s childhood and time with her brother’s family in London than to her time in the village of Great Mop.

Where else to turn?

Her entry into the service of the dark lord is presented as the only escape for a soul which has for so long been cornered and boxed in by convention. It is the inevitable conclusion of the binding restrictions placed on women’s self-determination by the demands of propriety and duty, most of all to be meek and helpful and always anchored to a man, whether a father, brother or husband. Laura recognises the structures which have created and perpetuated her captivity:

As for her own share in the matter, she felt no shame at all. It had pleased Satan to come to her aid. Considering carefully she could not see who else would have done so. Custom, public opinion, law, church and state – all would have shaken their massive heads against her plea and sent her back to bondage.

The simultaneous sharp departure from the usual of Laura and her narrative gives the end of the novel a quietly bold and subversive mood. And while there’s not a lot of actual witchiness there is plenty of subtly uncanny imagery. For example, on a whim Laura bakes some scones in the shapes of her neighbours, and watches as her guest eats “the strange shapes without comment, quietly splitting open the villagers and buttering them”.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

There is some clever stuff going on here, which is unsurprising given that the author is one of English literature’s great unsung heroes, Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Although she was celebrated in her lifetime as a musicologist as well as an author she is largely unknown today, despite the notoriety one might expect her to have for living more or less openly as a lesbian (with the dashing poet Valentine Ackland) and campaigning on behalf of the Communist Party.

You can find out more about her from the splendid Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, and I recommend you do, and read Lolly Willowes even if you don’t get around to all her fascinating novels.

Picture CC Terriem, 2011

So why am I writing this at all? Over the last nine months I’ve gotten interested in the interactions between violence against women, gender roles and HIV, which I confess is mostly down to my job at Womankind Worldwide.

It struck me that even though I’ve been working with different organisations tackling violence against women in the UK for years, I don’t remember HIV ever being mentioned. It’s just not something I’d ever really thought about. But then, I had also failed to really think about, you know, the rest of the world. This job has been an eye-opener, and I heartily encourage other feminists in the UK, the US, and Western Europe to look up and see what’s happening in the places you don’t see on TV.

“This epidemic unfortunately remains an epidemic of women,” Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS said in 2010. At the end of 2009, women accounted for just over half of all adults living with HIV worldwide. In some areas of the world the proportion is much higher, for example in sub-Saharan Africa it is 60%. High levels of HIV among women in these areas are both caused by and causes of violence against women.

Violence, HIV and Women’s Health

Violence against women (you remember, that really prevalent thing that occurs in all countries in the world) interacts with the HIV epidemic in several cheery ways. This paraphrased from a World Health Organisation briefing:

• Sexual abuse in childhood is associated with risk-taking behaviour later in life, increasing an individual’s lifetime risk of contracting HIV.
• Rape exposes women to HIV, and the chances of a woman contracting HIV via a forced sexual encounter are probably increased due to the physical trauma.
• Violence and fear of violence can stop a woman insisting on condom use or refusing unwanted sex, leaving her with no means of protecting themselves.
• Fear of violence, abandonment or stigma can dissuade women from learning their status or from sharing it with their partners, and can also effect HIV control, treatment, and programmes aiming to prevent mother to child transmission.

Women’s health has been the subject of more discussion in development circles in recent years, thanks in large part to the Millennium Development Goals, one of which (MDG5) is focused on maternal health. Women’s health doesn’t begin and end with children though, so I’ve been pleased to see greater recognition of the impact of gender-based violence appearing under MDG6, which is dedicated to ending the spread of diseases including HIV infection and the associated illnesses it can cause. Next step, an MDG which is focused on reducing levels of violence against women? Something which has a pretty damaging effect on women’s health in its own right.

Ghana

Through work recently I was lucky enough to meet some of the women and men fighting to reduce violence against women and women’s vulnerability to HIV infection in rural Ghana. Although Ghana isn’t the country worst affected by the HIV epidemic, of the 240,000 HIV+ adults living in Ghana, almost 60% are women. Women in Ghana also experience high levels of violence: 1 in 3 women has experienced some form of physical violence in their lifetime, and 20% of women report that they first experienced sex against their will. (Stats)

In addition there are a number of harmful traditional practices that contribute to the spread of HIV among women, as well as the cultural acceptability of men having several partners and the right to demand sex. Traditional practices, such as widow inheritance (where a widow is forced to marry her dead husband’s relative), or polygyny (22% of married women are in polygynous unions) increase the likelihood of contracting HIV.

Women living with HIV or AIDS in Ghana also face enormous stigma and go to extraordinary lengths to find support and keep their status secret. One reason is that belief in witchcraft is widespread, and HIV infection or death from AIDS-defining illnesses is sometimes blamed on the malign influence of a witch. Incidentally if you’re interested to know more about what happens to women accused of witchcraft in Ghana I recommend watching The Witches of Gambaga:

‘Witch’ persecution is also alarmingly common in Nepal.

Reading about all this every day at work would get a bit depressing if it wasn’t for our amazing partners – health workers, educators, lawyers and activists – who are working for change for individuals, and local and global communities. Part of that change is recognition of the complex interactions between HIV and AIDS and violence against women, and the need for targeted, local, gender-sensitive interventions and support. UK feminists can help by looking up, and recognising that HIV is a feminist issue on a global scale.

All those other bodies totally don't count.

There are many ways to make a film about witches.

Firstly, you can make a straight-up witch film.  You know, with a spooky young woman with a drippy curtain of hair over her face, glowering out from heavy eyelids, muttering to herself to make stuff go on fire and horses stress out.  A proper witch film.  With at least one scene of crows taking off from a forest and yelling.  It’ll be insidious and creepy, a spine-crawling exploration of subtle witchery and spooky magic that’ll end in the witch being vanquished and a sort of bleak conclusion as we all examine our ideas of the supernatural.  Something like The Blair Witch Project, to pick an obvious example.

Secondly, you can make a film that’s hyper-aware of the cruelty of witch trials and is cynical to the bone; the horror seeping in from our horrified examination of how cruel humans can be to each other when given a modicum of authority and a healthily heaped serving of paranoia.  You can also spice up this trope by having a nice wade through an examination of religion’s hand in the instigation of human cruelty.  The classic example of this trope is the 1996 film version of The Crucible, as we all know – a fine film.  A fine film indeed.

Thirdly, you can do an all-out schlock-horror gore-and-monsters fest where things sprout wings, raise the dead and have An Eville Laughe.  Something like Van Helsing.  Something where there’s no realism to speak of, and you’re in it for the rollicking monster fights and stabbination.

Season Of The Witch, bless its little darling pseudo-medieval socks, tries to do all three at once.

And you know, blow me, it failed in every single conceivable way.  I thought that it might be able to do something right.  It didn’t.  It didn’t at all.  It was amazing.

****Here’s a SPOILER WARNING, just in case, by some strange chance, you would rather see its failings yourself first! ****

The films starts with Some Women being accused of witchcraft and flung over a bridge and hanged. “Oh, I see,” I thought, as the priest pronounced them worthy of hanging despite tearful, desperate confessions. “This’ll be an Examination of the Church’s Cruelty.”

And then one of them comes back to life.

“Oh,” I thought. “Oh. Right.”

Then, we jump to THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES, where Ron Perlman and Nicolas Cage are fighting a dark-skinned, faceless horde, stirred into friendly, competitive violence by the Christianity-spouting standard-bearer.  God only knows where they think the Crusades happened, however – the intertitles confidently proclaimed “Styria” – as our heroes trundle from the desert into bafflingly-named snowy wilderness in only a few years.  Presumably, then, they had been fighting Staracens in Stamascus on the way to Sterusalem which had defied the laws of steographical stysics and raised in staltitude, altering its stlimate beyond repair.  And they are, I assume, Knights Stemplar.  Or of the Steutonic Order of – okay, I’ll stop.

But despite the prolonged, stupidly-costumed battles spent massacring hundreds of turbaned Staracens, it’s only when Nick Cage stabs a young, white woman in the stomach that he comes to the staggering realisation that they’ve been killing people.

“Holy shit, Ron Perlman!” Nick Cage says with his best worried face.  “I didn’t realise that we were killing people!”

Ron Perlman’s face resembles a disgusted brick with frightening accuracy.  “Killing people,” he repeats, confused.  Then he looks at the floor, which is littered with bodies.  His tiny, crab-like eyes widen slightly with sudden horror. “Holy shit!” he rumbles. “Killing killing people! I didn’t sign up for this shit!”

And so they left the crusades.

It was at about this point that I sort of hoped for them to run into some Stashshashin.

By now, I think you’ll have realised that this film has one hell of a lot of problems.  The race failure is intense, as I’ve mentioned: I’ve yet to see a film that handles the Crusades at all handle race in a non-insulting way, but it’s a very difficult and horrible era to handle at all, what with the inherent colonially-minded, racist nature of the conflict in the first place.  But to have the moment of realisation for Nick Cage’s forgettably-named protagonist to come as he plants his sword squarely in the gut of a young, white woman (who must be very lost, all context considered) after cheerfully hacking his way through what appears to be all the non-white extras from Prince of Persia is just offensive.

The other problem that glared out of the celluloid into my tired, disbelieving eyes was the witch herself.  She was the only female character in the film, and she didn’t even get a name.  She’s credited as “The Girl”.  But as crap as this is, this wasn’t the worst problem with her.

Oh no.

She’s captured, tortured and abused at the hands of the Church, and that is made eminently clear.  She crawls, curls into the foetal position and weeps.  When anyone tries to talk to her, she panics and begs not to be left alone with the priest who she doesn’t want touching her.  The implication of rape is ladled on thick, heavy and triggering in a way that I found, in some parts, challenging to watch (although nothing is explicit: the way the witch behaves is just so wounded) – but then she lashes out like a caged tiger, and is eventually proven to be the “deceiver” the priest says she is all along.

Wow.  How many problems are there with that?

For a moment, I thought the film would be an expertly-balanced exploration of whether the “witchcraft” the girl does is real or imagined by the terrified men who keep her caged, and started to get into it – but it wasn’t at all.  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  It felt as if the film makers had made themselves all uncomfortable by bringing the reputation of the Church into question, and therefore had to reassure themselves that yes, everything was as it should be: any maltreatment of “the Girl” was made excusable and fine due to her actually being evil after all, and any power the girl had was due to her actually being a non-gender-applicable demon (the protagonists switch from referring to her as “her” to “it” in a single cut of film) and not a girl at all.  And any accusations of rape in the first place were probably false, anyway.

All that said, my film-watching companion and I did find ourselves bellowing disruptively with laughter at several points during the film, because it really is one of those films that’s so dreadful, it’s amazing.  The ill-researched sets, costume and fighting styles (that’s not how you fight with anything!) were hilarious.  Nicholas Cage’s permanently worried face was hilarious.  The clunky, awkward dialogue was hilarious.  The scene with the wolves was side-splittingly hilarious.  And the fact that it was all meant to be deadly serious and wire-sprung with tension was the best punchline of all.  We certainly weren’t the only ones ruining the scary-movie-dates of young couples by howling our amusement every time a plague victim’s head exploded.

But the handling of The Girl and her abuse was not hilarious at all and made me feel quite sick.

Oh, and here’s one for the gamers: there’s a bit in the soundtrack that is nearly identical to the stealthy-mission music in Assassin’s Creed.  This and the fact that Templars appear in the film combined in my mind to deadly fanboying effect.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• It is such ridiculous bullshit that in places it’s genuinely funny
• It’d make an excellent cliché-spotting drinking game
• Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman make zombie plague monks explode

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• There’s racefail galore
• The Bechdel Test doesn’t even get a look-in
• No film should handle abuse in the way this one tried to