Format: Mémoire

« At the beginning of the twentieth century a great change occurred in how the witch was represented in popular culture. Slowly the ugly old hag that snatched children and danced with the devil at night was replaced by a young beautiful witch with a welcoming smile. Advertisers seized this image of the beguiling young witch and utilized it to market a variety of products to the general public. The witches’ changing imagery can be linked with the increasing popularity of Halloween celebrations and the subsequent infusing of glamour and sex appeal into the old folk character. This paper investigates how, when and why the dress and appearance of witches changed from that of an old crone to that of a fashionable young woman.

This study begins with an examination of woodcut prints dating from the fifteenth century that depict images of witches highly influenced by biblical representations of Eve. It is necessary to examine these early images as they were instrumental in establishing what would become an incredibly powerful and long unwavering depiction of this folk character. The persecution of witches and the witch hunts that occurred all over Europe and the Americas from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries solidified the witch in written works and its place in history but did little in establishing a unifying image. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century when the belief in witches had subsided the iconic costume of a witch began to take shape; pointed hat, cape and long dress. It is only after this congealing of witch iconography and establishment of a witch costume can it then be altered and changed by current fashion and trends until it completely melts away and the witch is pictured entirely in fashionable attire.

The fancy dress manuals of the late nineteenth century are the first sources to alter and change the witch costume by suggesting exactly what should be worn for fancy dress balls and parties to be more fashionable and on trend with Victorian ideals. Next Halloween postcards and magazines further blurred the boundary between witch costume and current fashion. Dennison’s Bogie Books, an early how-to book on Halloween decorating, entertaining and costuming uses contemporary settings and fashion illustrations to sell its Halloween decorations and costumes, and in turn, further pushes the witch toward fully fashionable dress. The final source to be examined, product ads from fashion magazines, will demonstrate that by the end of the 1920s the witch had become a profitable marketing tool and her attire had completely transformed into high fashion of the day with only a few key indicators left signaling that she was a witch. In the end the reader will come away with an understanding of how the costume associated with a witch developed, when and then how it changed with the influence of outside forces during the early twentieth century. » [Résumé]

« In the original conception of the feminine, there was a wholeness that embodied both darkness and light. With the dawning of patriarchy and the demise of the gods and goddesses, the feminine became a split entity, which was divided further during the Enlightenment and the search for objective truth. Today, capitalism and the technological revolution have polarized and defined almost every aspect of psychological life. However, there seems to be a cultural shift in which a new generation of women, raised by the “superwoman” mother, has created its own rules, eschewing the patriarchal, embracing the feminine, and aligning the animus as facilitator rather than critic and judge. Through a phenomenological approach, this thesis discovers the princess and witch archetypes in individual women, looks at how the princess brand has hijacked girls and women, and offers an alternative, the witch archetype, as a means of healing the split feminine. » [Résumé]

« This study explores the sociohistorical and literary implications of the fairy tale witch. Analyzing the witch figure, it is possible to determine past and present ideas concerning women and ideas of femininity. The importance of this information comes from the implications of these ideas and how they function in terms of how women respond to their social identity as a sex. » [Résumé]

« The American theater has long been a venue for social commentary. From shows like South Pacific and Rent to Bye, Bye, Birdie and Hair, stage productions have made significant contributions to the discussions and understandings of American experiences, the ways in which people struggle through their hardships, and the relationships that publics develop throughout their lives. In particular, the American theater opens a discursive space for sexuality. The musical Wicked is and continues to be one of the most popular productions of the past decade as it holds strong in his home at the Gershwin Theatre in New York City and sells out touring locations across America and internationally, earning over one million dollars per week. This study, using the musical Wicked as a fragmented text and ideological cluster criticism as a rhetorical lens, first establishes a queer romantic storyline between Glinda the Good and Elphaba, who later becomes The Wicked Witch of the West. Then, in response to the driving research query, how does passing function within the musical Wicked, this project accesses traditional and ambiguous strategies of passing to understand the construction and maintenance of Glinda’s heterosexual passing identity before providing some implications for rhetorical criticism and examinations of culture. » [Résumé]

« Since the mid-twentieth century, scholarship on European witchcraft has proved critical in understanding the relationship between gender, sexuality, and power in pre-modern Western society. For medieval and early modern people, accusations of heresy and witchcraft served to reinstate control over elements of society that were perceived as dangerous or dissident to the established order. While advances in the study of witchcraft have greatly informed the fields of history and anthropology, such scholarship has up until this point largely focused on witch hunts targeting women of the lower classes. Further study concerning the use of witchcraft charges as a political tool aimed at socially prominent women is needed to better inform scholarly understanding of the full breadth of the European witch craze. This thesis will specifically examine a multitude of cases spanning the early Middle Ages through the early modern period, roughly the fifth through eighteenth centuries, involving women in positions of social visibility and power, who were attacked with witchcraft accusations as a means of removing them from a seemingly unnatural gender role.

Methodology or Procedures:

This thesis utilizes a diverse range of medieval documents, especially witchcraft treatises, as a means of exploring the evolution of European witchcraft throughout the medieval period, culminating in the late medieval feminization of the institution of witchcraft. In order to establish politically motivated witchcraft charges against powerful women as a repeating pattern throughout medieval and early modern history, this study assumes a sweeping perspective, taking note of similar cases occurred both chronologically and geographically separate from one another. Subsequently, the source material upon which this thesis relies is quite diverse. Infamous inquisitors’ guides such as the Formicarius by Johannes Nider and the Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger provide the theoretical foundation upon which such witchcraft charges were built, and similarly allow me to explain the belief system in place that allowed witchcraft accusations against prominent women to succeed.

Moving on from this foundational literature, this study explores a variety of primary sources documenting specific instances of witchcraft accusations leveled at socially influential women. These will include, to name a few, the claims of witchcraft aimed at the Anglo-Saxon Queen Ælfthryth in the twelfth-century chronicle Liber Eilensis, the recording of the sorcery trial of Dame Alice Kyteler in fourteenth-century Ireland, and the court proceedings for treason and witchcraft brought against Joan of Arc in fifteenth-century Burgundy and Queen Anne Boleyn in 1530s England. Examining the implications of witchcraft accusations on powerful women will broaden and bolster scholarship on the European witchcraft movement by illustrating both how these cases fit into the larger fabric of medieval society, and how they maintained or impacted the social hierarchy and its prescribed gender roles.

Findings:

This study illustrates a pattern of politically motivated witchcraft accusations throughout the medieval and early modern period informed by a single, ever-expanding lexicon supporting the idea of feminized witchcraft. Unlike much previous scholarship on European witchcraft, this thesis demonstrates that socially prominent women, for a myriad of reasons ranging from the scrutiny given to their sexual conduct to their contested foothold in both the domestic and public spheres, were just as susceptible to accusations of sorcery and witchcraft as their lower-class counterparts. The case studies presented here also demonstrate a pattern of naming women as witches in an attempt to delegitimize their agency in the male-dominated arenas of governance, religion, warfare, and commerce. Because this method successfully defamed and destroyed numerous powerful women throughout the Middle Ages, the inherent characteristics of the witch became intertwined with unrestrained women, creating an environment that allowed political detractors to slander women for witch-like crimes, without ever invoking that particular label. This finding demands further study on the relationship between powerful women and claims of deviant behavior as an essential aspect of pre-modern women’s social history. » [Résumé]

« Many print sources from 1680 to 1730 depicted bawds and witches as figures of transgressive elderly femininity. They were often described as having roughly the same anti-social behaviour, age, and gender. Both witches and bawds were seen as seducing innocents into a life of sin, associating with the devil, and acting lustful and unmotherly. Furthermore, they were connected with Catholicism and were thought to unite sinners against English Protestant society. The physical descriptions of the witch and procuress also bore significant patterns in presenting deformity, disfigurement, smelliness, rottenness, and death, traits generally connected with elderly women. Though historians have recognized the tendency of the witch or bawd to be characterized as an old woman, none have conducted a systematic comparison of the two stereotypes. Such an analysis can offer insight about the social anxieties around aging femininity in this period. » [Résumé]

« Ce texte témoigne des interrogations qui ont accompagné mon passage à la maîtrise et de ma recherche portant sur la figure de la sorcière comme figure féministe, ainsi que son inclusion dans ma pratique artistique afin d’y soutenir la production d’un discours féministe. Abordant la sorcière sous les angles historique, politique et spirituel, j’examine les différents discours de réappropriation et de réhabilitation qui lui sont accolés. Souvent, ces discours s’apparentent au féminisme radical et au féminisme marxiste ou au féminisme matérialiste. J’ai donc cherché à mieux comprendre ces théories et en quoi elles concordaient ou non avec ma propre pensée. Je me suis demandé quelle façon celles-ci s’intégraient ou pouvaient s’intégrer à un féminisme d’aujourd’hui, principalement en regard des concepts d’intersectionnalité et de trans-inclusion. De mes recherches, certains concepts ont émergé : la conscience holistique, l’a-hiérarchie, les actes de fabrication et la connaissance comme source de pouvoir. Mots-clés: féminisme, sorcellerie, pensée holistique, a-hiérarchie, acte de fabrication, pouvoir, connaissance, anticolonialisme, art. » [Résumé]

« This thesis compares the Wiccan faith with fantasy literature of the twentieth century in an effort to reveal the spread of radical feminist thought between 1963 and 1983 by examining how these groups represented the shared figure of the witch. By comparing these different representations it may be determined whether radical feminist thought was promoted through fantasy literature. If the figure of the witch did become radically feminist in this popular setting then this would indicate a broader acceptance of radical feminist thought in American culture. This is examined by establishing a definition of fantasy literature during the late twentieth century, looking at what the traditional figure of the witch represented and how the Wiccan faith under the influence of radical feminism initially altered this representation, and then comparing that with the figure of the witch found in fantasy literature. Evidence has been drawn from newspapers, fantasy literature depicting witches, speeches and interviews given by the authors, and important texts within the Wiccan community. This thesis challenges academic perceptions that popular culture is unworthy of study by showing how a popular form of literature helped spread radical feminist thought beyond the confines of the feminist movement. This was accomplished through the shared figure of the witch that underwent a radical transformation during the second half of the twentieth century. As a transitioning figure during a time of great social upheaval the witch represents a lasting legacy of change in American culture during this period. » [Résumé]