Witchcraft and Gender

Abstract

The historical study of witchcraft was one of the first fields to accept gender history as part of the mainstream. Many scholars have noted that this development has been slow, but only a few fields of history – notably the history of sexuality and the history of the family – have seen anything swifter. Of course, this does not mean that every historian of witchcraft embraces gender history, or that all witchcraft historians see gender alike. It only means that the history of witchcraft, with its vivid imagery of violence, sexuality, oppression and religion, has produced interpretations from different political and academic angles, and these differing perspectives have been forced to take each other and to take gender matters seriously. Witchcraft historians became interested in gender very early, and gender struggle has also been a part of various political interpretations of the history of witchcraft such as Mary Daly and Barbara Echrenreich. Historians such as Marianne Hester and Lyndal Roper have pursued the issue of female oppression and feminine psychology. Lately the question on gender has revolved around men and male witches, the work of Lara Apps and Andrew Gow laying the standard starting points on the area of witchcraft theory and works such as Rolf Schulte or perhaps Johannes Dillinger on the level on social history. The purpose of this presentation, however, in not to lay out a historiography of gender and witchcraft – a job well done in other presentations – but to explore possible grounds for new generalizations and analysis on the basis of what we currently know about witches (or the accusers and witnesses), witchraft, or witch trials in various places of the early modern Europe.