Magical Feminism: The Manifestation and Evolution of the Witch Under the Male Gaze
Date
2020-10-28
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Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
Since her fabrication, the Witch has been suffocated by the masculine voice and mode. Beginning with the witch-hunts, her social narrative has been completely dictated by men. All predicating texts were written by men, for men to use against women. From Macbeth to the King James Bible, from Glinda to Galinda, from Carrie to Sue, and from Myrtle to Madison, men have defined, silenced, and appropriated Witches’ voices in order to maintain social hegemony and hierarchy - man’s supremacy over women. Very rarely has a woman’s witchy voice been heard when set against overpowering patriarchal domination. While women have written Witches in the shadows, it is the male voice that has historically defined her as a threat to society, i.e., patriarchy. Women critics such as Matilda Joslyn Gage have defended the Witch as a source of Female power and an obvious display of brutal patriarchal persecution, but the literary Witch and her accompanying images that define public perception remain dominated by men, trapping her in a cyclical fallacy of female autonomy, fabricated by men.
Through a Feminist theory of male gaze with New Historicism approach, this thesis will examine the manifestation and evolution of the Witch, starting with the Witch’s origin and connection to birth and death through Lilith. Next, it will provide an overview of the Witch in literary and visual mediums during European witchcraze in order to show its influence on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the King James Bible, and Christian rhetoric, codifying the social perception of Witches’ - and thereby all women’s - inherent wickedness. Turning to the first modern Feminist wave, Matilda Josyln Gage’s treatise Women, Church, and State, brings forward and defends the Witch as an intelligently educated women who threatened the patriarchy by living outside the bounds of male influence and paints Witches as victims of masculine fear. Her treatise proposed an image of a kind, intelligent Witch, persecuted and murdered for her female intelligence. The legacy of Gage’s good Witch lives through her son-in-law’s children’s book The Wonderful Land of Oz. The words asked by the Good Witch of the North upon Dorothy’s arrival opened the door to represent women with power and magic as beings of goodness. However, L. Frank Baum’s lasting legacy is the Wicked Witch of the West, further solidified by Margaret Hamilton’s iconic performance on screen. In the second Feminist wave, this thesis will explore the use of Exodus in Carrie to show how the King James Bible is still being used to justify and persecute women as Witches out of fear and hate. In the third Feminist wave, the Wicked Witch of the West is reborn through Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which explores the backstory and motivations of the Wicked Witch, exploring both her obsession with her sister’s shoes and her green hue. These Witches, echoes of the images of Witches throughout history, are further examples of the Witch under the male gaze. Ushering in the fourth Feminist wave, Witches have finally broken through patriarchal male gaze and limitations, opening new possibilities for a thoroughly Feminine literary structure. Ariel Gore’s We Were Witches is an extraordinary exemplar of the potential literary creation that happens when a Witch takes hold and fully claims her witchy power and forges an entirely new, magical literary structure - defining the Witch as a figure of women’s fortitude, love, and survival.
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