In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

Product Information

The first two chapters focus heavily on when women choose not to have children and how society treats this choice. The third looks at the differences between how men and women age, or how society treats them differently as they age. These sections were clear, organized, focused on the topics. I was occasionally reminded that the book was written and published in Europe, as it would refer to resources in French, and mention how things were in America. It is clear the author has done her research, and I highly recommend this read for anyone interested in social history of women, the evolution of the concept of a “witch”, or just sociology in general. Susan Stryker Discusses Trans Studies, Trans Feminism, and a More Trans Future with V Varun Chaudhry The ultimate conclusion, if you will, is that these witch hunts from the past continue in the present and are far from some romanticized period in our history. Indeed, they deserve to not be romanticized but to be permanently placed in the past along with all the other cultural and institutionalized forms of misogyny. Women have always been hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions, though the methods have changed and the justifications varied. The women who were murdered in Salem in 1692 were not performing witchcraft. They were not brewing potions in cauldrons, or if they were, they were not doing so because they were calling upon the Devil to manifest ill for their neighbors. They were just doing laundry. While some of them had some manner of outsider status or may have be seen as rebels, many were simply going about the work of everyday life, like Rebecca Nurse, a 71-year-old woman who was particularly known for her piety and good nature yet was executed as a witch. The most likely thing that was going to get you accused of witchcraft was simply being a woman; you didn’t even have to be a rebel, intentionally or accidentally.

Western women’s lives today could have been much different and better if had it not been for the European witch craze, Mona Chollet tells us in In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial . The trials, which occurred sporadically in many countries over centuries and well into the early modern era, were unpredictable, irrational, and horrific. The persecution wiped out many thousands of innocents and helped entrench a tyranny of repressive misogyny women must still overcome. I was personally most interested in the ways that the witch hunts we widely think of as a thing of the past have simply morphed into more subtle, and in some ways more sinister, forms of control and punishment. Looking at the information as laid out for the reader, I have a much better understanding and appreciation for the various ways women can and do re-appropriate not only words but indeed their own sexuality and make them work to their benefit and happiness rather than as means of controlling them. A dense read, but that is primarily because of the academic nature of the writing. There is a lot of very interesting information spread over a wide variety of chapter subjects. And it was fascinating to get more on the witch trials outside of the United States. She also tells the story of Flutter who lived alone on a mountain not caring what the local people thought. She was a bringer of positive news for her little village.The campaign led between 1507 and 1593 in twenty-two villages in the region of Trier, In Germany–the starting point and also the epicenter, along with Switzerland, of the witch hunts–was so relentless that two of the villages, only one woman was left alive; in total 368 women were burned.” It always amazed me how many people in America were only aware of the Salem Witch Trials, not the reign of terror that swept Europe for centuries, that claimed the lives of thousands of women. Not only that, they don’t know that witch-hunts still occur today. In Northern Ghana, there are at least six witch camps. In Defense of Witches by Mona Chollet analyzes the treatment of women since the witch-hunts and how they contributed to the shaping of our society today. She looks at 3 main aspects: independent women, childless women, and elderly women. Women are not alone in being persecuted as witches. Men have also fallen victim to accusations but they make up a considerably smaller percentage and most men that were accused were more likely to receive a trial. It shows that the witch trials were deeply rooted in sexism and misogyny. And, in a widely read book from 1967, André Soubiran, a doctor, reflected: “One wonders whether feminine psychology can accommodate freedom and the absence of men’s domination as well as we imagine.”27 In a chilling analogy to today’s technologies of misinformation, Chollet notes it was that advent of the printing press in 1454 that led to the wide availability of the Bible, with its (likely mistranslated) injunction, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and worse, in 1487, to the oft-reprinted “witch-hunter’s bible,” the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, launching a “media campaign” to identify and try witches.

For me, the history of witchcraft could equally be called the history of independence…the most troubled territories are always those that want to be independent.’

Customer reviews

Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harrassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct descendants to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions.