Why Witches?
Whenever I’m interviewed one question that regularly comes up is, ‘Why are you drawn to write about witches?’ It’s not a particularly easy question for me to answer as this fascination has been part of me for as long as I can remember. In fact, I can’t think back to when they weren’t in my life. As a child, for instance, my parents and grandparents noted that I wasn’t interested in the princesses in fairy tales but to the darkling witches. It seemed to me, at that young age, that the princesses who just hung around waiting for Prince Charming to come and rescue and/or marry them were a bit vapid and passive. ON the whole uninteresting. Witches, on the other hand, were active, they flew, cooked up potions and generally did stuff. They also had respect, even if that translated into fear. And they had power. I mean, just look at Maleficent - she could transform herself into a dragon! Who didn’t want to be able to transform into a dragon?
My parents put all of this down to the fact that I was a ‘tomboy’, a term associated with girls who like physical play and noisy activities that are traditionally associated with boys. I have a whole load of issues about why girls can’t be seen to enjoy physical and noisy activities, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, the point is that I did, rather naturally in my opinion, gravitate towards the witches who were female and who lived on their own and who also enjoyed outdoor activities and who were magical. As a result, I was constantly plaguing my parents with the child’s persistent “why?” You couldn’t begin a sentence with “A witch walks into a room” without being hammered with a bucketload of questions. Of course, I didn’t want to know why she was walking into that particular room, I wanted to know why she was witch. And, actually who said she was a witch? Did she think she was a witch? Why would she want to be a witch when everyone around her thought that was such a bad idea? Not that her lifestyle sounded bad. And also, if she really was a witch, and witches did actually exist did that mean that magic was also real? But why not? Why? Why? Why?
As I got older I began to realize that fairy tales and the traditional vision of the witch were both binary reductions of a far more complex pictures, and that the real witch trials had been full of nuance. I went on to discover, that ironically, in contrast to the children’s stories, women who were accused of witchcraft often had no power at all, temporal or otherwise. A lot of the time, they were completely power-less, the scapegoats of their day.
The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members and it was with growing discomfort that I researched the legend of the 19th century sea witch, Sarah Moore, in the town where I live. Instead of an authoritative, scary woman I found a poor beleaguered character, blamed for storms and cholera epidemics, she couldn’t possibly have been responsible for. At the same time, in spite of this she managed to display a great strength of spirit and determination of character to see her family through very hard times. I fell under the spell of her tragic story and wrote The Drowning Pool so I could give her a voice posthumously.
As I continued to research witch hunts I learned that witches, the age-old fall guys, were in effect treated by governments just as badly as those who lived alongside them. That prejudice and ignorance weren’t confined to the past along with the witchfinders and their witch hunts, but were very much alive today. Not metaphorical ones but real ones – with tests and torture and witchfinders. In Kenya the victims are usually old women suffering dementia. In Nigeria it’s children. In India the low caste, single women, widows or old couples are the target. In Saudi Arabia and Papua New Guinea no one is safe.
Just as in the 16th and 17th centuries this seems to be about scapegoating and superstition, hysteria and hidden agendas. But it’s not just on the rise ‘over there’. The Metropolitan Police in London have created Project Violet, which responds to cases of witchcraft-related abuse, right here, right now in the UK. Witches and witchfinders are still able to hold a magic mirror up to humanity, and show us a reflection of who we really are. It’s not always a pretty sight.
At the same time I’m aware that there remains an enduring notion that the witch is a connection to the natural world and an age when we were closer to the earth, more in tune with the seasons. These associations with a less complex more natural environment are something that those of us living in urban or suburban environments, myself included, can often yearn for. The matching of plants to illness, medicine in fact, was what Ursula Kemp, the witch who features in Strange Magic, was ultimately hanged for.
Of course, there is something else which Ursula embodied which I think remains poignant today, and that was her association with magic and the miraculous. Ursula was a ‘cunning woman’, a healer, who had positive results. Her magic worked. And this is a big thing. For it is through such windows into history that we are able to perceive mystery and wonder. They existed then, and still persist today. And in some respects I don’t think that’s wrong. In fact I think it’s important that we don’t try to explain everything away, to deconstruct it and analyse it. Sometimes it’s just great to linger in a tinkling moment of simple awe. Who doesn’t want to believe magic is real?
The sad and brutal fact is that these women were hanged and nihilated. However, it’s important to note that in recent years the witch has come to be identified as a defiant feminist icon. Modern women, you see, have redefined her. For some see her as a woman who stepped beyond the domestic sphere, who was autonomous, didn’t seek the approval of society, who was defiant and who punished the patriarchy. I don’t know how much of that was true, but I like it.
A reader sent me a quote a few months ago, which made me smile. It was from author Tish Tawer, and read: ‘We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.’ I love that sentiment; commemoration and solidarity. I think it’s important to celebrate that defiant aspect of femininity, the non-conventional. But it’s just as vital to acknowledge the past and to remember the victims of the witch hunts. For there are those who walk in the shadow of that legacy and who still suffer today.