Grimm Witch Analysis

The mouse in this scene is the “beast” mentioned in the MM while the “imperfection” is the fact that, even though the child looks like a mouse, they are still, in fact, children. Who can, as evidenced by the protagonist doing so in the latter part of the book, speak English and communicate perfectly with his grandmother. This passage only aids to further the idea that Dahl’s work was not purely misogynistic because of the line “only women are witches”, but that it was, in fact, based around historically misogynistic texts, like the Malleus Maleficarum, in addition to classic fairy-tale traits.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, more famously known as the Brothers’ Grimm storytellers, took the image of the witch as presented by the MM and extended it, exploiting society’s prejudices and folklore tales. Jacob Grimm specifically, like Kramer and Sprenger, also believed that “women in general [were] to be predestined for clandestine magic because they, as opposed
While some examples can be excused with Dahl’s imagination, others can be directly linked back to the Brothers’ Grimm’s works. The first detail that Dahl gives is how “real witches” always wear gloves, “a REAL WITCH [sic] is certain always to be wearing gloves when you meet her….because she doesn’t have fingernails. Instead of fingernails, she has thin curvy claws like a cat…” (24). Schimmelpfennig writes that “in early illustrations of storybooks the witch is often drawn with claw-like fingers” (para. 9) along with the “common belief that witches are able to morph into animals themselves (cf. Merrifield 175)” (para. 9) when paired alongside black cats being associated stereotypically with witches and the trait Dahl has introduced the reader in spotting a “real” witch goes from being completely sexist to historically