The Marginalized Victims Of Women During The Witch Trials

Women Were Primarily Victims of Witch-Hunting and They did not Exercise any Significant Agency/power through the Process of Witch trials. A well-established definition of a victim is a person who has been attacked, or injured by someone else and someone who is harmed by an unpleasant event. In addition, the reference to the word ‘significant’ in this thesis argument is an important qualifier. The word significant, being a subjective term, allows this author to argue women did not have significant agency/power during the witch trial process. Just being a woman subjected to male controlled witch trials removed substantial power from women accused of being witches. Both women and men of this period in history believed that men had God given
rights of power over women and women were weaker biologically and spiritually. The information available from a variety of sources reflects that women were primarily victims of witch-hunting and they did not exercise any significant agency/power through the process of witch trials.
Researchers identified at least three different views of women and their role in a male dominated society and why they did not exercise any significant agency. These are: one, Catholic demonism defined witches as having a pact with the devil and being the opposite of Godly; two, women’s position in the household defined her subordinate role in private and communal life and placed her under supervision by males; and three, women’s role of healer and midwife who could cause harm and/or death to the most vulnerable of the population. This placed these women in a position which made them especially susceptible to being accused of being a witch if the person died. The abundance of material available from trial records utilized by the majority of researchers gave those historians an in depth understanding of trial process and was an important factor in choosing those trial documents for case studies. Profuse trial records allowed researchers to critically evaluate them for content, bias, and validity allowing them to compare information found in different European countries.
Eva Pocs article “Why Witches Are Women,” enumerates the bias and elucidated the lack of significant power by women during the witch trial process and how they were the victims in that process. The logical identification of witches as women in the minds of both elites and peasants informed the popular view of women. Pocs contends, the Catholic Church teachings were the root of generating the witch-stereotype. St. Thomas of Aquino [Aquinas], in his response to “the question why the female sex is more prone to witchcraft than the male”, provided a clear example of how society viewed women as lacking in agency; when he answered “it is due to the weakness of women and their susceptibility to influence.” The idea of sorceresses as brought forth by the religious elites placed demonology as the means to delineate women as witches removing their ability to exercise significant agency.
Lauren Martin, in “The Devil and the Domestic: Witchcraft, Quarrels and Women’s Work in Scotland”, noted that accusations of witchcraft were aligned with social status subverting any significant exercising of women’s power in the process of a witch trial.
Women were taught to be submissive to the rule of their fathers and men in positions of rank. This caused social tensions, and the agency of a woman was suspect if she acted outside this socially structured role. The roles of women in households and communities were connected to bearing and raising children, marriage, and purchasing goods for the household. The acceptance of women accused as witches being part of the marginalized and poor, she argues, is not reflected in the documents from the trials and did not support the idea that women accused of witchcraft were the marginalized members of the community. Just because they were women in their patriarchal culture, they lacked significant ability to exercise agency. Analyses by English anthropologists made it clear that the appearance of witchcraft-accusations were related to the tensions within local societies. Community members brought accusations against people who were their neighbors or members of the same household who felt harmed by the witch. The accused witches did not exercise significant agency during the witch trials as they were considered women who were perceived to have stepped outside their place in
society.
Marianne Hester in “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting” stated women during this period worked within the defined institution of marriage and any agency regarding the process of witch trials was not significant. The husband had total control of a woman’s life which demonstrates a woman’s vulnerability to abuse. Creating a cultural bias around women and their roles placed them at risk for victimization which was reflected in trial processes. Society identified women as vessels for producing children and as servants within the household and working the family business. Young adult women would be placed as servants to supplement the family income making them vulnerable to sexual abuse. Women could work in the craft their husband practiced but were perceived to be a threat when they had their own business and were paid less than men for the same work. In multiple ways society and culture dictated a woman’s place and any significantly agency she had was reduced when accused of witchcraft.
Pocs stated numerous studies which examined women who were identified as healers or midwives and when placed on trial did not exercise any significant agency through the process. The healers and midwives were accused as witches due to harm or death while treating people in the community, placing them in a particularly vulnerable position when accused of being a witch. The stereotype attached to healers and midwives at times resulted in accusations of maleficium and/or murder. Historian J.A. Sharpe suggested the belief by the populous that a healer also knew how to harm/maleficium. The results of child birth and healing were always uncertain in a society rife with disease, accidents, and a high infant mortality rate. The death of a new born, young child or family member and the families’ emotional reaction to the death made the healers particularly vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft.
Clive Holmes article “Women: Witnesses and Witches” referenced the Jane Wenham court case that clearly displayed a process of prosecution of the accused witch who was unable to exercise any significant power. Holmes remarked on the “complex process which attended the transformation of local concerns into formal legal procedure.” This process of changing translated testimony was to conform to higher court proceedings which reflected maleficium and/or murder as the charge. Those adjustments to the testimonies created harsher legal charges and removed the exercising of significant agency by accused witches.
Louise Jackson’s, “Witches, Wives and Mothers: Witchcraft persecution and women’s confessions in seventeenth-century England,” also noted how the use of torture on the accused reflected victimization, and lack of significant agency/power. Although Jackson’s view is certainly feminist, it does have validity when compared with other historians. The historians remarked on women not conforming to the idea of the godly wife stereotype resulting in accusations of witchcraft. Even the women witnesses and/or searchers who were designated by men needed “to prove they were on the side of virtue before someone tried to label them as a witch.” Early modern Europeans held the common belief of the need to be a Godly woman, as preached from the pulpit, and this placed women at risk of becoming a victim of the devil’s temptation, a fear reinforced by the scarcity of agency.
E.J.
Kent’s “Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593-1680” reflects on the normalized dominance of men in several areas which demonstrated how women were primarily victims of witch-hunting and lacked the ability to exercise any significant agency through the process of witch trials. She mentioned the “subtlety of subcultural power in the areas of economic, social, religious and political behavior.” This subcultural power combined with the institutional power of a trial presided over by men, resulted in the subordinate and marginalized positions of women. Simply by being a woman in this culture resulted in significant loss of
agency.
The use of well documented specific cases added validity to the argument that women were victims and they did not exercise any significant power through the process of witch trials. There were multiple aspects of the witch stereotype found in the abundant sources by researchers. The use of demons, the subservient role of women and women as healers and midwives made them particularly vulnerable to accusations. The trial process itself, which included torture, and accusations against a woman met the definition of victim. Women were considerably more vulnerable due to their significant lack of agency within the patriarchal society and trial process.