Hag, Temptress Or Feminist Icon? The Witch In Popular Culture

You would have thought that Western society might have grown out of the habit of portraying powerful women as witches, but a trope that usually ended badly for women in the Middle Ages is still being used in the 21st century. Those who portrayed Hillary Clinton as a witch during the 2016 presidential campaign, or have given Theresa May a pointy hat and broomstick in Britain’s general election, may not be calling for them to be burned at the stake, but they do call down political destruction on their heads. 

Witches have featured in fairy tales and fiction for centuries. In her earliest incarnations, the witch served as a warning. Stories about the witch-as-hag demonised and punished women for attempting to exert power outside the bounds of the domestic sphere. Beyond the fairy tale, women with “occult” knowledge (of folk medicine, for example), or simply poor, social outcasts (such as the infamous Pendle Witches hanged at Lancaster castle in 1612), were the victims of persecution and prosecution in 16th and 17th-century Britain.

Nowadays, though, the witch is often praised as a feminist figure, who pushes boundaries, breaks the rules and punishes patriarchal authority. 

Full Article: http://theconversation.com/hag-temptress-or-feminist-icon-the-witch-in-popular-culture-77374