“We are the daughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn”: A Gender-based Approach to the Figure of the Witch in Contemporary Reassessments of the Fairy Tale

Abstract

The figure of the witch has traditionally stood for the negative moral type in the fairy tales, whose purpose was to teach readers (children in particular) what they should not to do, what they should avoid or fear. However, feminist women have long identified with witches, as did the radical feminists from the late 1960s who first grouped in the streets of New York in order to “hex” Wall Street bankers, organized under the name W.I.T.C.H. It is undeniable that the image of the witch is a central one in present-day feminisms, and that is because to identify with the witch is not to identify with the dangerous and socially feared, as presented in traditional fairy tales, but rather to identify with a long history of gendered repression, with the silenced women who were persecuted for resisting to conform to patriarchal standards in one way or the other. Thus, the connotations of the witch have changed from being a (gendered) symbol of evil to an icon of female empowerment and resilience –as claimed by Maitland, “Witches are neither good nor bad. They are powerful” (On Becoming a Fairy Godmother, 2003). It is on the basis of this symbolic identification so evident in our contemporary world that this project aims to explore the significance of the image of the witch by offering an analysis of such a figure in contemporary re-writings of the fairy-tale genre; particularly, in Emma Donoghue’s collection of short stories entitled Kissing The Witch: Old Tales in New Skins (1997)