The Witches - Week 5 Witches

This week in themed to witches I read “The Witches” by Roald Dahl. A surprisingly gruesome novel of child killing monsters that take shape as young women supposably written for kids (though that's arguable). In this novel the witches aren’t real women they are creatures. Though we cannot remove the fact that all witches are women as said in the book it self. A statement that leaves un-answered questions. Why are all witches women? Why can’t they be men? Well, the answer lays far beneath just this scary children's book but our male dominate society we live in.

The witch is an odd phenomena of horror, it is the only monster of it's kind to be revolved around gender. The idea that a powerful women in control of her sexuality is to its core evil. The ‘horrors’ of witches can be traced back even farther then the Salem Witch trials but to Catholic England. Before the Catholic religion spread through out Europe women or witches were the head of most villages. Being far from Catholic ideals they demonized the religion and pushed on the male dominate one. 

The witch horror archetype reminds us how almost all horror is sexist. Violence and sex is completely intertwine with in the horror genre followed by misogyny. Slasher films is the greatest offender of all with it's specific violence towards women. The films typically boil women down to stereotypes and tropes. The most common are the "good girl" and the "slut", the good girl lives for she is pure where the slut dies cause she is "easy" and "deserves it". The "slut" stereotype in media also but wood onto the far of the already growing issue of rape culture (the blaming for sexual assaulted victims). The horror genre though loved is misogynistic we have the ability to move from that, however it is difficult for female writers to make headway such a male dominate genre. Interesting considering the Gothic genre was created and loved by a female dominate crowd. As a fan of horror films and stories I hope one day genre could be equal in it’s representation of its genders. I think the narrative works of horror and new age gothic writings would reach a new hight if feminism was embraced in it’s concepts.