In Defence of Witches

Mona Chollet

Picador, £14.99

Review by Dani Garavelli

THE problem for feminists writing about “witches” is that the myth of unconventional rebels casting spells against the patriarchy is so appealing it can seem a shame to debunk it. This is why – centuries after tens of thousands of innocent people, most of them women, were massacred across Europe – we see anti-Trump protesters casting themselves as “the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn”. It’s why, even as campaigners in Scotland push for pardons for those falsely accused, there is a growing market for grimoires on Etsy and other websites.

Mona Chollet identifies this contradiction early on in her book, In Defence of Witches. As a young girl she was captivated by Flutter Mildweather from The Glassblower’s Children, a novel by Swedish author Maria Gripe. She was enchanted by her indigo cloak and her remarkable hat with its flower-strewn brim. Here was a witch who made the baddies “bite the dust” and “offered the promise of revenge over any adversary who under-estimated you”. Flutter became for her a talisman, “a memory of what a woman of stature could be”.

Chollet says it took her half a lifetime to appreciate the degree of misunderstanding within this “magnet for fantasy”; to understand that, before becoming a spark to the imagination, the word “witch” had been “the very worst seal of shame”.

The premise of her book, first published in France in 2018, but now translated into English by Sophie R Lewis, is that the witch-hunts of the 16th-18th centuries were rooted in misogyny, and that women are still on trial today.

On one level this is uncontroversial. We know misogyny remains rife, and that the idea of the "witch" has also been co-opted by anti-feminists, who use it to denigrate powerful women. During the 2016 US election, Hillary Clinton was shown with a green face, riding a broomstick, and branded “the wicked witch of the left”. It's the go-to insult for Nicola Sturgeon, too.

And yet, Chollet struggles to present a coherent narrative. Despite acknowledging the risk, she continues to conflate fantasy and reality. This conflation is inherent in the title. Is her book: In Defence of Witches or In Defence of “Witches”? In other words: is it an investigation of the legacy of a massive miscarriage of justice? Or is it an attempt to reclaim a mythical figure as a role model for contemporary women? The answer is both; and the result is a muddle.

A further problem stems from Chollet's decision to structure her book around what she claims as three "archetypes" from the witch-hunts. There is one chapter on independent women, one on women who choose not to have children and one on women “who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing”. Chollet's contention is that, several centuries on, these same types of women are having the same charges levelled against them.

But this is an over-simplification. As those at the forefront of the campaign for the Scottish "witches" to be pardoned have stressed, most of those executed were ordinary Christian women trying to keep their heads down. And – while some may have been picked on by neighbours with a grudge – their wider persecution was born of a societal belief in, and fear of, witchcraft.

This over-simplification is most obvious in the chapter titled “The scourge of women’s independence”. Most of those executed as witches were accused of “consorting with the devil”. Chollet asks: “Who is this devil who, from the 14th century onwards … began to loom behind the figure of every female, every sorceress, every woman who was slightly too forward or too much of a stirrer to the point that they became a mortal threat to society? What if this devil were in fact independence?” Not only does she imply that those targeted were rabble-rousers (a contention for which she provides no evidence) but she underplays the extent to which, at that period, the devil was a real and terrifying entity.

There was certainly misogyny in the notion that women were morally inferior and so more susceptible to the devil’s advances. And the witch-hunts did coincide with a wider disempowerment as women who had been "smiths, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers" were pushed out of those spheres. But when, for example, midwives were charged with witchcraft it tended to be because a child had died rather than an orchestrated attack on the profession.

This is not to say Chollet’s book is of no interest. It starts off well, with a look at early artistic representations of witches, and goes on to link the witch-hunts with antisemitism. Chollet suggests both persecutions were a product of society’s need to find a scapegoat for its ills, pointing out that terms such as “sabbath” and “synagogue” were also used in reference to witches, while both groups were depicted with hooked noses.

There is also a thought-provoking section on the commodification of modern witchcraft. As well as being a spiritual and/or political practice, Chollet, says, it is a money-spinner. “Capitalism is always engaged in selling back to us in product form all that it has first destroyed,” she writes.

Unfortunately, though, the book quickly becomes untethered from its premise. In the chapters that follow, the references to the witch trials fall away. And – while many of the arguments Chollet makes about contemporary misogyny are legitimate – there is nothing anyone with a basic interest in feminism will not have encountered before.

There is an attempt to bring it all together at the end. Chollet quotes historian Guy Betchel, who once wrote: “It is likely that we are, at least partially, indebted to the unjustifiable massacre of the witches for a change in mindset towards greater rationality, greater justice, stronger support for the right to legal defence and general awareness of human rights.” Chollet believes the legacy of the witch hunts is an enduring contempt for women. Her take seems the more plausible, but the case she makes is too nebulous for the book to be anything other than frustrating.