Anna Sibilia

David Steiling

Women and Witchcraft 

There is a disparity within literature in the way gender is portrayed. More often than not, a male hero is sent on a quest with a group of sidekicks meant to appeal to other dynamics and groups of people than the norm of the protagonist. Consequently this created an archetype of female characters whom are ‘only strong for boys’ being that they near constantly could be written as a male and have no dramatic change to their character to push views of toxic masculinity onto the audience in subtle, snide ways. 

In the case of Aunt Maria authored by Dianne Wynne Jones, we see a cast of women higher on the proverbial mountain of power with no qualms in wielding such abilities over the heads of their male counterparts. Aunt Maria herself is a nagging, fickle woman who starts out as an annoying force that harasses the family. Usually, this isn’t the place of a lady in media, for in most worlds -fantastic or otherwise- women are not antagonists who brutalize or harass others, they work in more subdued ways to either undermine or usurp power from others. Therefore Maria’s actions are quite unexpected, and her bullying role only increases until it seems her targeted family is nearly rent asunder. 

Maria does exemplify the trope of being both woman and filled with ill intentions (another evil witch-queen, as she’d surely be in the Disney fashion), however, that is not the point of Jones’ writing. Her blatant reversal of the world’s power distribution only highlights how much of our society is so reliant on the typical distribution of power and the way things are delegated to each gender. 

There is a strange dichotomy of men and women in literature and media that spawns back from the beginnings of story telling. It is a belief that men are more representative of the physical world: they are the embodiment of what we can understand and interact with, the pinnacle of power, whilst women are symbolic of the mystical and ethereal part of life. This is largely caused by the fact that women can carry and give birth to children, something men could not do, so therefore women were tied to the spiritual side of creation when men were tasked with handling other physical labors. Women are also more empathetic and emotionally understanding in the written word, and therefore can better understand and interpret the minds of others -something many typical heroic figures rarely do. 

By turning things on their head in this novel, Jones wanted the audience to understand that this dichotomy should be deconstructed and done away with. Men and women play equal parts in society, however there is this notion to demonize or oppress one half in favor of the other. Misandry and misogyny create an unhealthy atmosphere where it is hard for the masses to communicate with another and the ruling party is able keep the stigma alive.