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Malevolent Nurture - Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R3,771
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Malevolent Nurture - Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Hardcover, New)
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Why were women far more likely than men to be executed for
witchcraft in the early modern period? Questioning approaches that
focus narrowly on the male role in witch-hunting in England and
Scotland, Deborah Willis examines the fact that women were also
frequently the accusers.Willis draws on the strengths of feminist,
new historicist, and psychoanalytic criticism and on such primary
sources as legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts,
and stage plays. Both the witch and her female accuser, Willis
concludes, were engaged in a complex, intricate struggle for
survival and empowerment in a patriarchal culture, and they stood
in uneasy relation to definitions of female identity that rewarded
nurturing behavior.Malevolent Nurture disentangles popular images
of the witch from those endorsed by male elites. Among villagers,
the witch was most typically imagined as a malevolent mother, while
elites preferred to view her as a betraying servant of Satan.
Analyzing King James VI and I's involvement in the North Berwick
witchcraft trials, Willis shows how his elite atittudes were
nevertheless influenced by his relationships with his brith mother,
Mary Queen of Scots, and another maternal figure, Queen Elizabeth
I.Willis also shows that Shakespeare, in Richard III, Macbeth, and
Henry VI, and other middle-class playwrights incorporated the
beliefs of the ruling class and villagers alike in their
representations of witches.
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