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What Role Do Human Bodies Play In Roper's Witch Craze?

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Human bodies played a significant role in the hunt for witches and other European religious struggles. Throughout Germany, the concept of witchcraft and the obsession to stop it was at its worst from 1550 to 1650. While older women were famously the targets for accusations of witchcraft, men and children were not exempt from the terror that was the witch hunt. As described in Roper’s Witch Craze, there were multiple known influences on this phenomenon that killed so many, such as religious instability and various aspects of the human experience. One theme that is prevalent is that of women, their bodies and how the two of the aspects influenced the idea of witchcraft and way society attempted to end it. During this time, it was essential for women to be healthy and become mothers while they were still young enough to do so. This need created a sort of negative environment for older women who either hadn’t had children or were unsuccessful in raising them. “People could be inclined to seeing threats to fertility lurking everywhere, and to expect older women to envy the fecund young” (Pg. 8). Themes such as pregnancy, conception and aging of women’s bodies all had in important role in supposedly identifying witches. Witches …show more content…

Variables such as the Reformation, the Thirty Years War, and other religious strife cause a large amount of discord in the country. The struggles between the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were intensely driven and resulted in tumultuous beliefs for the common person. The uncertainty of religious beliefs created confusion, and while the concern of witchcraft was gaining prominence, it is easy to understand how fear powered the hysteria behind beliefs held about witches. “Witchcraft raised issues that lay at the heart of religious identity” (Pg.

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After reading “Devil in the Shape of a Woman: The Economic Basis of Witchcraft “by Carol Karlsen I was intrigued by Karlsen’s interpretation, and upset about the ways women were treated. During these witch hunts women and men alike were accused of the crime, but the majority were women. I found it interesting that she related the commonly known Puritan beliefs, which lead to accusations of witchcraft, with gender roles. She ultimately says that Puritans feared these accused women because they symbolized female independence. I found it shocking that women, often the wealthier, had a greater chance of being let go of their accusations if they had a husband to spoke on their behalf.

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However, J. Barry and O. Davies argues against Barstow’s perspective and theory, that “To translate this as ‘witches’, as Montague Summers regularly does, is therefore to give the reader a false impression, because the English word ‘witch’ immediately suggests a woman.” Therefore, from Barry and Davies’ argument, it could be deduced that although misogyny could be seen throughout the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, the intention of the book being persecution of women cannot be confirmed to be true. This detracts from Barstow’s argument as there are not much supporting evidence for her perspective that the publication of the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ had a significant impact on starting and increasing the scale of witch-hunting in Europe, as well as specifying that these witches were all women, and therefore makes her argument rather

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In addition to virginal innocence, during her funeral, the girl wore white “fitting for a virgin” to increase the significance of this chastity. Reaching the end of the story, the same innocent girl comes back into view. She “put on [her] white burial dress, [her] white veil, as befits a virgin” and excepts her fate just as women accepted their place in society (Atwood 266). Quite unexpectedly, I have attempted to show this story in a new light. Through the reading of Margaret Atwood’s short biography and her clever “Lusus Naturae,” I found an interesting symbolic connection between the treatment of women and the monster in this story.

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