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Lindsay Symmonds: Silencing
Female Power
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Silencing Female Power:
The Male Anxiety Revealed
by
Lindsay Nicole Symmonds
Between the years of 1478 and 1808, many women
became the victims of a mass hysteria which is now termed The Inquisition. According to
author Anne Barstowe, women who had previously been able to practice herbal lore of any
type (midwives, folk healers, etc.) were hunted down and labeled as witches, for their use
of these practices was considered to be overly assertive within a patriarchal society.
There was a general consensus that women (regardless of their reputations) were oversexed
and seething with carnal lust. Female association with spoken/practiced knowledge or
sexuality represents one of the major driving forces of The Inquisition. Women who
appeared to utilize or possess masculine tools of oppression were dangerous and therefore
needed to be physically and mentally purged of this power. In the witch hunts, this
demonizing of the female mind and body resulted in hideous incidents of torture and
numerous deaths. The male anxiety responsible for the brutality of the witch hunts is also
present within much of the literature of the time. Although few of the women in the
literature were openly accused of being witches, their independence was enough to spark a
male response not unlike the torture which ultimately represented The Inquisition. Two
texts that fall within this time period and particularly reveal male anxiety over female
power are Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi;
the action in both of these texts not only reveals this anxiety, but it also involves a
type of mental and physical purging similar to that forced upon those accused of
witchcraft. Before
the Inquisition, many women held important jobs within their societies. Within Witchcraze,
Barstowe clarifies that a large number of women were not doctors, but were healers who
played any number of the following roles: gynecologist, apothecary, physician, barber and
surgeon. However, many of the healers also played very spiritual roles in their work
(diviner, necromancer, curser and countermagician), therefore creating the possibility for
others to view them as women who appeared to be using magic (Barstowe 111). The
label of magic-worker was one which was placed on many healers and began to generate
problems. Although magic could be used for good, the patriarchy asserted that it would
most likely only be used for evil. The nature of their so-called "magical"
powers ultimately led the healers to be more feared than respected: "she who can cure
can kill" (Barstowe 116). At this stage, priests and trained doctors began
recognizing that they were in direct competition with the female healers for business. The
need to end this competition, along with the fear of magic, led to the exclusion of
females from the realm of practiced knowledge. Suddenly, those who once were healers
became witches capable only of evil. Likewise, women who were vocal within their community
were labeled as shrews and would be prime targets for the witch hunts that would later
begin. The universal message that women should be silent and gentile was now being sent
out loud and clear. Male anxiety began to develop, focusing on women who attempted to
utilize what were considered to be masculine tools. In other words, the fear was that
women were no longer in their respective places within the patriarchy, and the quickest
way for men to overturn this was to stop the healers and find a way to silence female
knowledge completely (both practiced or spoken). |
The witch hunts officially began in 1478. They
targeted mainly females, which led the term "witch hunt" to become synonymous
with the term "woman hunt". The patriarchy shifted its focus from the smaller
population of healers onto the larger female population in general as a result of the
rising fear of female power. The general belief that women were oversexed and bestial
(regardless of their true sexual behavior) gained currency; therefore, females were
regarded as unchaste beings who were dangerous to men. For centuries, women were
considered to be grounded in the physical; their ability to menstruate and give birth were
two things men could not control. In addition to the disgust these natural cycles evoked
in men, there was also a fear of their power. A growing connection was being made between
female sexuality and evil. Somehow women were at fault for every negative event that
occurred, especially if it involved a man's sexual capabilities. Adding to the fear of
female power within the spoken or practiced realm, the female body was increasingly
considered to be the embodiment and source of sin, as epitomized by Eve:
Therefore, this demonization of the female mind and body was a result of the
view that women were the weaker sex, a weakness that made them more susceptible to being
corrupted by the devil. Women even associated with evil to the degree that some believed
their nature actually promoted it: "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is
in women insatiable" (Kramer and Sprenger 46).
In addition to finding a "logical" explanation for these events, those persecuting "witches" also had the ability to silence female power in order to stop its encroachment upon the patriarchy. |
The Inquisition is often remembered most vividly
through graphic descriptions of the mental and physical torture. Torture was a common
legal practice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; however, the types of torture
utilized within the witch hunts varied greatly from those traditionally applied to
criminal cases. Although some of the devices used during the Inquisition were designed for
either sex, there were several that were particularly damaging to the female sexual
organs. For example, thumbscrews were a torture device that were invented and used for
eliciting confessions from both men and women (see fig. 3). The pear, however, was a
torture device which was often used on females in an attempt to destroy the core of
feminine power. . . the vagina (see figs. 1 and 2). Damaging the breasts with pincers or
cutting them off altogether also manifested a desire to physically mutilate and/or destroy
female sex organs. As mentioned in Witchcraze by Anne Barstowe, the tragic story of
Anna Pappenheimer involves near-pornographic moments of physical and sexual humiliation.
Her breasts were cut off and forced into her children's mouths not only to punish her, but
also to threaten onlooking women simultaneously. Cutting off the breasts was painful, but
was also a way to destroy the female capability to breast-feed. Similarly, the physical
torment of water torture functioned to mock maternal power. This method involved force
feeding women large amounts of liquids until their stomachs became hideously distended.
The questioning would continue, and if the desired response was not offered by the
accused, her stomach would be beaten. This form of torture was not only physically harming
to the individual in question, but it was also a way to mock female power by creating a
morbid parody of pregnancy.During
torture, the female genitals were often searched for the "devil's mark" or
"witch's teat". These were considered to be the marks leftover from the suckling
of demons or imps. Men traditionally performed the searches and often found numerous
"marks" on women as a result of their own ignorance about the female body:
Irrational tests of guilt were applied to already frightened women, which forced them to endure physical torture and in many cases, an even more excruciating death. Because legal torture allowed for men to make sexual advances and perform sexual experimentation on women, the results of it extended beyond the question of whether or not one was a witch:
Therefore, during the Inquisition, the various forms of torture applied to women were often used to silence the female power of sexuality that was threatened patriarchal control. |
