‘See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows, As if, with Circe, she would change my shape’ (Shakespeare, King Henry VI Part I).
It is no coincidence that Shakespeare dramatized accusations of witchcraft upon his sixteenth-century stage when dealing with politically powerful women, like Joan of Arc, who threatened the early modern patriarchal social order. By the early sixteenth-century, sixty-thousand Europeans were executed for witchcraft, four-fifths of whom were female. Biological sex did not offer exclusive protection against accusations of witchcraft, but let us discuss the sex-related reasons that compelled an overwhelmingly female majority of witchcraft accusations in early modern Europe.
Misogynistic mentalities pervaded early modern Europe. In an attempt to justify why he believed women were fifty times more likely to succumb to demonic temptations, French demonologist, Jean Bodin (1530-1596) insisted ‘Satan addressed himself first and foremost to the woman’. In 1486, Heinrich Kramer issued Malleus Maleficarum that severely condemned female intellect, morality, and sexuality. Kramer extended his criticisms of the female sex to originate from Eve (‘the first woman’), therefore biologically blaming female immorality on evil witchcraft’s existence.
Early modern ecclesiastical suppression of female sexuality increased women’s vulnerability to witchcraft accusations. Descriptions of witchcraft had become threatening expressions of unconscious sexual desires. Early modern sexual beliefs validated witchcraft as a female crime. Elderly widows were believed to have increased sex drive, and thus were understood to use witchcraft to ruin young men’s fertility by ‘suck[ing] out their seed’. As a result, male anxieties concerning sex, contributed to sex-related witchcraft prosecutions.
Elderly widowed women were especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft as they had lost their husband’s socio-economic status. Widowed women endured poverty and weakened mobility, and they relied upon their communities for material assistance, which increased social tensions. Historians have argued that older women’s displays of hostility during social conflicts, prompting witchcraft accusations, were unconscious acts of aggression triggered by female menopause (although more research is needed to prove this).
Witchcraft accusations often involved deep antagonisms between women, particularly accusations from new mothers against women who occupied maternal roles (i.e., midwives). Early modern Europe’s high infant mortality rate inevitably increased public suspicion of midwives. Witchcraft accusers may well have been suffering from extreme post-natal depression and subsequently projected their guilt, seeking revenge against their lying-in-maids, who also happened to be old and post-menopausal.
Women were most vulnerable to witchcraft accusations during the early-modern period. The patriarchy subscribed subordinate roles to women, which limited their mobility and socioeconomic autonomy. As mothers, midwives and widows, early modern European women were significantly at risk of prosecution for the crime of witchcraft due to Europe’s tolerance of female suppression, and prevailing patriarchal anxieties around women’s biological potential.