Sometimes the Witch Really Is Wicked.

When 'reclaiming narratives' erases the evils amongst us

In a recent article, bestselling author and folklorist/psychologist Sharon Blackie claimed that she 'wanted to ‘push back against the wicked stepmother and evil-witch tropes, to restore the “wise old woman” to her rightful place at the heart of society.’ Now I love and follow Blackie’s work and am often inspired by it, so this article is not about her, yet this particular quote highlights a popular trend in folklore interpretation and fairytale retellings recently that often makes me uncomfortable. Every other fiction book on the shelf in bookstores right now seems to be a sympathetic retelling of our most evil female villains, aiming to ‘restore her voice.’

What about the voices of her victims?

Because it is not the full story. Not the only narrative. Archetypal and feminist interpretations of myths, fairy tales, and folklore are often insightful and helpful, and I make use of them myself, but I’ve noticed a deeply one-sided narrative recently around these figures - the wicked witch, the evil queen, the wicked stepmother. It’s a narrative that insists these figures are primarily evidence of the demonisation of women and the female divine throughout history; that the witches and stepmothers are in fact wise elders, goddesses or powerful female archetypes, degraded and demonised by the patriarchy. That to empower women, and especially older women, we need to make the wicked witch our ally.

Sometimes, of course, this is true. I wrote last week about the image of the mermaid and how she went from being a figure concerned with women’s reproductive lives to a fallen seductress of men apparently too enchanted to resist her wiles. And by now most of us are familiar with the ways in which more masculine-oriented religions portrayed ancient goddesses.

Folk and fairy tales, however, are not myths, which generally have something universal to say about cultures and their gods. Folk tales, as Blackie herself often points out, have always been more local, more personal, dealing with mundane daily life even in the midst of talking animals and enchanted objects. While there is always inevitable overlap, we miss a great deal about the people telling the tales and their lives if we only look at these stories through the lens of either archetypal psychology or in the hope of finding pre-Christian motifs.

We also miss what they have to say to people today going through those same realities. And when we rush to’reclaim’ the wicked witch and make her a feminist role model, or retell the story of the evil Queen to be a misunderstood matriarch, we erase the fact that for many, these figures reflected a reality they had lived.

Wicked stepmothers exist, both then and now. If we see this motif only as evidence of the demonization of women in general, then we erase the very stories that may once have been a lifeline for abuse victims to see their stories reflected and validated. Sometimes the evil Queen really is jealous of her daughter and does everything she can to destroy her. Or the siblings really do treat the youngest like a slave, the witch really does want to devour her children, and the fruit really is poisoned.

Dr. Maria Tatar, in her book ‘The Fairest of Them All,’ explores a wealth of ‘Snow White’ type tales from around the world, which are not descended from the well-known version by the Grimm brothers, showing that the roots of these stories go back far and wide. In them all, the key motif of the wicked mother/stepmother seeking to destroy the daughter out of rivalry and jealousy remains the same, while the details often change. In the earlier version of the familiar story collected by the Grimms, the stepmother is, in fact, like many other variants, the biological mother. Why this significant change? Perhaps in part because in a time when maternal mortality was high, stepmothers would have been common and not always benign, but perhaps also because society has never been able to cope with the idea that a mother - that nurturing and self-sacrificing idealised figure - could be cruel or indifferent or worse. Sometimes the mother is not a queen but an innkeeper, and does not become a witch/poisoner but employs one. In every variant however, she wants to destroy the heroine.

As a child, these stories sparked an immediate recognition within me, because I saw myself in them. I saw my own mother in them.

(TW The next paragraph contains references to child abuse. I’ve put it in italics so you can skip it if necessary.)

I recognised the evil queen, and identified with Snow White, and knew that I wasn’t alone; that somewhere, someone knew that these things happened, that mothers could be abusive in private while smiling at the world, and that it wasn’t my fault. As I got older, I saw the echoes of ‘Mirror, mirror’ in the toxic, almost deranged and weirdly sexual rivalry that resulted in her degrading my body and looks (eventually inducing an eating disorder) while simultaneously getting some kind of enmeshed kick out of grown men finding underage me attractive, to the point of deliberately leaving me alone with abusive men and then blaming me when they indeed abused me. An undiagnosed autistic child, I often went into non-verbal shutdown, knowing there were no words that could fully articulate the turmoil I was feeling, the depths of trauma, fear and betrayal. Bruises sometimes alerted others to what was going on, but bruises are easy to explain. That undercurrent of hatred and jealousy I felt from her, the knowledge that this woman who was supposed to love me seemed to want nothing more than to erase me, had no language that could fully capture it, except that of story. I knew that evil Queen, the wicked witch with the poisoned apple. I was living that story….and at the same time, that story told me there was hope. People who might help. Ways to get away. Places to go. That story helped me to hold on. It gave me heroines who did not remain victims, who did not simply disappear, but who went on.

What happens to that heroine when we tell her the wicked witch is simply misunderstood? Or is really the wise woman we should trust our care to? Sometimes the witch in the story really is wicked, and the communities who told these stories knew that. Just as stories of selkies and other fairy brides often spoke of the realities of gender violence and domestic abuse, so tales of the wicked stepmother too often encoded an uncomfortable truth; not all families are safe. Not all older women are wise, or maternal, or kind. Would anyone seriously argue that Bluebeard needs to be ‘reclaimed’? Or the ogre that crunched the bones of children?

Fairy and folk tales, especially in their original forms, encoded the wisdoms and norms of often poor communities. Sometimes these were unhelpful; superstitions born out of fear and poverty and distrust of the Other.

Sometimes they contained warnings and helpful advice.

And sometimes they told the bitter truth about what could happen behind closed doors.

So I don’t want more reclaimed bitches and witches and evil stepmothers. I want the stories of what happened to Snow White and Cinderella when they grew up, realised Prince Charming was a bit of an idiot, prioritised their own healing and broke the cycle for their own children and grandchildren. I want to know who Hansel and Gretel were as adults, how Vasalisa got on after Baba Yaga (now there’s a genuine wise woman) helped her burn family to a crisp.

Let’s make space for ALL the stories.

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If you found value in this post, you might enjoy these:

Healing Trauma with the Dark Maiden (An Archetype for the Outcast and Outraged)

Dark Moon Musings (On Selkie Stories and Finding My Way Home)