Animals, Women, & Witchcraft
Oktober(veg)fest: The Witch
My Halloween season is never complete without a good amount of witchiness. As a kid, I’d watch Halloweentown and Twitches on Disney Channel, repeatedly. In my teen years, I ventured into the whimsical world of Harry Potter and the delectable magic of The Vampire Diaries. Now an adult, I’m always looking for more. From songs like “Witchy Woman” to Hallmark cozies like The Good Witch to graphic novels like Hex Wives—I want it all. I want to stew in a cauldron of wickedness.
Robert Eggers’ The Witch, admittedly, is a film that I initially found a bit overrated. Underwhelmed after my first viewing, I thought it’d be one of those classics I just didn’t get, à la Poltergeist, The Exorcist, and…well, I’ll stop there. But after doing more research into the Salem witch trials and historical animal welfarism, I found a new appreciation for it. The story follows a pilgrim family excommunicated from their Puritan village. Setting up a homestead alone in the bitter New England wilderness, they unravel as a witch in the nearby woods picks off the children one by one. Eldest daughter Thomasin is often blamed for the strange occurrences, and the distrust within the family ultimately leads them to death and, in Thomasin’s case, diabolical corruption.
Rigidly attentive to historical details, The Witch offers some insight into how Puritans perceived and dealt with witchcraft and, more often, the terrifying vastness of the “New World.” Like all colonial tales of bewitchery, the witch herself hides in the shadows, and suspicions of her presence arise in the forms of animal peculiarities and pointed fingers. Animals find their place in this “New England folktale” as partners in witchery and parts of witchcraft.
Animals as Partners
Accusations of witchcraft were usually levied against women, rather than men, in the days of yore. It hadn’t always been that way, but women became easier targets as civilization became more “civilized” over the last millennia. Rather than equal partners in indigenous tribes or clans, they became relegated to the home. Walls built up around them to keep dangers out and to keep women sheltered within. With all that time at home, it seemed so easy for women to dally with the devil. Men put women in their place and then used that place as evidence of wickedness.
As housekeepers, women—especially single or elderly women—could find companionship with animals around the home, whether they be dogs in the house, goats in the yard, or birds in the trees. Women and animals, being of lower status than men—not just socially but religiously; animals and women were further from God on the rungs of moral value, and therefore nearer to the devil—shared a kinship.
In The Witch, we see the women and children tending to the animals: milking the goats, feeding them, putting them in their hutch at night. William, the patriarch of the family, tends to the rotting corn and hunts in the woods. His role is to kill animals, while the women care for them. Yet when whispers of witchcraft crop up, communing with beasts casts suspicion on women. Surely, such a close relationship with ungodly creatures could easily corrupt the sensitive spirits of the weaker sex.
In this case, the witch toying with this Puritan family does fraternize with beasts. After the eldest son, Caleb, becomes afflicted by the witch, he cries out that she set a cat, dog, crow, raven, and wolf upon him. Familiars, sent out to do witches’ bidding, are part and parcel of historical accounts of witchcraft, as if becoming too familiar with nonhuman animals is itself an unnatural act.
Unwitting Partners
Some animals remain immune to the witch’s thrall, though they become afflicted in their own way. The family’s dog, Fowler, chases after a peculiar hare in the woods, only later to be found dead and gutted. In the commotion of Fowler’s flight, Burt the horse bucks Thomasin from his back, fleeing into the woods and never seen again. What precisely causes such strange behavior from the animals is never known, and why the witch killed Fowler—other than for her morbid pleasure—is never once questioned. It seems well-trained animals could be of use to her, but perhaps a creature subservient to treacherous Christians is better off dead in her eyes.
By physically removing Thomasin from his back, Burt bucks the speciesist demands made of him, and in doing so, he availed himself to choose another path, much like the witch herself.
Animals as Parts
The presence of the devil and his witch rot the soil on which the family lives. The corn turns black, chicks perish before they can hatch, and a goat’s milk turns to blood. As often as witches partner with animals to foment evil on behalf of Satan, they also chop up their furry friends to boil them in cauldrons.
Shakespeare may have been referring to plants and fungi in the witches’ “eye of newt and toe of frog” potion in Macbeth, but virtually every body part of every animal found some use in British and colonial medicine. From blood to bladders, fat to fingers, Puritans like those of The Witch performed their own sort of sorcery to allay ailments. Though nakedly supping blood straight from a goat, as the witch does in the climax of the movie, may have been a bridge too far for even Puritan sensibilities.
Unlike modern views of animals as innocents, animals in centuries past could be, and were, condemned for infractions against humanity. Animals held the dichotomic position of being both insipid brutes and depraved fiends, leaning more one way or the other depending on the human appraising their unlawful actions. Similarly, Puritans saw even human babies as sinful. Accounts of the Salem trials show that they believed the only true innocent was “the child unborn.” When unbaptized baby Sam of the family in The Witch is snatched and killed, the family despairs that he’s in Hell. We see the old witch rubbing his blood over her body and on a long wooden pole, upon which she flies above the trees. Like human-derived collagen, the not-quite-innocent baby’s blood grants her youth again and gives her the supernatural ability to soar with the birds and bats of the sky.
Part-Animals
When witches aren’t busy in their kitchens cutting kitten tails, they may be transforming themselves into beasts, taking on the visage of a creature while retaining their human mind. In the same vein as The Witch, Brom’s splendid novel Slewfoot follows a young widow who eventually transforms into a part-beast with cloven hooves. Like a satyr, her body blurs the line between woman and animal, but her mind retains its human knowledge, memories, and language. It’s very possible that the hag of The Witch makes similar, though far more diabolical, transformations. The beasts set upon Caleb may have been the witch herself, rather than her familiars, or even the devil taking a shape other than the family’s male goat, Black Philip.
Women as Animals
Whether it’s Christians worshipping God or witches bowing to the devil, nearly all depictions of these deities are male. Puritans live in fear of their angry God, perpetually seeking, and failing, to appease Him. Witches shed the restrictions of Puritan life to pledge loyalty to Lucifer, yet are reduced to dancing naked in the woods while their masculine master watches on. Regardless of a woman’s choice to be “good” or “evil” in the traditional sense, there are no truly good choices. Each side of the patriarchal religion has drawbacks, sacrifices, and rewards; neither gives women true freedom.
But at least there’s a choice. Animals used by both the pure Christians and the impure witches have none. They can be either the sturdy horse carrying the burden of human progress or they can be the irrepressible imp bucking that burden and darting off into the wild unknown.
On my mind: The Lords of Salem
For what it lacks in plot, The Lords of Salem delivers on the necessary New England vibes for the Halloween season. (As a bonus, Rob Zombie’s song “Lords of Salem” is so dang catchy, it gets stuck in my head year-round!) Though this movie doesn’t have anything to do with animals—aside from some goats and a sasquatchian Satan—Zombie is a legit animal advocate. Featured in Moby’s Punk Rock Vegan Movie at a farmed animal sanctuary, Zombie speaks freely about the interconnections between art and veganism. It’s great to be able to support a director who not only makes entertaining movies and music but who shares my values!