Wattpad brings you a guest post by Tara West, author of “Sophie’s Secret”:
Before the twentieth century, witches in literature were portrayed as devil-worshipping, ugly old women with warts on their hook noses and sinister cackles. They liked to eat little children, worship the devil and cast horrific spells.
Only in modern day literature, as superstition has been replaced by facts, has the perception of witches changed.
So why did Medieval and Renaissance literature portray witches as satanic hags?
Disease and ignorance.
A widespread witch-hunt took place between around 1450-1750 in Christian Western Europe. No witch or suspected witch was safe from bigoted persecution. With epidemics such as The Plague on the rise, the people who suffered these diseases looked to superstition, rather than science, as the reason for their suffering. They accused witches of being in league with the devil and plotting to harm good Christians. Many accused witches, children included, were tortured and killed in a religious cleansing that eventually spread to The American Colonies.
At times, it was simply a neighbor accusing another of witchcraft with little to no proof. From 1645-1663, thirteen women and two men were executed in New England’s witch-hunt, and over 80 more were accused of witchcraft. The Crucible, a 1952 play, dramatized the events of the Salem Massachusetts Witch Trials, exposing the ignorance and injustice inflicted on the accused witches.
We now know that the spread of The Plague was not due to witchcraft, but to unsanitary living conditions. Likewise, miscarriages and other maladies, once blamed on witchcraft, have since been explained by science.
And so, too, literature has changed. Thanks to JK Rowling and countless other authors, witches are no longer portrayed solely as evil hags, but as heroes and heroines.
Some movies and books still represent witches as evil hags (such as the soon-to-be released movie, Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters.) Still, we’ve come a long way from the time when witches were solely sinister characters, such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth in which three witches, or ‘weird sisters’, each represented darkness, chaos, and conflict.
In book four of my Whispers Series, Spirit of the Witch (2013), Sophie, AJ, and Krysta all learn that they are descended from a long line of witches. My writing partner for this novel, Heather Marie Adkins, is a practising Wiccan and has published novels with witches as the heroines.
In my recent YA Fantasy, Curse of the Ice Dragon, the Goddess, Madhea, is portrayed as an evil witch, but without giving any spoilers, there are good witches in the fantasy saga as well.
And let’s not forget one of my favorite fantasy SAGAs of all time. I own every Harry Potter book and every movie, and I have recently introduced my young daughter to the world of Hogwarts as well. Imagine if we were still living in the days of ignorance and superstition. Imagine a literary world without Harry, Hermoine and Ron defending muggles and witches against evil. What a boring world that would be.
Read “Sophie’s Secret” by Tara West on Wattpad:
After shedding 30 pounds of baby fat, Sophie Sinora has grown into a pretty, but insecure, teen in bloom. To make her life more complicated, Sophie can sometimes read minds.
Sophie’s BFFs, AJ and Krysta, are also ‘gifted’ with paranormal abilities. Keeping their gifts secret proves difficult, as their powers are strengthening, making them feel more and more like freaks.
When Sophie falls for Jacob, she hopes he’ll ask her out to the Freshman Formal. But when she’s forced to cheat and lie for him, she wonders how far she’ll have to go to make him like her. Add to her growing list of problems - her teacher’s suicidal thoughts, a locker bully who wants to kick her butt, the hot school flirt who won’t stop teasing her, her pregnant sister who boots Sophie out of her room, and the growing tension between Sophie and her best friends.
Sophie’s got issues. Hopefully, she can fix them in time to save her teacher’s life and her social life.