迷离诱惑：英语文学中的“女巫”形象,英语文学论文

1 Introduction

Reading witches is，to some extent, reading the history of women. Though anthropologistsand historians have been studying this magic female group for long, as a mysterious literaryimage，the creation of this figure has been hidden from our view and fascinated both childrenand adults for centuries. Belief in witchcraft can find its clue back to early Europe. In Europe,fear of magic was often "projected" onto women, and “witch，，was a label consciously orsubconsciously applied as a method of scapegoating (Russell and Magliocco 9773). The veryearly and traditional view of witches is that they are associated with Satan, antagonistic toChristianity.The widely known witch image in western literature can be categorized into two groups:the one in fairy tales for children，and the other in fictions or plays. In the classic children'sliterature, the witchy lady is always thin，old with wrinkles on her face，looks frightening withevil eyes, wears black cloak, rides on the broom and always curses or poisons the kind people.A black cat is often her best companion; a mirror，a diamond ball and a stick are hertraditional instrument. When it comes to fictions and plays, the image of witch is more closeto our real life. The women who play witchcraft to predict the future or make a change in lifeare regarded as witches. According to the historical documentary, they suffered the massiveslaughter known as "witch-hunt" or the cruel trials，which provide certain primary source forthe literary representation of this female image.There always exist controversies around the witches and witchcraft, the ancient onesconcerning the real existence of witches and the more recent ones regarding the gender issue.This extraordinary woman is recorded and written with magic power and supernaturalconnection. However, with people's exploration and recognition of nature, the progress ofscience, the development of religion, and the change of women's social position, the image ofwitch in English and American literature has evolved as time passes by. As Sharon Russell has remarked，"The witch as a figure holds an interesting positionrelative to other monster figures in popular culture" (65). As an icon in fantasy literature, theimage of witch has evolved in literary works and now has been an important female figure inpopular culture. Several series of witch stories were published and gained a wide readership，including J. K. Rowling's Harry Porter series, Anne Rice's The Mayfair Witches，TerryPratchet's Discworld witches, Debora Geary's A Modern Witch series. Besides the serial witchstories，this female figure is also recurrently written in the fictions about supernaturalcreatures or magic power. In the recent overwhelmingly popular fiction Vampire Diarieswritten by American writer L. J. Smith，a black girl called Bonnie is a very powerfiil witchfrom the Bennett witch family. She is essential to both her human friends and vampireclassmates. The trilogy The Lord of the Rings also mentioned the witch Galadriel，who isblessed with the ability to peer into the minds of others. The witches are also frequentlypresented on screen. Every year, especially when the Halloween is coming, Hollywoodregularly releases the films about witches. The Hollywood's Top Ten (Witches and Warlocks)listed the most favorite witches and warlocks by the audience with the three ladies in TheWitches of Eastwick (1987),ihQ wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)and the four high school students in The Craft (1996) voted as the top three.
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2 Sources of Witch Imagery

2.1 Terminology
Witchcraft is believed to have been existed since prehistoric times in almost every land ofearth. In anthropological terminology, a “witch，，differs from a sorcerer in that they do not usephysical tools or actions to curse; their malevolent magic is perceived as extending from someintangible inner quality, and the person may be unaware that they are a “witch”，or may havebeen convinced of their own evil nature by the suggestion of others. According toEncyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca (Guiley 388), witches are the "practitioners ofwitchcraft”. They are expertise in sorcery and magic. The word "witch" was a coinage of theEnglish language in the late 13th century, coming from the Middle English word "witche"which is derived from the Old English terms "wicca, wicce and wiccian，，，，referring “to worksorcery, bewitch." The term “witch” is nowadays usually linked with female figures while"sorcerer" tends to be seen as a male prerogative. However，in the ancient folklore, a “witch”can be either male or female and during the witch persecutions from the 15th to 17th centuries，the word "witch" was applied to both sexes. The English language is rich in synonyms, andthere are several partly overlapping terms such as “magician，，，"conjurer". Anthropologistsand historians have distinguished the synonyms by identifying whether the supernaturalpower is innate or externally acquired, but giving that this paper is to analyze the generalimage of this female figure in literature, the difference between "enchanter", "sorceress" and"witch” is not emphasized.

2.2 "Goddess of Witchcraft： Classical Images
Myth is one of the most ancient literary sources. Katherine A. Fowkes even puts forwardthat "the roots of fantasy tap ancient myth, legends, and folk tales. In the West, stories ofwonders and marvel can be traced all the way back to Homer's Odyssey, Ovid'sMetamorphoses，Lucius Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and the chivalric romances of the lateMiddle Ages" (15). Many literary figures can find their source in myth and the witch is noexception. According to the description of the goddess and female monsters, there are severalwho are with supernatural powers and among them，three witch goddesses in the myths aremore familiar to readers and widely accepted by scholars as the prototype of the later witches.They are Hecate, Circe and Medea.As the goddess of all forms of magic and witchcraft，Hecate was far more important inantiquity than the mythical sorceress. In the Greek mythology，Hecate was the daughter of theTitans Asteria (sister of Leto) and Persesis and was a powerful goddess who eventuallyevolved to become the patron of magic and witchcraft. Hecate had three aspects: goddess offertility and plenty; goddess of the Moon; and queen of the night, ghosts and shades (Guiley158). Her role as a tripartite goddess in modem days is associated with the concept of "theMaiden, the Mother and the Crone" (Donna 213). Hecate was widely revered since she was aninfluential goddess who possessed infernal power. Wandering the earth at night with a pack ofred-eyed hell hounds and a retinue of dead souls, she was constantly associated withcrossroads，fire, the Moon, knowledge of herbs, incantations, sacrifices and rituals throughouthistory. The classical sources of Hecate are rich. For instance in Theogony, Hesiod dedicated along passage to the praise of Hecate and her varied powers: She was given splendid gifts tohave a share of the earth and the sea.Circe, also an original “witch goddess" (Guiley 225), was written in both Odyssey andMetamorphoses, Composed near the end of the 8th century BC, Odyssey was filled with avariety of female figures that represent male fantasies. Apart from the ideal women who werehelpful to the heroes such as the faithful wife Penelope who kept his suitors at bay and waseventually reunited with him, and the virgin Nausicaa who provided aid after his shipwreck,there were then several femmes fatales whose images were opposite to the ideal types. Thesefemmes fatales made wide use of their power to impede or delay Odysseus' journey home.The alluring Siren tempted the sailors to deaths, and the hybrid Scylla bolted the men sail past.The epic also mentioned a woman who played magic and she is regarded as one of theoriginal image of witch. Her name is Circe, a minor goddess of magic in the Greek mythologyand described in Odyssey as the witch who transformed Odysseus' crew into swine when theylanded on her land. Said to be Hecate's daughter，Circe played a remarkable role in the Greekepic of adventure and sea travel. Described by the epic as fair-haired，she could control theresult and the forces of creation or destruction with braids in her hair. She was married to theking of Sarmaritans, whom she poisoned. She was exiled to Aeaea，which means “wailing，’，and there built herself a palace and learned magic. She cast a spell all over the island so thatanyone who stepped on the land would be turned into an animal. When Odysseus and his mencame, she tricked Odysseus's men into drinking a magic potion，thus turning them all intopigs. Of course Odysseus saved his men (with the help from Hermes by using an herb called“moly” which prevented Circe's enchantment from working) and they escaped. In paintingsand sculptures, she was portrayed as a beautiful woman wearing beautifol flowing clothes anda golden crown, offering the potion to Odysseus. The enchantress tried to charm the captain ofthe ship with her sexuality, though it was to no avail. Despite that Circe's origins were neverexplained, but it can be assumed from her actions that she was the victim of a broken heart. InMetamorphoses, a Latin narrative poem which collected more transformation stories，Ovidalso mentioned Circe's magic. When Glaucus came to her for a love potion, she fell in lovewith him, but he rejected Circe since his heart went to Scylla who suffered the jealousy ofCirce and was transformed into a rock by her.

3 Supernatural Solicitation and Agent of Devil: Inheritance andDevelopment in Renaissance England .......13

3.1 Henry VI，Part IImd Othello: Voice from the Supernatural ..........14

3.2 Macbeth: Seductive Evil Forces ....16

3.3 The Tempest: The Witch Unseen .........19

4 From Sinners to Victims of Religious and Political Persecution:Rewriting Salem Witch Trials  ..... 22

4.1 New England and Salem Witch Trials ........22

5 Gendered Portrayal and Icon of Fantasy: Overturn of the Tradition........ 31

5.1 Urban setting in America and the Witch-as-wife Narrative: Conjure Wife .....31

5.2 Symbol of Lust: The Witches of Eastwick ........33

5 Gendered Portrayal and Icon of Fantasy: Overturn ofthe Tradition

5.1 Urban setting in America and the Witch-as-wife Narrative: ConjureWife
The literary depiction of witches as ordinary-looking women might have its origin fromthe late 17th century when the hunt of witches reached its peak. Though the early Americanwriters have already drawn connection between the witch and housewife, "my wife is awitch" becomes a recurrent narrative in literature from the mid 1940s to the early 1970s.Joseph Klaits sees the difference as that during the witch trials, the figure of witch had “notyet been domesticated，commercialized and trivialized". Instead, “she” lived in theimagination as “a supremely dangerous, uncontrollable menace.” The later portrayal of thewitch in the middle of the 20th century shows a young lady in a struggle to reconcile herextraordinary power with "the demands of conventionality and domesticity" (119).Analyzing the particularity of the narrative of housewife witch in American literature，Murphy points out that，The witches appear as housewives are defined in relation to their husbands and other peoplein life rather than just appear as independent supernatural beings in their own right.Among the texts in which this narrative is established，Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife is veryfamous for the story between a professor and his witch-wife. Fritz Leiber is talented in writingstories in which "the irrational and the supernatural suddenly disrupt the lives of protagonistswho otherwise live a fairly well regulated, and indeed, mundane existence" (Murphy 44). AsLeiber's debut novel，first published in 1943，Conjure Wife rediscovers a modem daywitchcraft storyline in different formats. It ranks among Leiber's most resilient works favoredby several generations of admirers. It has already inspired three films: Weird Woman (1944)，Burn Witch Burn (1961) and Witches Brew (1980)，and also illuminated the creation ofBewitched, an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from1964 to 1972. Leiber's story centered on a New England college professor, Norman Saylor,who discovered that his good fortune was the result of his wife, also a "hard-headed NewEnglander，，（16)，Tansy Saylor,s secret, magical interference, which might remind readers ofthe saying that "behind every great man, there's a great woman，，，and here in the story, thewoman was just a witch who cast spells on her husband's behalf.The story opened when Saylor decided to pry into his Tansy's dressing room. There,among the cosmetics, he found，vials of graveyard dirt, packets of hair and fingernailclippings from their acquaintance, incantations scrawled in the margins of a book, horseshoenails, unusual herbal substances and so on. He was shocked and could not accept that his wifebelieved in the primitive superstition and acted as a secret witch in daily life. What surprisedor frightened Saylor most was not his discovery that Tansy had been involved in the occult foryears, but that she had successfully kept the secret from him and left him the feeling that themost familiar person in life turns out to be the most estranged one. The premise could also beinterpreted as Leiber's suggestion that "beneath the ordered，modem surface of his characters'lives，something darker and more atavistic lurks" (Murphy 44).

5.2 Symbol of Lust: The Witches of Eastwick
It is already discussed in the second chapter that one aspect of the traditional witch imageis the connection with sexuality. As stated in Malleus Maleficarum, "All witchcraft comesfrom carnal lust, which is in women insatiable [they] collect male organs in great numbers，as many as twenty or thirty members together，and put them in a bird's nest” (Kramer andSprenger 56，138). They were believed to copulate with the devil at home, in woods and fields，sucked by their familiars，a form in which Satan appeared to them. Hence "the supposedsexual lust of women provided one of the bases on which women were accused and tried forwitchcraft" (Merchant 134-138). Linking women with sexuality is of great importance to theancient witchcraft since it was held that the reason why women became witches was that onlySatan was able to satisfy their sexual desire. This label of sexual lust is still attached towitches in some literary works of modem times. However, men's desires for sex are alsorevealed in those texts since the witches appearing in their dreams are always young, beautiful,and passionate for sexual intercourse. Besides, as the feminist movement rises，the sexualdepiction of witches is connected with women's liberation experiences and self-awakening.This aspect of witches is vividly illustrated in John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick,Updike characterizes three outstanding witches in this novel allegedly in order to bringabout "female power，a power that patriarchal societies have denied" (qtd. in Timberg). Thethree witches first appear as neighborhood women, but they start playing with their magicpowers after leaving or being abandoned by their husbands and soon involve in the sexualscandals with a same man Darryl Van Home. There have been controversial views on thisnovel. Some critics praise it as celebrating women's liberation while some criticize it asmaliciously anti-feminist. Though Updike accentuated women's sexual adventures in the story，which echoes the traditional emphasis on the aspect of lust of witches, his witchesdifferentiate from the traditional ones. On the one hand, Updike inherits part of"the-witch-as-housewife" narrative, and thus his witches are domesticated and socialized. Onthe other hand，sexual adventures are not an end to his witches, but a means to achievefreedom and independence.
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6 Conclusion

It has been clear that the images of witches are metamorphosed in literary texts ofdifferent times. Her early appearance in myths is the Goddess who plays witchcraft by castingspells or mixing herbs. She is absolutely powerM in myth，ruling part of nature, andmastering others' fate at her will. The legend of witch Goddess helps produce the literarystereotype of witches and witchcraft. However, in the real patriarchal society, she is labeled asthe agent of Satan, doing dirty business secretly. People hold a controversial view on her,frightened of her dark forces but willing to know the future she tells. The appellation ofwitches once brought women constant nightmares in history. They were empowered by thepatriarchal society, but unable to act as powerfully as the witch Goddesses, on the contrary，only to be persecuted by a justified excuse. As the feminist movement rises, some literarywitches seem to appear as liberated, independent and versatile female figures, but they arestill placed in a position inferior to men.Though people's attitude towards witchcraft and the supernatural is more and morerational, the story of witches still has its share in the market and people would like to buysuch stories. No wonder, “She，，has already become the code of entertaining consumption inpopular culture. Carl Jung's construction of witch archetype may help to interpret why thenarrative of witch, to certain extent, satisfies the patriarchal society. Jung considers a witch asthe "anima" of a man, namely the feminine inner personality in the unconscious of the male."Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions，and fantasies，she takes on personified forms, thusdemonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of afeminine being" (qtd. in G, Zhu 135). When the anima appears as a female playing witchcraft，the witch archetype is established. She externalizes the dark forces and abhorrence, andsymbolizes primitive and unconscious, mystery and intuition. Although the anima can bebewitching, deceptive, and frustrating, she leads a man into life in the truest sense一into hisemotional and passionate life，into genuine self-discovery, and ultimately into experience ofthe Self, which is the “sense，，beyond all the apparent "nonsense" of her often capriciousappearing influence (Hart 100). If the witch appears being wicked, she also combines thearchetypal image of a negative mother who "may connote anything secret，hidden, dark; theabyss, the world of the dead，anything that devours, seduces, and poisons，that is terrifyingand inescapable like fate" (qtd. in G Zhu 136).In light of the Jungian theory, Shakespearean witches, especially the three witches inMacbeth fit in the witch archetype that symbolizes dark forces and mystery. They wearwicked look, practice black magic to predict future, and induce Macbeth to disclose his desireand ruthlessness. Updike's three witches seem to get rid of the constraint of marriage, yearnfor mysterious changes in life and finally involve in sexual adventures with the maleprotagonist Darryl, however，they also bring out the dark and evil nature of Danyl who isactually a homosexual and eventually leave with a male partner. The White Witch in Narniaalso represents the negative aspect of anima. She treats Edmund with the enchanted TurkishDelight to entice him to betray his sisters and brother. On the contrary to an evil witch, a goodand helpful witch bears the archetypal image of a positive mother such as the White Queen inAlice 's Adventures in Wonder Land, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of OZ. Theyplay a positive role in the story and manifest the "maternal solicitude and sympathy; themagic authority of the female; the wisdom and spiritual exaltation that transcend reason; anyhelpful instinct or impulse; all that benign, all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growthand fertility" (qtd. in G Zhu 137). The narrative of the Conjure Wife may better stand for thepositive aspect of witch archetype. Tansy plays witchcraft for the sake of her husband Saylor,which might be the exterior representation of Saylor's inner wishes for being protected orredeemed. The wisdom and protective instinct are more obviously displayed by the elderlywitches when they help Harry Potter defeat Voldemort. With Harry's mother dead before thestory begins, they shoulder the caring and educating responsibility to help Potter grow up. Theconcept of "anima of a man" conceived by Jung provides the archetypal interpretations toread the literary imagery of witches and may partly explain the constant popularity of thisfemale figure among readers.The limitation of this thesis lies in the complexity and large number of witch figures inliterature. Restricted by the energy and the space of the paper, I only research on some of themost representative texts and based on them, draw a relatively clear picture of the witchimage in English literature. Besides, this paper does not discuss in detail about the witches inearly fairy tales, instead, only refers to them when necessary. It is because fairy tales aresupposed to help children distinguish the good from the evil, and thus the witches usuallyappear as the wicked old woman. The progress of science, the recognition of religion，the curiosity of nature，and theunderstanding of women，all contribute to the diversity of literary witch imagery. It is hard tosay whether the witch image will return to her original appearance or head for more creativeand unconventional depiction, however, it could be predicted that as women advance insociety, witches will be endowed with new images，closer and closer to a full woman.
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参考文献（略）