When I hear "Witch", the first image that flits into my mind is neither a warty green-tinted old lady nor a neo-pagan of any stripe (and I could be painted so) but instead that of a thin nosed crone (with clear skin and all her teeth, no matter how many sweets she eats) a round grandmother (with three teeth and a clan of cowed relatives) and a large, operatic young lady who is two minds about everything, literally - and can sing counterpoint with herself.
I absolutely adore the late Sir Terry Pratchett's books, and 10 of his Fantasy/Satire novels have witches as their protagonists. This of course makes them very hard to write about critically, in terms of representations of witches in modern culture, because they are themselves a critique and a conscious overturning of the tropes and stereotypes of witches, as well as characters in their own right with foibles and personalities.
There are three, er, ways of thinking, that Pratchett brings up, in particular, that I think are useful to our discussion on Witches and Lycanthropes.
1. Witches have, in his world "First sight, second thoughts", which means that they see what's actually there (rather than what they expect to see) and can take a step back to critique their own thoughts. Perdita (the third witch mentioned above) ACTUALLY HAS two separate personalities that converse with each other, and battle for control of her actions, and this is what makes her a skilled witch. After reading and discussing Sidky, this was a surprise to think about.
2 There is, in his Witches stories especially, a focus on storytelling, and what he calls "narrative causality", which is when a story unfolds a certain way because that's the way that this particular story unfolds (the prince always wakes the princess, for example), and, specifically, there is a town where an old lady used to live by herself, and then someone's child drowned, and someone remembered old Goody Whemper with all the cats out on the edge of town, and then... it doesn't matter if she actually IS a witch or not, because the town needs a scapegoat.
3 There is a specific scene, where the three witches find a young girl in a red cape, out in the woods, going to her grandmother's house. The witches realize what is happening, and instead of a cottage with a tasty old biddy and her equally tasty granddaughter, the wolf finds the witches. But. because the story needs an anthropomorphic wolf, the story has given a former wolf near-human intelligence. The wolf-were is starving, specifically because of it's in-between nature. Both wolves and humans drive it away because of its difference. In the end, the half-wolf is killed, but the witches have removed the fear from the situation, and it has been replaced with pity.
NNC
I absolutely adore the late Sir Terry Pratchett's books, and 10 of his Fantasy/Satire novels have witches as their protagonists. This of course makes them very hard to write about critically, in terms of representations of witches in modern culture, because they are themselves a critique and a conscious overturning of the tropes and stereotypes of witches, as well as characters in their own right with foibles and personalities.
There are three, er, ways of thinking, that Pratchett brings up, in particular, that I think are useful to our discussion on Witches and Lycanthropes.
1. Witches have, in his world "First sight, second thoughts", which means that they see what's actually there (rather than what they expect to see) and can take a step back to critique their own thoughts. Perdita (the third witch mentioned above) ACTUALLY HAS two separate personalities that converse with each other, and battle for control of her actions, and this is what makes her a skilled witch. After reading and discussing Sidky, this was a surprise to think about.
2 There is, in his Witches stories especially, a focus on storytelling, and what he calls "narrative causality", which is when a story unfolds a certain way because that's the way that this particular story unfolds (the prince always wakes the princess, for example), and, specifically, there is a town where an old lady used to live by herself, and then someone's child drowned, and someone remembered old Goody Whemper with all the cats out on the edge of town, and then... it doesn't matter if she actually IS a witch or not, because the town needs a scapegoat.
3 There is a specific scene, where the three witches find a young girl in a red cape, out in the woods, going to her grandmother's house. The witches realize what is happening, and instead of a cottage with a tasty old biddy and her equally tasty granddaughter, the wolf finds the witches. But. because the story needs an anthropomorphic wolf, the story has given a former wolf near-human intelligence. The wolf-were is starving, specifically because of it's in-between nature. Both wolves and humans drive it away because of its difference. In the end, the half-wolf is killed, but the witches have removed the fear from the situation, and it has been replaced with pity.
NNC
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