By the late nineteenth century, you see popular culture portrayals like Halloween postcards and commercials the place witches are stunning, attractive girls. Over time, the definition of a witch turns into only a girl with magical powers.
In 1900, L. Frank Baum publishes the e book The Great Wizard of Oz, which has two good witches: Glinda and the Good Witch of the North. He’s the primary to introduce on a significant scale good witches, witches who’re heroines, in a narrative.
L. Frank Baum has this attention-grabbing connection to the ladies’s motion. His mother-in-law is Matilda Joslyn Gage, an vital first-wave feminist and abolitionist. In her e book Girls, Church and State within the early Nineties, she’s the primary individual to articulate the concept that the witch trials had been a manner for the state to strip girls of their rights. A few years later, L. Frank Baum wrote his e book. One can’t assist however surprise if Baum was impressed by Gage’s writing.
That concept of the great witch explodes and transforms in standard tradition because the century goes on. You have got Bewitched within the ’60s and ’70s, the place witches will not be solely stunning, however they’re America’s sweetheart, actually the lady subsequent door.
Witches additionally change into vital figures in spiritual actions within the ’60s and ’70s, Wicca and neo-paganism, and within the girls’s motion. Within the ’90s, witches are coming-of-age figures in plenty of tales, like Harry Potter, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
