Analysis Of Mary Coleridge's The Witch

Modern depictions of witches range from highschool teenagers as in the 2018 Netflix adaptation The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, to even faux sitcom housewives as in the 2021 Marvel superhero show Wandavision. Imagery of witches living some part of their lives as normal women may reflect a more accurate depiction of what witches originally were. Our understanding of witches today has long been warped from their original position in society. Early women who were experts in medicine and healing were slandered by patriarchal institutions in order to give validity towards their educational institutions.  “The evolution of European universities…systematically excluded women as students, thereby creating a legal male monopoly of the practice of medicine.” (Women Healers of The Middle Ages: Selected Aspects of Their History, William L. Minkowski) Women experts in pagan or esoteric traditions and medicines were deemed illegal, and considered a threat to the church's power. Thus “the result was the brutal execution of unknown numbers of mostly peasant women.” (Minkowski) Such documents like the Malleus Maleficarum, a witch hunting manual published in 1486 reflect the effects of the European church's vilification of witches. Almost 300 years later the Salem Witch trials in the 18th century continued to demonstrate this violent fear of witches, and what they represented. ‘Witches’ were something that always existed outside of the standards of patriarchal society.

The symbol of women wise in the nature of the world, educated in ways beyond the imposed reach of the church was invalidated by turning the concept of a wise woman into something horrifying. In an analysis of the Malleus Maleficarum, Peter Brodel writes “They accept as an established fact that the gaze of certain persons – menstruating women for example – has a natural power capable of bringing about physical effects, and that in some angry or disturbed old women this gaze may be sufficient to do real harm to young and impressionable minds and bodies.” (The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft, Peter Brodel) Indeed, the very nature of womanhood itself was transformed into a malignant evil associated with dark powers.

As the hallmarks of what made a woman a witch became more general, so too did the kinds of evil acts they were capable of. The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum wrote that although random unfortunate events can have plausible explanations, if a witch was present then it was most likely caused by their evil workings. “Where there are witches, a category that is inevitably socially defined, there must be witchcraft…This link between moral behavior and ambiguous harm, allows the authors to extend their conception of witchcraft to an almost limitless number of applications.” (The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction Of Witchcraft, Hans Peter Brodel) The word ‘witch’ became an ambiguous descriptor condemning any women who appeared to resist the patriarchal standards European institutions imposed. By the 19th century, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge wrote The Witch, a poem which reappropriates the ambiguity of witches in order to express a freer conception of womanhood compared to what contemporary social standards would have allowed.

Coleridge creates a witch through using imagery and symbolism historically associated with them. The poem in essence reflects the story of a wanderer made weak from a long journey, seeking refuge. The first speaker has “walked a great while over snow” (Line 1) and has “wandered all over this fruitful earth” (Line 5) implying something wayward about them. The wayward woman, traveling to and from strange and distant lands has historically been associated with witchy behavior. The three sisters in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, disputed as weird or wayward, sometimes both were noted on by Samuel Coleridge, “Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, the lawless of human nature, —elemental evenagers with no sex or kin.” (Collection of Coleridge's Essays and Lectures On Shakespeare, 1907) Mary Coleridge adopts this elemental, transient nature of witches, but challenges this through repeatedly establishing the speaker's female identity. This speaker isn’t “tall or strong,” (Line 2) and is just a “little maiden” (Line 12) with “little white feet.” (Line 13) The witch Coleridge creates is not a sexless shadow in command of wind and rain, but a small maiden who suffers from the effects of a long journey and cold weather. Coleridge characterizes a witch solely based on her moral actions, specifically being a woman who wanders the world independently. The reader associates the cold snow and harsh wind with her powers because of the historically ingrained cultural connection between a woman's moral behavior and ambiguous harm.

Samuel Coleridge's poem Christabel is about a woman who invites a stranger into her home, and upon her entry strange things begin to take place giving way to exposing something supernatural about the stranger. One of the supernatural effects of the visitor's entry was dying flames suddenly burning bright again. 

“The brands were flat, the brands were dying, 

Amid their own white ashes lying; 

But when the lady passed, there came 

A tongue of light, a fit of flame” (Christabel, Samuel Coleridge, 1816)

After Christabel finds this stranger in the woods and invites them into her home, she sees the stranger walk past dying embers burning in torches on the wall,  and they suddenly flourish into full flames again. In Mary Coleridge's poem however, the stranger's entry is signaled by a dying flame going out completely, and never spontaneously bursting back to life in the presence of this stranger. There is nothing supernatural about this ‘witch,’ and through taking her power away, Coleridge reverts her back to the woman she really is.