ABSTRACT
The wicked witch is a withered old woman with bony hands, humpy back, and sharp-tipped teeth, who preys on the blood and flesh of boys and girls. Witches and giants are not only products of rampant imaginations, the child’s eye view of parents, or its parents’ scary constructions, but they actually touch upon archaic and not so archaic memories of childhood and child care. The witch represents the cruelly rejecting, depriving, devouring, treacherous mother, more concerned with her own looks, feelings, and needs than her child’s. While children certainly crave the breast and begrudge womb and phallic powers, parents are also assailed by terrible tensions for which they often blame their offspring. These concern their own inadequacies in the face of life renewed, but especially, in an age of narcissism, the special attentions which children demand, but which mothers and fathers prefer to keep for themselves.
