ABSTRACT

The early nineteenth century’s portrayals of witches are under the spell of European Romanticism with the spectacular revival of spirituality, medieval inspiration and imagery of the powerful, unencumbered nature. Bodily and mental spontaneity of the witch-woman, characteristic especially of the nineteenth-century women’s literature, unsettles Victorian readers by pointing to the repressed desire to reach beyond rational behaviour. The nineteenth-century witch figures also embrace the exotic, the unfamiliar, and the distant, occurring mostly as marginal, underdeveloped characters harnessing readers’ imagination. Throughout the nineteenth century, the witch-like characters are increasingly delineated as women dissatisfied with their cultural roles and obligations, who, often through diaries, manifest various desires to abandon their unhappy lives and make their own independent decisions. The late twentieth century writers’ interest in the history of sexuality, especially the history of madness, violence and hysteria, attest to these new cultural horizons.