HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF VOILENCE AGAINST WOMEN: USING THE EUROPEAN WITCH HUNTS TO REPRESENT THE VIOLENCE AGAINST COMENT IN THE PAST

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Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

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I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Abstract

"Witch craze" (also known as "witch- hunts") in this thesis connotes the witch craze and witch- hunts that raged throughout Europe from the 16th to 18th century and New England in the 17th century, as well as the much later feminist craze for the female subject through research into that period of witch-hunting, often centering upon the misery of the hunted woman victims, brutality of male hunters, and, most important of all, patriarchal injustice to women.

As "witch- hunt" has already been gene realized into a label that could be easily applied to any (self-proclaimed?) oppressed group, especially to women as a group, the present thesis would like to examine the formation of this witch-hunt discourse and re-consider the terms being constructed. This thesis also hopes to present the diversity among the different subjects who had come to share the same label of the

"Witch," and to find different definitions for the witches and witch-related subjects under study by so-called "gender-blind" male researchers. Such a survey of witch-hunt researches as well as historical documents may provide us with a better understanding not only of the witch as one of the most mysterious historical subjects, but also of the various roles women have played and are still playing in witch-hunts and other similar historical events.

Introduction

I began to pursue the theme of the witch- search with concern when taking Dr. David Barton's course, "The Abject Body" in 1998. One of the fascinating items about the witches we were reading at the time disclosed the large diversity amidst the witches- they were much more than vintage, unattractive woman victims who were prosecuted and performed under allegations of heresy or paganism. In detail, the topics encompassed under the sunshade period of "witch" could be males, which medical practitioners, midwives, even lesbians and cross-dressers; and still there were other ones who did not pertains to any of these groups. That made me wonders "who" the witches actually were: for if there was such a conspicuous diversity amidst the "witches," then how the current effect arrives is that the "witches" identical "woman victims". In the next semester I took Dr. Nai- fei Ding's class, "Feminism and New Historicism." The measurements and considerations that I came into communicate with in that course cast a very distinct lightweight on the so-called "grand discourse of annals,” that is, a discourse that appears to be a overriding one is but one of the discourses that are employed ...