Witches

Witches have been present in stories from many different cultures since the first stories were told. The archetypal witch character is an old, ugly woman who magic powers for evil. In recent media we’ve seen a shift from this archetype, but this has been the standard for ages, and is still present. As children we were all scared of a wicked witch with a large pointed nose finding us in the woods and casting spells on us, and rightfully so as many classic stories about witches see them being cruel towards children.

The deviation from this archetype comes around with the idea of there being good witches and bad witches. This idea was first popularized I The Wizard of Oz, when the world is introduced to Glinda the Good Witch. She is very pretty and dresses in a bright pink gown, and the Wicked Witch is deformed and dresses in all black. It’s interesting to note that for an archetype based purely on women, the perception of whether they are evil or not directly relates to how attractive they are.

The classic archetype is very much alive in Black Maria by Diana Wynne Jones. The character Aunt Maria is nasty to her niece and nephew. She has no sympathy to the fact that they are family members, and she even turns her nephew into a wolf. Aunt Maria is old and ugly, like the classic witches all are, making her easily identifiable as a witch and the antagonist of the story. It seems like literature never has a place for unattractive elderly women to be a kind protagonist in a story, but that’s just archetypes at work.