Falling for the Devil: Eve and the Witch in Modern Feminist Activism and Anti-Witchcraft Ideology  Seminar

Abstract

Eve and the Witch are figures who have both been persecuted, punished, and disempowered for falling for the devil. Yet, they are also simultaneously women who have entertained the possibility of accessing a worldview different than the patriarchal order. This paper seeks to examine and compare the close associations that can be found between Eve and the Satanic Witch in modern and contemporary politics, and its connection to anti-witchcraft ideology as exemplified in the Malleus Maleficarum. It will conclude that Eve functions, according to the Malleus Maleficarum, as something of a symbolic blueprint and ancestress to the Satanic Witch through the ages, and that this close relationship between the two female figures, which focuses on women as seekers of transgressive knowledge and figures of rebellion, is echoed and appropriated in the intellectual and material culture of the Women’s Movement today.

Speaker Information

Holly Morse is Lecturer in Bible, Gender and Culture at the University of Manchester, and author of Encountering Eve's Afterlives: A New Reception Critical Approach to Genesis 2-4. In this book Holly explores how and why the image of Eve as a dangerous temptress gained considerably more cultural currency than the equally viable pictures of her as a subversive wise woman or mourning mother. Holly is currently researching cultural feminisations of transgressive knowledge and magic in the West from antiquity to today. Holly is also PI on AHRC Networking project, Abusing God: Reading the Bible in the #MeToo Age.

 

This seminar will be chaired by Helen Spurling.