"Girls are gross and they have cooties and they scare me."
No, that's not a direct quote from the reading, as hard as it may be to tell. This reading was something alright. I'm not quite sure what kind of something it was though. My copy of the book is used and I've found occasional notes left by a previous owner, but this chapter was absolutely full of highlights. I could almost picture the look on their face. One sentence that I can tell made them extra excited was both highlighted and covered in asterisks. "Therefore let us now chiefly consider women, and first, why this kind of perfidy is found more in so fragile a sex than in men." (181).
Another point of interest: on page 185, where Socrates is brought up, the owner underlined a few lines and wrote "Socrates" in big letters and drew an arrow to part of the text, almost as if they were in disbelief about what they were reading. I was quite surprised myself. "And when the philosophy Socrates was asked if one should marry a wife, he answered: If you do not, you are lonely, your family dies out, and a stranger inherits; if you do, you suffer perpetual anxiety, querulous complaints, reproaches concerning the marriage portion, the heavy displeasure of your relations, the garrulousness of a mother-in-law, cuckoldom, and no certain arrival of an heir." (185). This was definitely not something I would expect of someone who spent so much time thinking.
A lot of this reading was, honestly, quite repetitive. There are only so many ways to say, "Women are weak-minded, therefore they fill victim to temptation more than men." and Kramer and Sprenger certainly said it in all those ways more than once. With such headings as, "Why Superstition is chiefly found in Women" they are sure to make their feelings known. "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." (183). "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable." (188). I probably don't need to list any more quotes to get the point across: these two 'gentlemen' were quite set in their ways against women.
Looking back from a modern perspective, where a lot of things have changed, it's not difficult to think poorly of these writers. I don't think you could find many people that would agree with what is written here, at the very least. When this stuff was written, of course, people were a lot different. Stereotypes were likely even more widespread, because not everyone could write, and those that could were looked up to. And with this writing talking about women being weak, vulnerable to demons, unable to control their lust, and innately evil creatures, among other things, I wouldn't be surprised to find the common person starting to believe in these things upon reading them. Certainly, if I were to read this with an empty mind, perhaps as an alien that had just discovered Earth and knew nothing of the people on it, I would read these many pages and form an opinion that women are indeed everything these men say they are.
Of course, I'm not an alien and so I don't think this way at all, but I guess it's understandable (and unfortunate) that people back then might have been led to think this way. When the people who know how to write and utilize their knowledge do it to pass on their own beliefs, well, it's hard to stop others from latching on to those beliefs as well. And when people are as impressionable as they were back then, with magic being so feared and talked about, it helps to have a scapegoat to pin blame on or a way to rationalize what's going on. Of course, that still doesn't make it okay.
If Kramer and Sprenger were alive today what would they say? Well, to be honest I don't know what they would say but I know that they would not last very long in our modern day society. To say that I silently read this chapter and took it all in, acceptingly would be a big lie. I cursed at the Kramer and Sprenger. I had to walk away from the book a few times. I contemplated throwing it across the room but I didn't want to hurt the book for the ill-content inside its pages. That being said, I understand that it was a very different time back then. While I tried to put myself in their shoes and come up with other possible explanations for well everything, I found that I could not. Yes, this chapter was full of every female witch stereotype in the book. I accept the Hammer of Witches for what it was and for why it was written and used. But as Tyler very kindly said, that doesn't make it okay.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading, the quotation of Socrates actually made sense. Last semester I was enrolled in a philosophy course and, naturally, we spent a lot of time reading Socratic dialogues and the like. According to my professor, Socrates' wife was a shrew of a woman. Socrates taught his students in the agora, or central gathering place, of Athens and did so for free. His wife, not surprisingly, would constantly berate him to get a "real job," as he was providing little to his household. Socrates' comments on wives are unsurprising because his own wife was constantly on him about not financially supporting their family, whom Socrates, as evidence shows, cared relatively little for. :( Additionally, in Socrates' time, homosexuality among men was considered to be the highest and most beautiful form of love. Wives were merely tools for continuing the family line. It is safe to say that Socrates was probably not very attracted to his wife(s) and would rather hang out in the Athenian agora with the abundance of handsome young men. With Kramer and Sprenger's apparent revulsion with women I wonder if they were just like super closeted gay for each other. Or just misogynists. Or both?
ReplyDelete