Role Reversal

It would seem logically that in a highly patriarchal society that at some point women would feel disgruntled about having to always remain submissive to men and their whims.  And what was a readily available remedy for women to calm their out-of-control husbands?  Witchcraft, of course.  Ruth Behar, in her article about witchcraft details the main reasons for women’s use of witchcraft and society’s reception of these supernatural practices.

Because these societies were based in patriarchy, all members of society, women included, viewed any power that a woman might have as illegitimate and unnatural.  Society accepted and expected spousal abuse of a woman, so if a husband suddenly acquired the demeanor of a lamb towards his wife, the wife became suspect for foul play.  Behar solidly establishes that Spain and Spanish America were male-dominated societies.

The Spanish viewed witchcraft very peculiarly which was as ignorance rather than heresy.  Spain had its share of heretics during its expansion; the converts from Judaism and Islam were the targets of the Inquisition.  The Spanish believed that witchcraft could be dealt with through Christian intervention.  The type of witchcraft found in Spain was a very specific kind — one that revolved around love magic and sexual bewitchment.  Women used these remedies to manipulate their lovers in a number of ways:  to cause impotency for a cheating husband, subdue a violent husband, or to bring about illness.  The main method of bewitching men was through ingestion.  The “magical” herbs were oftentimes also mixed with the woman’s bodily fluids, and when her husband would ingest this food, it was almost as if she were penetrating him.

The same ideals surrounding witchcraft in Spain traveled to Latin America.  Women who performed witchcraft in Latin America formed networks with each other within their neighborhoods.  Some women supplied the others with magical herbs and plants.

I believe that since witchcraft was not viewed as heretical in this area of the world that the only reason it became an issue was because of its threat to the dominance of men.  A woman in power was viewed as deviant, and even more deviant was a man in submission.  The only reason that the Church involved itself was because witchcraft was seen as an abomination on the status of a normal marriage, and at that point in time the Church had taken it upon itself to handle the rites of marriage.  I personally believe that these supernatural methods could not have worked whatsoever, so the men that happened to become “bewitched” probably just exposed their wives in order to get them in trouble.  Then again, after listening to some of the historical excerpts in class, people were probably ignorant enough at the time to believe that they were actually being bewitched.