Listening to Women: Empathy as a Method for the Study of the Witch-Trial Archives

Abstract: A feminist approach to early modern witchcraft should start from empathy. I argue that scholars must understand the people involved in witch trials, both the accused and the accusers, as individuals with their own motivations and goals. As revealed in gender based studies of witchcraft, the constraints of the social and cultural realities of early modern Europe and the limitations of the archive can obscure these individuals and their desires, but the collapsing of accusers into malevolent tools of the patriarchy and the simplification of the accused as helpless victims or as symbols of feminine power afflicts them once again in the attempt to fit a chosen narrative. Instead of re-silencing these women, and all those involved in witch trials who were not able to write their own side of the story, historians should use our knowledge of the limitations to recenter these individuals and their choices.