Which witches? How are they portrayed?, Witches in His Dark Materials & Harry Potter |
 Mar 15 2008, 08:54 PM
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Madame Pince's House Elf  Posts: 4,719 Joined: 5:46pm January 28, 2005 Location: In HP Book Club 5, awaiting Deathly Hallow's release.  |
WITCHES  Traditionally witches have been displayed as evil, ugly and damned creatures, riding broomsticks who practised magic and were to be burned at the stake. Witch burnings alluded to at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were real events, all the more horrifying as those who were so held guilty were most unlikely to have been able to perform any sort of magic. Their main offence was to fall foul of the society they lived in, most notably those ecclesiastical authorities of the time, who wanted to control what people thought and believed. A huge number of victims who were burned in such a manner were women, though men were included. This identification of witchery and magic with predominantly women could be explained not only by male authorities keeping women subservient, but also in part to societal pressure to control the practice of midwifery. By the last century some of this characterisation had broken down, thanks to plays like Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' or TV programs like Bewitched. The recently completed Harry Potter series depicts witches as the wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, friends and foes of wizards. This is a community apart in which the ability to do magic successfully depends on genetic makeup and its control and effectiveness depends on education and training. Being a witch, a wizard, a muggle or a squib is not necessarily a matter of choice. But in that community how one uses this magical ability and training to do good or evil definitely is a matter of individual choice and personality. The parallel world of Phillip Pullman's Oxford also depicts witches. The most prominent witch in his story is Serafina Pekkala, always a friend to Lyra Belacqua. Witches in the Golden Compass might be good or evil, much as they could be in the Harry Potter series. But they are portrayed in a completely different way. For example, Golden Compass/Northern Lights witches seem to have less problems with appropriate dress. It seems these witches do not have male equivalents, or do they? And how do these witches relate to the General Oblation Board and other ecclesiastical figures of the book? Yes they do ride broomsticks. But unlike the racing brooms of Harry Potter, are they fully developed or merely branches from a particular kind of tree? How does the use of different woods compare to that in the Harry Potter books? What sort of magic do the Witches perform in Golden Compass/Northern Lights? What do they achieve with it? How is it different from the magic performed in the Harry Potter world and how similar? Which group of witches is closer to what you know about Society's traditional view of witches? What do we learn about Golden compass/Northern Lights witches and their daemons which is different from how other characters relate to their own daemons? How is this difference important to the choice of the witches to aid Lyra Belacqua in opposing the intercission experiments conducted at Bolvangar? What do you think of Serafina Pekkala in particular, and her role in the story? This post has been edited by WaggaWaggaWerewolf: Mar 15 2008, 10:43 PM --------------------  Check out Book Number 5 POA edition. |
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