WHEN ALL IS said and done, these Mephistophelian fictions beg the question: How much agency do these witch women actually have? Haven’t they just traded one patriarchal prison for another? After all, the devil is, by all accounts, a dude, and now he is their master and keeper. Must phallocentrism exist even in the inferno? But for me, that oversimplifies the point. I think these tales about devils and witches represent something more, for they are commentaries upon the fallacy of female deficiency. They offer a different kind of fantasy: a vision of a world where women can live unrestrained
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