Having and Being Had

by Eula Biss

The witch hunts, Federici argues, weren’t about superstition or religion so much as they were about suppressing the rebellions of women. In feudal Europe, peasant women lived under the authority of a lord, who claimed possession of them. But they had a kind of economic power that women wouldn’t have again for hundreds of years. Peasant women were often partners in holding land, and they could inherit property. The work they did in their homes and gardens was considered real work with real value. They produced cloth and soap and medicine. Later, as cities grew, women worked in hundreds of professions, as smiths, butchers, bakers, ale brewers, and retailers. But then, during the transition to capitalism, they lost the right to make contracts and represent themselves in court. Not carrying a baby to term became a crime punishable by death. And when married women earned money, their wages were paid to their husbands. Their work, unpaid and compulsory, was now to produce more workers. Witches were old women who could no longer produce children, midwives who facilitated birth control, childless women who remained unproductive, loose women who refused to be held as property, and prostitutes who sold themselves. Witches were, notably, poor. Among their recorded crimes were cursing the people who refused them food.