Part Two: Old Agnes' Tale

[Werner]

I thought I'd go ahead and set this thread up, for anyone who's that far into the book and ready to comment on this part. The earlier threads are still open, of course!

[[deleted user]]

GREAT! and thanks so much for doing this. I was just thinking about opening a new thread. I need to read a little again as my mind is caught up with Wuthering Heights at the moment so I need to refocus on The Town House. I picked up The Whiskey Rebellion today but hubby is going to read it which is a good thing as my friend who always gives me tips tells me I won't be able to put it down once I start on it. Every time she advises me she is right.
I think Magda is my very favorite person in this book so I want to hear what everyone thinks. A couple of things I like about her are her red skirt and her tambourine. But why did they think she was a witch?

[Werner]

A farmer she had a run-in with lost two fingers the same day in a field accident, so the villagers assumed that she'd cursed him. Of course, they only made that assumption because her appearance and behavior was out of the ordinary, and people tend to fear anything or anybody that's different and strange.

[[deleted user]]

I read an article in last months Discover magazine that people have that fear due to new germs. They may not actually be conscious of it but long ago when small tribes encountered other small tribes one might often die out due to no immunity to a new disease.

I used to wonder why people behaved that way and it was explained scientifically. If I could find the article I would try to type part of it up.

I don't remember the farmer losing the fingers so need to read that again. Was that the farmer who came onto her? (seaching for my book) OH, she was stealing eggs I believe.

[[deleted user]]

It seems that Magda was sorry that Martin saved her from drowning. She saw the hawthorn tree as being heaven. "I think to myself: Is Heaven, after all. Then here I am, being slapped in the face, very wet and cold. Sir," she turned to Martin, "I do not wish you to think me ungrateful, but I was.......Oh well, it is over now."
When she said that Martin looked at her with sudden interest, such a look as I'd never seen him turn on anyone, not even his Kate."

I am thinking from this that Martin may have often wished himself dead? Is this how you interpret it?

[Barbara]

Now that is very interesting Alice, I never actually thought of that- that Martin may have wished himself dead and that Magada's comment may have been the thing that attracted to him first. Agnes says the the look he gave was as if you'd just heard your own language in a foreign country. Hmm, I wonder .

Later it was her dancing and both Tom and Agnes agreed that it was her being an outcast and to be pitied that also attracted him. Agnes says that Magada was the only thing that made him come really alive again.
But she really scared horrible Tom didn't she , he totally believed she was a witch capable of causing a man's fingers to get cut off because he'd laid hands on her. Her own explanation was much more mundane of course. Agnes too knew the vulnerability of unprotected women and how easily they could be traduced .
For Magda, being a gypsy, alone, looking different and possibly having some psychic powers was quite enough to get her branded as a witch and the fingers incident would have sealed her fate as far as the villagers ( who appear to have been on the same intellectual plane as Pert Tom) were concerned
This link
http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchh...
is quite interesting and comments, among other things, that independant women or women outside the bounds of the traditional family were particular targets. Women like Magda for eg ,or old women with no offspring to protect them.
Old Kate, the old woman who shared Eleanor of Aquitaine's worst prison sentence says something to the effect that being good- looking as a young women is fine, but as an old one, it's best to be really ugly so as to be able to frighten credulous would-be thieves , attackers etc

[[deleted user]]

Thanks Barbara. I thought it was part of the attraction. I sure like it that she scares Pert Tom that way. Delights me! Whatever it takes to keep Pert Tom in line.

Back then a woman didn't have to do much at all to get killed as a witch. I heard that in some villages in Germany every single woman was killed. I personally believe it was just wide spread hatred of women! I believe there are plenty of men alive today who hate women too. I also believe that some women get very fat as a way to avoid dangerous men. I saw some show about this too.

There is something about the book I am dying to ask but waiting til we get to that part. Its something else I noticed and wondering if anyone else thinks the same as me.

[[deleted user]]

Very interesting link. When I was in NM some witches told me they had been killed during the "burning times" by the Catholic church but this appears to be more Protestant persecution:

Gibbons' allusion to the Reformation reminds us that the clash between institutional Catholicism and emergent Protestantism contributed to the collapse of a stable world-view, which eventually led to panic and hyper-suspiciousness on the part of Catholic and Protestant authorities alike. Writes Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "This helps us understand why only the most rapidly developing countries, where the Catholic church was weakest, experienced a virulent witch craze (i.e., Germany, France, Switzerland). Where the Catholic church was strong (Spain, Italy, Portugal) hardly any witch craze occurred ... the Reformation was definitely the first time that the church had to cope with a large-scale threat to its very existence and legitimacy." But Ben-Yehuda adds that "Protestants persecuted witches with almost the same zeal as the Catholics ... Protestants and Catholics alike felt threatened." It is notable that the witch-hunts lost most of their momentum with the end of the Thirty Years War (Peace of Westphalia, 1648), which "gave official recognition and legitimacy to religious pluralism." (Ben-Yehuda, "The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective," American Journal of Sociology, 86: 1 [July 1980:], pp. 15, 23.)

[Werner]

From what I've read, while belief in witchcraft came down from classic antiquity and existed all through the Middle Ages, the real heyday of witch hysteria ran from roughly 1500-1700, with a period of rising frenzy from 1450-1500, and a tapering off period until 1750. (So Magda lived before the main "burning times," in the earlier 1400s.) It began well before 1517 (the Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious handbook for witch hunters, was written in the early 1480s), so with all due respect to Ben-Yehuda, it wasn't all about the Reformation --though the religious ferment of those centuries was certainly part of the dynamic behind it. The late 1400s were a time of social and economic upheaval and apocalyptic fear (Constantinople had fallen to the Turks, and Europe was not yet recovered from the effects of the Black Death); in this "autumn of the Middle Ages," many people felt horribly threatened and adrift in a world that seemed to be falling apart --and in many people's estimation, the ensuing centuries didn't get any better in that respect! While the craze was most virulent in Germany, France and Switzerland, it was also present in England, Scotland, Italy, and even in America; and 1648 wasn't really a significant turning point --the career of Matthew Hopkins, the British "witchfinder general," and the Salem witch hysteria, for instance, happened later. What made it lose momentum was the rise of widespread doubt in the educated classes about whether magic was real, more so than any acceptance of religious pluralism.

Lofts doesn't actually reflect the witch hysteria very much in the House trilogy. But she definitely knew about it, and it certainly forms part of the background of those times.

[Barbara]

Werner, yes, I take your point about Ben-Yehuda's overemphasis on the Reformation as causal

[[deleted user]]

Thanks for this clarification as I get all these times mixed up. It seemed she lived earlier too but I was not sure.