Malevolent Nurture

Another issue insufficiently considered in the intersection of witch-hunting and gender is that women were more likely than men to be accusers. Literary historian Deborah Willis seeks to redress this oversight.... Willis is critical of studies that represent witch-hunts as 'all-male' and 'univocally misogynist'; she takes issue with the 'widely held feminist view that assigns the women accused of witchcraft the role of rebellious proto-feminists and the female accusers to that of patriarchal conformists'.... She examines the threat of the witch to order on several social levels: peasent, gentry, and aristocratic.

-- Kenneth P. Minkema * Religious Studies Review *

Very well and clearly written and thoroughly researched.

-- Carole Levin * Medieval and Renaissance Drama in Engla