Notions of Witchcraft and Magic in the US Suffrage Movement

Witchcraft and the suffrage movement operated to define a woman’s worth, responsibilities, and character. Though their origins are separated by a few centuries—witchcraft accusations gained prominence during Europe’s early modern period (1450-1800) and the suffrage movement began in the late nineteenth century—their attempts to shape women’s roles mark a significant moment in the history of feminist thought and action. This project examines a potential connection between these movements: were there vestiges of the witch craze in the art of first wave feminism? Do similar interpretations and representations pervade twentieth century womanhood? Here I examine art and spirituality of the 20th century suffrage movement for evidence that it might have been influenced by the eccentric ideas of the witch craze.

The witch hunts were instrumental in identifying witches across continental Europe beginning in the fourteenth century. Though happening with the greatest fervor in Germany and France, persecution of suspected evil magical women spread quickly to England and the New World, where the violent activity was adopted enthusiastically. Because they embodied all things evil and unnatural under the Christian authority of this period, the fight against witches was a moral war: exterminating them and their corruption preserved the hard-fought sanctity of the town and protected its inhabitants from harm. Thus, in early modern attitudes towards witches were overwhelmingly negative: witches and magic appeared in art as disgusting hags or inappropriately seductive harlots.

Using the art and texts of the period as a guide to determine pervasive attitudes on women, witches and misogyny, my project aims to determine a) if there is a continued negative representation of women in anti-feminist work and b) if there is a use of occult spirituality by feminists to reflect their changing social role. I ask whether anti-suffragists employed the long-term continuities in misogynistic representations of women to inform their cartoons, and if suffragettes made an effort to refute them through their religious beliefs. Ultimately, a study of the two periods (the early modern period and the twentieth century) highlights certain enduring similarities in misogynistic depictions of women. These are the crone, unfit mother, sexual deviant, and hysteric.

Historiographically, this project looks to syncretize two unique historical narratives: the scholarship surrounding Early Modern witchcraft representations with that of women in the nineteenth century American suffrage movement. Though both robust in their individual fields, I have not been able to locate a source which discusses the two imageries in tandem. Thus, my historiographical intervention is clear: I look to demonstrate the pervasiveness of witchcraft iconography in first-wave anti-suffragist art, illustrating how witchcraft’s cultural capital was used to promote their negative message—simultaneously, I look to re-contextualize witchcraft by drawing connections to unorthodox spiritualism practiced by American suffragettes.

Though the witch hunts occurred across continental Europe, the craze in Germany is the historical standard—embodying a fervor and intensity that allowed mass witch burials and isolated village hangings, Germany is famous for its heightened understandings of early modern witchcraft. Arising out of a Catholic Christian need to persecute sinners and those potentially associated with the Devil to regain religious stability within the Protestant Reformation, witch hunts targeted "deviant women." Accused by a peer, these supposed witches were mainly older, post-menopausal women who were husbandless—German trials also specifically perpetuated the frightening “image of the cannibalistic, death-dealing witch who attends sabbaths and brews up storms” (Roper 2004 18). In “the hundred years from 1550 to 1650…Catholic prince-bishoprics were the most fearsome witch-hunters,” their efforts responsible for much of Germany’s sixteen thousand trails and seven thousand deaths (Roper 2004 17-18).

Though linked with Germany for its aggressive persecution of supposed witches by the Christian societal authority, the American witch hunt experience heavily differed in intensity and form. Spatially transferred to the new world through European colonial endeavors, American witch hunts are epitomized by the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693—marking “by far the largest and most lethal witchcraft episode in American history,” the Salem witch trials were a “perfect storm” of Puritanism Christion paranoia, religious tension, and fear of feminine expression (Baker 2015 6). Involving the execution of twenty women and two hundred accused, Massachusetts witchcraft tried a religious crime in secular courts—after a failed attempt by Massachusetts Bay Governor Sir William Phips to coverup the witch trials and the subsequent attempts by families of the deceased for their relatives to be exonerated for their crimes, Salem has become a touchstone for American occultism and witch fervor.

The American Women's Suffrage Movement spanned from the mid seventeenth century to 1920, concluding with the passing of the nineteenth amendment in August. Typically divided “into three parts representing different stages of advancement, organization, and strategy” by historians, the “first phase was marked by an initial event that lifted women’s claims for equality into the public consciousness: the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.” (Hundhammer 2012 23). Not initially a focus of the early movement, suffrage eventually became the central goal with the advent of independent suffrage press during the second phase (1868 to 1890) (Hundhammer 2012 24). The third phase (1890 to 1920) represented a splintering of feminist leadership, with “a strong number of alternative women’s groups” pursuing their own strategies and tactics to persuade public opinion (Hundhammer 2012 28-29). Transforming notions of their gendered prowess, abilities, and representation, these suffragettes elevated their once fringe cause to national attention and importance.

Initially established in the during the European witch craze of the Early Modern Period, an ingrained language of misogyny colored the anti-suffragist visual depiction of women during the American 1900s-1920s—the enduring legacy of witch hunt iconography informs the themes, stereotypes, and representations of suffragettes in the American fight to vote. 

Rendered hypersexual by their constant nakedness in prints, witches of the early modern period demonstrate concerns about a town’s demographic future amid fertility crisis. According to Roper, “the terrors, anxieties and dependence that childbed brought lay at the heart of the witch craze” (Roper 2004 127). Aiming to control fertility through the restriction of marriage and ostracizing post-menopausal women, governmental and religious policy also limited the ability of female sexuality sans-man. With “scenes of witchcraft respond[ing] to male fascinations with female sensuality, and in particular, a sensuality free of male authority,” such images consistently painted women as acting in unrestrained lust (Zika 2007 81-82).

Elevating youth and fertility above all else when defining a woman’s worth, a witch was ugly old hag--she was unfit to be an appropriate mother and unable to benefit a society who relied on frequent births to counteract dearth and community death. Unsurprisingly then were post-menopausal women “disproportionally represented amongst the victims of the witch craze” (Roper 2004 160). As people “who might be thought likely to envy young mothers in the prime of life, and so to wish to harm fecundity,” their imagined goals were at direct odds to the village’s longevity, and were therefore target to abuse and fear (Roper 2004 161). Thus, images of witches became overwhelmed by the motif of elderliness. To Roper, “the witch varies little among sixteenth-century artists, her wild hair, muscly arms, prominent nose and sagging breasts making her instantly recognizable whoever the artist” (Roper 2004 164).

Referring to a gathering of witches, demons, and the devil that epitomized a witch’s immoral seeking of pleasure, the depiction of a witches’ sabbath illustrated their rejection of accepted norms and an inversion of standards. Called by the devil to escape the confines of a stifling village life and embrace him in “a long night of demonic revelry…beginning with dance,” the witch renounced her previous life to accept evil (Roper 2004 108). A witches’ sabbath was the antithesis of Christian church service and communion, having “all the character of the church ale, the local festivals of eating, drinking and dancing organized by peasants,” but defined around a backwards relationship with Satan (Roper 2004 109).

With a majority of witchcraft accusations occurring against post-menopausal women unable to give birth, the role of women as mother was of a heightened social and cultural importance. Hence, when implicated for witchcraft, prints commonly depicted such women with demonic companion, something that could be grown and nourished by their body and efforts like a child. According to Purkiss’ analysis of trial testimonies, “as with all fantasies about the witch and her body, violent fear or desire is adjected into the witch, who signifies both men’s and women’s idea of the bad lactating mother” (Purkiss 1996 134)—“the witch gives blood instead of milk” from her teat to her familiars, all her body an impure poison (Purkiss1996 134). Therefore a representation of inverted mothering, the inclusion of a small animal alongside witches in drawings serves to remind the viewer of a witches’ familial depravity.

Serving as a direct comparison to witch themes, suffragettes were similarly described as ineffective mothers and disobedient wives. Popular press “[depicted] the suffragist or 'suffragette' as unattractive, selfish, and rowdy. She ignored her husband (whom she must have had difficulty obtaining), neglected her children, and disrupted the affairs of her community” (Sheppard 1994 179). Against social convention, suffragettes forced men to take on their role as mothers to pursue other perverse interests instead—while the man in the cartoon was glorified for his commitment to the household, suffragettes were demonized for subverting motherhood.

Likely the most pervasive of anti-suffragists stereotypes for feminists is the (witch) hag. Portrayed as “the stout, dour-faced, masculinized agitator,” they “represented the woman's rights advocate as a virilized, unattractive, old maid dressed in bloomers” (Sheppard 1994 181-182). “Granite faced,” these suffragettes were labelled with the same misogynistic brush that cast witches as crones: the old ugly woman was a threat to societal convention and moral decency (Sheppard 1994 181). The undesirable outsider, suffragette hags were hysterical and mean, the right to vote “turn[ing] women into men” and making them physically garish and haggard (Sheppard 1994 156).  

In an attempt to undermine the severity of the suffragette cause, antis likened them to various animals (cats, camels, turtles, monkeys, etc)—highly associated with witches through familiars, animal portrayals retain a sense of panic and disgust. While not actively puking nor reading demonic texts, the symbolism of animals looks to trivialize suffragette action and make outsiders fear the movement. Animal portrayal is commonly paired with another of the witch themes (particularly deviant motherhood or demonization of the group) to further emphasize suffragette’s negative characteristics.

Harkening back to the witchcraft ideal of inappropriate sexuality, the suffragette seductress is a woman who uses her wiles to achieve her goals—in many cases, her sexuality is the main method she uses to garner support for the suffragette cause: she has sex with and kisses men to get her way. This woman was immoral and fearsome, with “men regard[ing] the temptress as possessing ‘alluring yet frightening sexuality,’" (Sheppard 1994 180). Like witches’ improper sex, the suffragette is reduced to taboo practices to ensnare men—she is neither cunning nor intelligent and has a corrupt depravity tainting her push for the vote.

Anti-suffragettes looked to diabolize groups of suffragettes meeting together by directly comparing them with a witch’s sabbat. As the sabbat represented a time for women to communicate with the devil, allusions to the group gained a distinctly demonic lens when drawn in suffrage cartoons. Just as in the early modern period, women together was a troubling sight, their depravity and immorality turning the opinions of the masses and ruining Christian social order and government.

Examining the use of female spirituality and its role in the American Women’s suffrage movement of the 1880s to 1920s, non-standard imaginations of Christian faith supported the suffragette cause. With psychosis, the supernatural, and other occult interpretations of religion emerging as a viable belief system, ideas of quasi-witchcraft color suffragette practice.     

Expanding the definition of witchcraft and magic to include unconventional interpretations of Christianity and religion, suffragettes used novel ideas of spirituality to explore their feminine identities—at its base witchcraft is a perversion of Christian thought, thus all unorthodox versions of Christianity can be envisioned as a form of witchcraft. Suffragettes contended with unusual religion to recontextualize their places in society: episcopalism, new interpretations of religious texts, free-love, and spiritualism served as mechanisms to guide twentieth century feminist thought. Victoria Woodhull is likely the most interesting suffragette case study of this phenomenon, with her identification as a medium and spiritualist.  

In the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, religious Protestant women of the Episcopal Church instigated changes that “explored gender as a crucial organizing principle of religious life and thought in Protestantism” (Prelinger 1992 5). While leadership in “religion…is a game for men [with] men [making] the rules,” women in the episcopal church embraced a laity working position that focused on “three major goals: prayer study, and mission (action)” (Prelinger 1992 34-35). “Prayer… enhanced feelings of loyalty and obedience to the church;” “study met a woman’s intellectual needs;” mission gave religious women a purpose to fulfil (Prelinger 1992 35). Through their extraordinary work on missions episcopal women were pushed out of the domestic sphere into public life, breaking gender-specific cultural boundaries to take on larger church occupations—the nineteenth century marked a rebirth in the order of deaconess and the reemergence of church sisterhoods. Such groups of empowered women under a religious setting therefore helped women explore purpose outside the home and renegotiated interpretations of womanhood and women’s rights (including suffrage).

Suffragettes contended further with Christian thought through refutations of classic Christian literature—Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Women’s Bible is the most famous of such works. Analyzing prominent biblical stories to challenge traditional Christian positions on men’s domination and women’s subservience, Stanton explores a femininity unhindered by external influences. Though a controversial work exemplifying radical liberating theology, The Women’s Bible provides an atypical interpretation of religion to elevate female power. Even making allusions to witchcraft and witch trials explicitly (“women in all cases being the chief sufferers as in the modern trials for witchcraft,” etc), The Women’s Bible marks a clear instance of suffragettes contending with religious authority to understand their place in society.

Suffragettes also explored more unorthodox forms of religious expression to further examine their societal role. Rising to prominence in the late nineteenth century, Spiritualism was a religious movement based upon communication with the spirits of the dead—practitioners had a relationship with these spirits and could talk with them at will. Surprisingly “spiritualism was dominated by women, and its manifestations most frequently occurred in places within their control”--“women [were] ideal vehicles to channel messages” due to their associations with death and life through the motherhood and homemaking (Goldsmith 1998 35). Able to exert power over men who wished to use their services to lead seances, these women used spiritualism and magic to elevate their social importance. Several prominent suffragettes were spiritualists, Victoria Woodhull’s magical powers being the most famous. Ultimately these women used spiritualism to negotiate new understandings of womanhood and feminine expression, gaining power through mystical means. “Spiritualism and women’s rights drew from the same well: both were responses to the control, subjugation and repression” of women—not all women’s rights advocated became spiritualists, but Spiritualism embraced the suffrage cause (Goldsmith 1998 49).

Examining male and female relationships in novel ways, some suffragettes (particularly Woodhull) were advocates for controversial free-love ideals—free-love advocated for separation of government from love and sexuality, encouraging partners to pursue relationships with whomever they loved. Connecting the subjugation of women in government to the subservience of women in marriages, free-love looked to eliminate “standards of moral purity” from relationships, and in practice permitted rampant female sexuality amongst different partners. Based partially in religious and spiritual expectations of love and relationships, free-love afforded women greater freedoms than just within the domestic sphere—women could gain control over their sexuality through free-love and challenge feminine expectations of womanhood.

Ultimately, suffragette Victoria Woodhull can be visualized as an extreme embodiment of early suffragette magic, embracing an identity as a spiritualist medium and subsequently advocating for policies that elevated women's role in twentieth century society (particularly with free-love in her Steinway Speech). Born to fortune teller Roxy (Roxanna) Hummel Claflin, Woodhull was surrounded by an occult magic that seemingly passed to her and her siblings. “From childhood Victoria [and siblings] said they experienced clairvoyant visions and healing powers”—Woodhull also “apparently possessed skills demonstrated by mesmerized subjects, such as mind reading, finding lost objects, and describing events taking place where she had never been or before they occurred” (Goldsmith 1998 35). Believing that the spirits guided and sustained her, Woodhull maintained a close relationship with her mystical powers as she turned more heavily into suffrage and feminism—these powers bolstered her confidence and drive, providing her a spiritualist community and livelihood to support the push for women’s vote.

Providing a unique opportunity to work directly with the primary sources themselves, this project elevates the materiality of the archival collections and allowed me to examine source physicality: the age, texture, and feel of postcards, political cartoons and material objects. My project is extremely visually based—thus it was often easy to get lost analyzing the iconography of source collections and forget that they were actual, three-dimensional objects with stories of their own. Being able to tangibly examine them was a valuable experience that forced me to ask questions of ‘how was this made and distributed?’ in addition to ‘why use this image?’ Though my project mostly examined postcards, I made sure to also examine one material good: the Janus style handbell in the hag theme. Completely different from the other sources, it reminded me that each of these objects served an external purpose for twentieth century suffragettes and antis—the images I examined are often just decoration enhancing a larger use.

Related to this materiality is the element of ‘historical empathy’ inherent in archival sources. Physically interacting with the sources allowed me to connect personally with those who once used and purchased the goods—I could step into their shoes and imagine what it was possibly like to live and work during the time periods of my project (particularly the American suffrage movement). Especially with the postcards, on the back of each was a personal story: a son asking his mom how she was doing, a friend sending another the postcard just because they thought the image was funny, etc. There is a story behind each source, and they are important for more than just what I thought the imagery or motifs on the other sides could mean. I was asking myself questions of ‘how would someone from the 1910s have viewed this source?’ and “what imagery or construction could have elicited this action?’ Detailing more than just the information needed for my analysis, these archival sources were indicative of the lives of real historical peoples.