How Does The Witch Violate Motherhood

Puritanical society’s oppressive patriarchy demands that women must serve the family. Robert Egger’s sinister horror film The Witch reflects this belief, foregrounding how motherhood defines Puritan women. While the film primarily traces how witchcraft rips apart Thomasin’s family, Egger weaves in how a violation of motherhood leads to witchcraft. The witch signifies a freedom from motherhood, making her an abject figure to Puritans. As a result, women who violate motherhood are monsterized as witches. Thomasin and Catherine, her mother, become increasingly associated with witchcraft and monstrosity because they violate motherhood through acts of violence and blood. Puritans, however, fear this violation because motherhood it threatens the family structure. Therefore, Thomasin’s violent conflict with her mother and Catherine’s spiral into paranoia from losing her children underscore that motherhood is Puritanical society’s attempts to control womanhood.
Puritan society demonizes women as witches if they disturb the social order by rejecting motherhood. Puritans demand that women conform to …show more content…
Consequently, The Witch reveals that women who violate motherhood, like Catherine and Thomasin, become the abject because they express latent, horrifying freedom through witchcraft. This freedom, although terrifying and eerie to some, grants immense satisfaction to those who accept their monstrous freedom as a liberation from an oppressive patriarchy. Thomasin’s encounter with a coven of witches finally cumulates in her rising above society’s expected role of her as a “grounded” mother-figure. Catherine also liberates herself by straying away from motherhood: death. In this ultimatum of freedom through witchcraft versus death, Thomasin’s choice of witchcraft, where she can “live deliciously,” emphasizes a feminine freedom that frees women from the patriarchy of Puritan