Gender and emotions in the visual and intellectual imagination

Abstract

This chapter examines representations of the witch in the visual and intellectual imagination. Early sixteenth-century images show witches as female and eroticized. Yet by the seventeenth century, these ‘typical’ representations break down, and visual depictions include large groups of men and women. As the gendered profile changes, so do the emotions depicted: from female lust to collective debauchery, from envy to fear. We witness the same ambiguity in depictions of the witch in early modern intellectual thought. Focusing on Nicolas Remy’s Daemonolatria (1595), this chapter shows that intellectual thought could conceptualize both male and female witches, which challenges the idea that witches were women, because of their heightened emotions and their increased vulnerability to the Devil’s temptations. Instead, witchcraft could be understood through the lens of a violent Devil, who, driven by jealousy and anger, subjugated both men and women through force.