The original wicked witch: empowering wickedness, motherhood, and domesticity in Baba Yaga and modern witches

Abstract

Ideas of “good” and “bad” women leave no room for ambiguity. Andrea O’Reilly argues that women who don’t fit into the mould of the “perfect woman,” a concept instilled by the patriarchy, are considered “bad” women. In applying O’Reilly’s feminist scholarship to witches, I argue that Baba Yaga’s ambiguity challenges the patriarchal definition of witches as wicked. Baba Yaga is defined by her ambiguity, which makes her stand out as a witch figure and defies the binary of “good” versus “wicked” witches. The early European witch trials as well as the later American witch trials worked within a patriarchal tradition and cemented the idea of wicked witches. By limiting women to these moral expectations, the complexity of ambiguous representations of women are lost. Yet, Baba Yaga (Slavic, 8th century to present day) challenges this very polarization of good versus bad women. Baba Yaga offers a historical and literary starting point for examining what witches—and women—could be outside of patriarchal definitions of “good” and “bad” women. Unlike other monstrous characters in fairy tales and folklore, Baba Yaga’s role is in constant flux from text to text: she can play the role of villain, donor, trickster, or sage. In “Ivanushka”, she is a wicked witch, whereas in “Finist the Bright Falcon II” she plays a benevolent maternal guide. Speaking to this multiplicity, she sometimes plays as many as three characters in one story. My thesis will gesture towards twenty-first century examples of more ambiguous witches, such as Elphaba in Wicked, who resist the polarization of good and wicked.