ABSTRACT
The preceding two chapters have dealt primarily with witchcraft in novels whose authors either treated the figure of the witch with sympathy or approved of witches outright. But the reader will have noted that some fictions represented witches with more traditional disapproval (Buchan, Richardson, Silberrad and others). This chapter continues the discussion of works hostile to witchcraft, moving away from Romantic radicalism towards reactionary conservatism: the witch did not have an unchallenged passage into modernity. This chapter examines the conflict between the conservative version of the witch, which often saw a witch-hunter as the hero, and versions of the witch that continued the post-First World War vogue for celebrating witchcraft. A mid-twentieth century shift away from the “new spell” (Benson’s term for the positive portrayal of magic) towards a reaction in favour of witch-hunters, and then back towards the witch, helps to chart twentieth-century attitudes towards other phenomena as well. These include sexual and religious freedoms, women’s liberation, race and empire, political and other passions, age and notions of the Other more generally: all the “minorities” for which the minoritarian witch made a suitable proxy. Looking at the other side of the witch/witch-hunter coin shows us the witch-hunter in a number of positive lights, as a defender of public order, moral guardian, anti-communist, anti-fascist, even love interest, hero or heroine.
