Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches

In this video from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the curators Ruth Hibbard and Lydia Caston examine how depictions of witches have evolved over more than half a millennium. Drawing on objects from the museum’s collection, they place these shifts within broader social developments, such as the declining authority of the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Europe and the rise of the women’s suffrage movement. The objects demonstrate how interconnected societies have, across time, depicted these supernatural figures in almost contradictory terms – old hags in one time and place, and seductive enchantresses in another – and today, often as symbols of empowerment rather than destruction. Through this analysis, they reveal how each society projects its anxieties and aspirations about gender onto the figure of the witch, making her a mirror for evolving ideas of women’s power, transgression and resistance.