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Saleh A
Instructor Name
History and Anthropology
2 December 2019
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Part # 1
Yes, I agree with your point-of-view that Witchcraft was used as a misogynic weapon against the women of the relevant period. This belief can be confirmed by the fact that the women that were targeted in these witch-hunts were either too intelligent for the people in power to handle or too powerful and posed a serious threat to the rule of a monarch. The most famous example that is citable here is that of Joan the Maiden, who was later known in history as Joan d’ Arc. She was a brilliant military commander at just nineteen years of age and posed a serious threat to the British progress in the hundred years war. She was declared a witch and burned at a stake because she had become too powerful for the British to handle CITATION Ken191 \l 1033 (Kennedy, 2019). But we simply cannot rule out the possibility that some of these actions might have been driven under superstitious beliefs, even though only women were targeted in these extensive witch-hunts.
Part # 2
There should not be any doubt that these misogynic witch-hunts were given the cover of superstitious beliefs like Satan’s influence or possession by evil spirits and many other stories. But there is a possibility that the witches were used as scapegoats by the rulers of the time to divert their attentions to the general state of misery that they were in as common folks CITATION Lah15 \l 1033 (Mia Lahtinen, 2015). In any area where the rulers would fail, they would blame it in the witches and the community would vent out their anger mostly on the innocent women. In addition to that, there is another noteworthy point that the women that were accused of being witches were generally troublemakers according to their rulers because they often challenged a set of well-established beliefs and asked for rights and liberties that were considered as resentful in their societies. That is were Briggs is rightful to assume that this is the result of misogyny.
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kennedy, L. (2019, May 30). Why Was Joan of Arc Burned at the Stake? History.com. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/joan-arc-burned-stake
Mia Lahtinen, A. K. (2015). Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Retrieved from http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/journal/volumes/volume_18/Death%20and%20Dying%20in%20Medieval%20and%20Early%20Modern%20Europe.pdf
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