Marginalizing Women: Forced Marriage, Witchcraft Accusations, and the Social Machinery of Private Landownership in The Witch of Edmonton

Though critics have endeavored to explore the roots of Mother Sawyer’s being named a witch and the social conditioning of Frank Thorney’s domestic tragedy in The Witch of Edmonton, little attention has been paid to the relationships between forced marriage, witchcraft accusations and the development of private landownership in the play. This article argues that with the breakdown of neighborliness, the increased social stratification of the village society, and the bureaucratization of the enclosure movement, elderly, poor, deformed, and uneducated women were stigmatized as witches and transgressors of capitalist landlords’ properties. Yet, they were not the only victims. The wealthy gentry heiresses also had to bear the consequences of these rapid socioeconomic changes. They were seen as economic instruments for financially depleted aristocratic males to marry so that these impoverished men could retain their wealth and social status. Therefore, the formulation of private landownership, along with witchcraft accusation and forced marriage, further marginalizes women as the scapegoats of patriarchal economic and class pressures.