The Gluttony of Witches
In the book The Deepest Sense by Constance Classen, Chapter Four titled "A Woman's Touch" discusses the purposes and expectations of women throughout history. In particular, the section titled "A Witch's Touch" interested me because "the female witch was the symbolic inverse of the female saint" (90). Women were said to be gluttonous by nature. Female saints, by contrast, often starved themselves as part of their quest of holiness. At the other end of the moral scale, witches gorged themselves at demonic feasts and transgressed the greatest of food taboos by eating human flesh. While holy women had visions in which they spurned devils offering them food, witches accepted the Devil and took the food. (90) These two female forms were particularly interesting because of the interactions they established with eating and food in general. Female ...