Scarlet Witch and the Subversion of Witchcraft Jayme Horne Professor
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Scarlet Witch and the Subversion of Witchcraft Jayme Horne Professor Jasper van Putten HART-288 Comics: History and Theory She’s one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe. With reality warping magic and a vast knowledge of sorcery, Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch, has proven herself as one of the most important members of the Avengers. Even with her introduction as a villain and history of mental instability that has caused her fight against her friends, the Scarlet Witch remains one of the most recognizable Marvel heroes. However her name suggests something else. Even in a post-Harry Potter world, witches are still often associated with evil and darkness. What makes the Scarlet Witch such an interesting character, is her ability to subvert the Western World’s associations with witches. But how does the Scarlet Witch subvert the western traditions of witches? This paper aims to explore how the Scarlet Witch subverts and reclaims the title of witch, by exploring her through some of her most important storylines, as well as comparing her with comic witches. First, before exploring how the Scarlet Witch subverts and reclaims the title of witch, it must be defined how the witches in the Western World are historically depicted. Heralded as the biggest inspiration of witches in the western tradition, would be the Slavic folklore witch: Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga as seen in probably one of the most famous Slavic folk-tales, Vasilisa the Beautiful, has many of the traits we in our contemporary world. She’s a scary old hag with disfigured features. She lives alone in the middle of the forest, in a house on chicken’s feet with a skull and bones fence around the parameter. As seen in the story, Baba Yaga forces Vasilisa to do nearly impossible tasks or be eaten. On top of that, she flies through the forest on a mortar and pestle. Similar to how more modern era witches tend to fly broomsticks. As an old crone with disfigures features, Baba Yaga was a feared supernatural being. Despite all of her gross features and terrifying personality, Baba Yaga is also a very wise and knowledgeable figure. She’s also oddly helpful. In Vasilisa’s tale, Vasilisa is a young and beautiful maiden living with her awful stepmother and stepsisters, who all conspire to kill her. One day, they send Vasilisa Horne 1 off to Baba Yaga’s hut, in hopes that the crone would cannibalize her. Despite what you would imagine, Baba Yaga orders Vasilisa to do nearly impossible tasks, like separating rice from wheat kernels before dawn. If she should fail, she will be eaten. However Vasilisa is successful in her tasks and eventually she is let go. On her way out, Baba Yaga gives her a skull lamp from her fence. When Vasilisa returns home, the skull instantly incinerates her wicked step-family, freeing her from their tyranny1. So in this story we get a very interesting looking into Baba Yaga. Even her plan is for Vasilisa to fail so she can consume her, once she realizes she can’t win against the young girl, she ends up helping her. Of course in a really morbid and dark way. Another example of early witches who have informed the modern era witches, comes from the Roman novel, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, or better known as The Golden Ass. The story follows the character Lucius, who is interested in witchcraft and longs to become a witch himself. In book two, Lucius meets Thelyphron who goes on to tell his own encounter with witches. While on his way to the Olympic games, Thelyphron gambles all of his money away and becomes in need of cash. So he takes up a job guarding a corpse for the night. The reason it needs to guarded is that the area is very prone to witches, and witches apparently get their magic from eating dead bodies. During the night he falls asleep and has terrible dreams of shapeshifting witches taking on the forms of mice and other rodents coming to eat the corpse. Later, after the spirit of the deceased is conjured from beyond the grave, it is revealed that witches did, in fact, come that night and mistook Thelyphron for the deceased and ate his nose and ears. When they realized their mistake, they made him new ears and a nose made out of wax. Later in the story, Lucius accidentally turns himself into a donkey, after attempting to copy a witch’s transformation story. Though through the religious devotion, he’s returned to his human form2. 1 Winthrop, Elizabeth. Vasilisa The Beautiful. Trophy Press. 1995. 2 Apuleius; Kenney, E.J. (Trans.) The Golden Ass. London: Penguin. 1998. Horne 2 By looking back at where the modern era witches get their roots, it gives us a clearer view of how witches, outside of Harry Potter, looks like. Often, due to the spread and popularity of Christianity, it’s accepted that witches are worshipers of the devil. These kinds of beliefs have lead to witch hunts throughout Europe and the United States of America to either end in execution or being imprisoned in near uninhabitable cells. Witches, while they have a rich history in media of being depicted as either good or evil, as seen with great sorcerers like Merlin from Arthurian legends or even Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz, witches often have a very negative connotation attached to them. Which is why the title Scarlet Witch is such jarring name. Most superheroes who use magic usually go for more positive sounding altar egos. But that’s part of the reason that makes Scarlet Witch so interesting as a character. Wanda Maximoff, along with her twin brother Pietro (Quicksilver), was introduced in 1964 X-Men #4, as one of the members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Yes, Scarlet Witch began off as a villain. Here she was depicted as cruel and malicious. Her creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, never really saw her a real witch or her powers being actual magic. Rather, her powers were vaguely explained as being her mutant abilities. So her decision to call herself “witch” was meant to conjure up imagery of evil witchcraft and Macbeth. A year after her introduction, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver left Magneto’s Brotherhood and joined the Avengers. The transition was prompted by Scarlet Witch, who upon realizing that her views for mutantkind did not align with Magento’s more violent views. Later, under the writing of Steve Englehart, Scarlet Witch became more of a witch. Englehart always saw Wanda as an actual witch and her powers being that of witchcraft3 4. This transition would integral to seeing how Scarlet Witch subverts the traditions. 3 Englehart, Steve. "STEVE ENGLEHART responds". Women in refrigerators. Web. 4 Englehart, Steve; Buscema, Sal; Cockrum, Dave; Tuska, George; Heck, Don. Avengers: Celestial Madonna. New York, New York: Marvel Comics. 2002. p. 224. Horne 3 As Scarlet Witch became a more integral member of the Avengers and became more fleshed out as a character, it became clear that her personality didn’t really match that of Baba Yaga or the Wicked Witch of the West. Wanda was depicted as being very kind, loyal, and having great leadership skills. Eventually she even married the android Vision5, and temporarily was the leader of the West Coast Avengers6. Her powers during this time became to be known as “chaos magic” along with her normal hexes7. Along with hexes and chaos magic, Scarlet Witch also has reality warping powers. With these reality warping powers, Wanda was able to create her own children (because androids and humans can’t reproduce)8. After her children were absorbed by the demon Mephisto and she suffered a major mental breakdown, Scarlet Witch used her reality warping powers against the Avengers, causing Ultron-bots to spew from Vision’s body and Kree warships to invade Earth9. Later, it was revealed this was due to Doctor Doom meddling with Scarlet Witch’s mind and causing her to blame the Avengers10. Shortly after, the Marvel crossover event House of M took place, in which a mentally unstable Scarlet Witch is coerced by her twin brother to use her reality altering powers to rewrite the universe. In this altered reality, mutants were the dominant species and everybody was given almost exactly what they wanted to be happy. After things fall apart, Scarlet Witch lashes out at her father, Magneto, for having been abusive to her and Pietro and denounces mutants as not the next step in evolution, but rather as freaks. She then uttered probably one of the more famous phrases in the Marvel comics, “No more mutants.” Thus depowering 98% of all mutants11. The 5 Englehart, Steve; Heck, Don; McLaughlin, Frank. The Avengers #109. New York: Marvel Comics. 1973. 6 Thomas, Roy; Ross, David; Dzon, Tim. Avengers West Coast Volume 1, #98. New York: Marvel Comics. 1993. 7 Busiek, Kurt; Pérez, George; Vey, Al. The Avengers Volume 3, #10. New York: Marvel Comic. 1998. 8 Englehart, Steve; Milgrom, Al; Machlan, Mike. West Coast Avengers Volume 2, #35. New York: Marvel Comics. 1988. 9 Bendis, Brian Michael; Finch, David; Miki, Danny. The Avengers #502. New York: Marvel Comics. 2004. 10 Heinberg, Allan; Cheung, Jim; Morales, Mark; Livesay, John; Vines, Dexter. Avengers: The Children's Crusade #7. New York: Marvel Comics. 2011. 11 Bendis, Brian Michael; Coipel, Oliver. House of M #7. New York: Marvel Comic. 2005. Horne 4 long awaited follow up to the events of House of M, would also be the fight Marvel fans had felt was building up for years: Avengers vs X-Men.