Herbwife & Healer & Fantasy, part III

So, where did this stereotypical fantasy herbwife/healer/midwife/witch come from?
She makes her appearance in the early 1970s. There's a number of factors going on here:

1. The rise of feminism, which comes into it in several ways. There's the development of fantasy, and the development of female roles, at the same time.

2. The rise of women's interest in and participation in the fantasy reader and writership. About 35 years ago, there was a surge in women reading and writing fantasy. The tradition of women in fantasy goes back further than that, but up to about 15 years ago, the major female fantasy/sf writers could be traced by a literary geneaology back to that Grand Dame of FSF, Andre Norton. The surge of fanfic, particularly by women, also dates to that era.

Early on, there was a surge in fantasy fiction role models of the type I think of as the Artemis, running-jumping-whacking-people kind. (Artemis was a major cult figure for the early women's movement: young, athletic, free-legged and free-loving, hanging out with Daddy and doing boy stuff, unencumbered by children, house, women's work, etc.) But there were some women and girls (I think it may be called third-wave feminists) who didn't feel able to identify with this picture. These Bagginses ("We have no use for adventures here, Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"), among which I count myself, wanted someone to identify with, someone who might actually wear a skirt and not disdain nuturing, caring activities.

An example of this non-non-traditional heroine would be Maggie Brown, of Elizabeth Scarborough's Song of Sorcery and later books. Maggie isn't an herbalist, though her grandmother is; but what she is, is a hearthwitch of the most extreme kind; her magic can do all kinds of housewifely tasks, but to raise a cyclone, for example, she needs to tell it she wishes to whip a VERY large quantity of eggs, "right there." When I first encountered her as a teen, I was enraptured. Here was someone I could identify with.

Segue: listening to a historian

Last time I was in the public library in Madison, I was looking for a book on CD to listen to in the car. Flipping through the adult non-fiction on CD, the best I could come up with was something that looked like a popularized history (and is).
Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe. This is the Books on Tape Version, read by John Lee. (http://www.booksontape.com/bookdetail.cfm/7098-DL)

I surprised myself. I liked it. I disagreed with most of his conclusions, and felt that the commentaries on modern politics will soon make it dated. But it was fun to read, and I didn't catch him on too many factual errors (though I think I have earlier evidence of toilet facilities). Yes, he's a popularizer (for a sample, see http://www.randomhouse.com/features/cahill/mysteries_excerpt.html ) And I could have done without the digression about the modern Catholic church at the end. And his conclusions are shallow.

Why did I like it? Because it was a story, and it was read by someone with a superb storyteller's voice. I suspect I'd want to listen to John Lee read St. Augustine, or even Calvin.

I admit that I think I listened to it in a very different spirit than I would have read it; had I read it, I would probably been as incensed as the Library Journal reviewer who slammed it, October 15 2006: "It is difficult to conceive of an audience that would benefit from reading this silly and superficial book."

But as a story, read to me, it had a good deal of the character of a lecture, either in the SCA or in school, created by a person with a good command of language and analogy. It was perfectly clear to me that the author was picking out what he saw as the good bits to share with the reader, and making a loose argument of the conversational type. Perhaps that's how I lecture, though I hope I don't "trample history into a muddled paste of great figures and exalting moments, ignoring nuance or exception." (Perhaps I do. Perhaps I am, in my thoughts on herbwives and fantasy. Ah well.)

I disagree with Cahill on nearly every exact conclusion he draws (such as St. Francis' part in the development of the 'plastic arts' of drama etc.); but on the other hand, I revelled in his argument that the Middle Ages weren't as bad as all that (and his condemnation of A World Lit only by Fire, Manchester's ghastly anti-medieval, anti-Catholic text), and generally his enjoyment of his subject and of the play of words.

More about herbalists/healers in fantasy

(Sorry if y'all are bored. You may have figured out that I'm re-creating my notes here preparatory to writing it all up in a single doc. Zing me if something sounds wrong or more than usually overgeneralized.)

Another major force behind the emergence of the idealistic herbalist-healer in fantasy was the resurgence of interest in herbs, and herbal medicine in particular.

This also was somewhat related to the women's movement, as there was a strong backlash against "traditional," scientific-style medicine in the women's movement. That backlash was definitely justified; the problems with women's healthcare in that time period are amply documented in many studies and first person narratives from healthcare providers and patients of the 1960s.

In particular, male medical establishments' control over women's health was a major issue. (Though I'm not from that period, I can remember going on the Pill and my personal struggles with having to jump through the hoops of authority to control my body.) The question of herbal contraception (did/does it exist? work safely and reliably?) is one that continues to be disputed. John Riddle's Eve's Herbs argues that there were safe reliable contraceptives used 'under the radar' before the modern period; I personally don't buy his arguments, but some people do. We do know that people used contraception, of some type, off and on from the Roman, through the medieval and modern periods. Catherine of Siena, the 30th 23rd child of her parents, railed against those who practiced it (a clear case of self-interest there!) In fantasy and science fiction, of course, there's nearly always a safe reliable contraceptive of some sort.

During the 1970s and their climate of distrust of modern medicine, interest in herbs went through a renaissance. Around the turn of the 20th century, herbs had become devalued in society, though there was a resurgence in interest in the 1930s and 1940s led by scholarly garden-club women such as Eleanor Rhode and Rosetta Clarkson, leading to the foundation of herbal guilds and societies. However, by the late 1960s, most people knew and cared little about herbs as garden plants, seasonings, or medicines. This began to change when the counterculture (and, to a certain extent, the pre-bicentennial celebrators) embraced and promoted the study and growing of herbs, and the use of herbal medicine.

The old woman who lived in the woods, either as a good or bad witch, or the miraculous young woman who dispensed magical healing, were alread features of the folk and fairy tales ardently collected and dispensed by 19th century ethnologists. But in this time period, studies such as the Foxfire Books brought the 'cunning' and 'wise' men and women who practiced folk healing in remote areas-- the Ozarks, the Appalachians-- as their predecessors in remote areas of 18th and 19th century Europe had practiced folk medicine. We'll call these folk healers 'empirics,' a term that was first used in the middle ages by University-trained physicians for those who were not informed by University knowledge and theory. An example of such a folk-healer, folk-witch appears in Nancy Springer's The Hex Witch of Seldom.

Women's studies historians were attempting to retrieve the history of the daily life of women ("the world's best kept secret: Merely the private lives of one-half of humanity" as Carolyn Kizer put it in "Pro Femina"). Women as nurses, nurturers, home doctors, were traced back, by these historians, to the suppression of the empiric medical practicioners and the witches; and here is where the witches come in to our narrative.