I am delighted that today my article on the Pendle witches has been published by the Dangerous Women Project on their site.
The Dangerous Women Project is an initiative of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. A month ago, I saw the project’s call for submissions online, asking for articles which addressed the question ‘What does it mean to be a dangerous woman?’
Immediately, I knew I had to write something about the Pendle witches. As most of you who read my blog, my social media feeds and indeed my novels will know, the past couple of years for me have been occupied with researching and writing about the Pendle witches. The witches were also the subject of my undergraduate dissertation about a decade ago. I suppose you could say I am a little obsessed! During all this time, I have often been struck by how their communities came to genuinely regard them as so fundamentally malevolent and dangerous, and in my fictional recreation of their stories, I have strived to address why this was. My article today focusses on one aspect of this, their sexuality and sexual conduct as a form of undesirable behaviour.
You can find my article here. I hope you enjoy it.