Grater Expectations: Issue 3 - Halloween Edition

Grater

Expectations BEWITCHED...

Salutations!

At long last, the third issue of Grater Expectations has floated through the clouds of patriarchal mist that still reside on this lump of rock. She comes to impart her witchy wisdom on those who need some sense bashed into them by a broomstick (unfortunately, however, this would get us into deep water, and we know what happens to witches in deep water). As Hallowe’en is upon us, what better time for us to release ourselves from the shackles of normality and thrust some spooky satire onto the scene. Yet, witches are nothing if not creative, so think of this as a concoction of frivolity and some vaguely serious ingredients. Ah ha, the perfect result! I hear you cry. Yes, it is spectacular. So, don your pointed hats so we can flick the proverbial wand and commence. Abracadabra, and all that.

Ms. Anthropy x x

Contributors: Andrea Yáñez-Cunningham Darcy Bounsall Felicity Wareing Iona Jenkins Issy Macleod Sam Dodghson Sophia Robinson

Macbeth From the barn behind his house I watched him talking with his wife in their kitchen, and the light from the candles gripped to him as he laid both hands flat on the table and bent his head and spoke, and the yellow light slid onto her as she went to him and grasped him, she was speaking to him urgently, and after a while he turned and took her in his arms and I felt it, I felt it in every part of me but most of all where I would if I was a woman, I held myself there and I heard a wave sighing, but I heard it from far away where the grey sea licks the coast.

And when his Lady died he came crashing out onto the moor to find us and I cried and tried to hide myself but he held an arm up against the rain and he could see us, and as he spoke I felt the thick tide press against my skull and pull away, pulling my hair with it, my hair like rats’ tails thin and wet.

I saw the small kirk he went to when he was little and the winds that battled against it like the ones beating against him now, and I saw the bladed corn move in its small way and he sat among it and sucked on it and I saw it all crumble and slide past his ears, the bricks from the church, the sweet little seeds of corn, everything as bloody as bedsheets, and now his body rose up tall and proud against the purple sky, and I wished I was a woman.

Then we pulled his proud body up slick and red and headless from our cauldron and he went pale when he saw it, and we pulled seahorse babies out of our torn stomachs and the blood ran towards him and he thought he was going to drown and he screamed filthy hags, his eyes red and hating, and sister said come, cheer we up his sprites, our king. So we danced around him and they screamed his name but I was quiet, I held his name in my mouth and tasted it so I could pretend we were alone together, like I had been alone with him and his wife, and as I passed him he reached out his fingers and caught my hip, speak if you can, he said.

And long after he’d gone I felt the ghost of his fingertips on me, and I was burning and alive where he’d touched me, I ached, and we danced in the mud and the blood, and the day of the battle was red as well, but dry, and I slipped away from them and slid along the ground beneath him and his feet trod into me, my body not dry but wet as the lips of a bog. And when he stumbled into a copse, tired and bleeding, his hand on his side, I followed him, and he turned and saw me. I stood in front of him.

From above his wide shoulders he peered down, and I pulled him into me, he was pouring out blood and my skin drank it in like a cup, I held him, and on the ground his body hovered above mine and he raised his head and blinked quickly at the sky. His arm was heavy and he mumbled things and stroked my hair and I knew he thought he was in bed with his wife. And then I told him it was time to find Macduff, so he sat up and followed me quietly out of the trees.

There were children dancing on the field and Macbeth stared at them, I saw him remember. And he looked at me and his face twisted and he saw who I was and he hated me again, I knew that he’d gone. The leaves crackled under our feet. The white air was thick on the ground, and Macduff waded out of it and cut the king down, and his blood spread out and made the field a red lake, he was still blinking quickly at the sky.

Issy Macleod

fear the faint swish of bicycle wheels and metallic click of locks says he’s back a paper bag rustles a fat-soaked salty stench of chips stings the musty air as it seeps into the numb space between us for a moment the blackness is splintered by grinding enamel and I try to slow my breathing but it is hitched on a rusty nail by the door a heartbeat from where my pounding head lies waiting his boots are drunkenly dumped on the plywood floor ice cubes clink his whisky-tempered words always excused shredding my muted mind As spectral hands around my throat snap my tired elastic voice the thunderous roll of his eyes a hopeless obliteration of a reconciliation ghosts float between my drying lips I lie motionless in the gloom in a cracking cavernous shell muffled footsteps beating tick tock taps dripping gas pipes whispering hissing meaningless words that bite a deafening cacophony fighting through the yawning chasm between us

Iona Jenkins Iona Jenkins

“Grave Silence”

Hubble Bubble, we’re in trouble: the modern witch trials The Witch Trials form a terrifying history. The truly glaring and horrifying mass hysteria and killings of accused witches began in the late 1500s after witchcraft was made illegal in 1542. Around 200,000 individuals were executed for witchcraft. The most infamous witch trials plagued Salem village in New England between 1692-1693. 19 people were hanged on Gallows Hill for witchcraft, 14 of whom were women. Figures from Salem show the majority of those accused and executed were women. Why were women specifically were targeted?

Witch trials were partially a consequence of the rise of Puritanism, whichspread to America with colonisation. Puritanism was a reaction to the Reformation, calling for a more ‘pure’ form of Protestantism, specifically a religion and lifestyle that strictly adhered to the Bible. The targeting of women is intricately linked to Puritan ideology. As a strict Biblical fundamentalist theology, the Puritan view of womanhood restricted women’s roles to three options: mother, wife, caretaker.

Any woman who lived outside these roles was often presumed to be working with Satan. Many of the women persecuted during the witch trials were either single, elderly or ‘unruly’.

The persecution of women was not, however, solely a religious issue. An unwavering belief in the Bible, and in Satan and his evil, would cause a terror of witchcraft that may be understood. Though the focus on women may be rooted in religious ground, after a certain period it became an effective method of social cleansing. The high rates of convictions of witchcraft, and the low requirement of proof, meant that any woman deemed to be undesirable or anti-social could be eliminated through marking them as a witch. All that was needed was a dislike for an individual living outside the norms of society. Women were accused for refusing a man’s sexual advances, as a punishment for rejection. Though witch trials mostly disappeared after the 1700s, their influence remains clear. The fundamental ideology of womanhood that resulted in the persecution of women as witches is still part of our culture. Career women are vilified for not wanting children; a single woman is incomplete; women who are independent, outspoken, and powerful are attacked. Women empowered by their sexuality are ‘promiscuous’, and though we claim to be a progressive egalitarian society, women are still expected to fit into the ‘mother, wife, caretaker’ pigeonhole.

Regarding the Witch trials as Puritan hysteria resulting from a sincere fear of Satan ignores the fact that it was predominantly women who were targeted, women who didn’t fit the ideal of womanhood. Women are still put on trial in social and public media for refusing to fit the idea of womanhood that western society still idolises. The witch trials aren’t over. They have grown into a modern persecution of a woman’s image and character when she steps outside of the boundary of social understandings of femininity and womanhood. In the 21 st century, we are still haunted by the dark shadow of Gallows Hill.

Sophia Robinson

When a man writes a woman....

Clara sat alone. Her husband had left her, and with his disappearance, the house felt decrepit. She was thinking about her peculiar situation. Upon being abandoned by her husband, she had suddenly become a witch. Yet Clara felt like something was missing. She realised that by gaining her independence, she had lost her true power: being a wife. Clara knew no witchcraft could make up for the sheer exhilaration of being someone’s wife. Her singledom left her empty, and when she looked in the mirror, a haggard, old and ugly woman looked back. Her femininity was vanquished.

But what could Clara do? What solution could there be? She pondered awhile, trying to conjure a solution. Thoughts struggled to navigate their way through the maze that is the lady brain, being far more delicate than that of a man. Finally, she had a revelation.

Clara lifted her shrivelled, loveless, ringless finger and muttered a spell. With a puff of smoke, a man appeared. Her unknowable, twisted female heart fluttered once the blood found its way through her feminine arteries. Before her she saw a new husband! As he rose he said, ‘why aren’t you in the kitchen? Go and make dinner.’ Clara smiled as she felt her womanhood and beauty restored, her identity renewed.

At last, she was a wife once more.

Sophia Robinson & Iona Jenkins

Grater Expections is an intersectional feminist zine and younger sister publication of the Cheese Grater Magazine.

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zine@cheesegratermagazine.org Editor: Iona Jenkins