Session 13(b): Women, Difference and Social Conflict

Session 13b: Avarice, Witchcraft and Social Conflict
Chair: Margarita Carretero-Gonzalez

Women, Witchcraft and the Devil
Darren Oldridge
Department of History, University College Worcester, United Kingdom

The devil had a high profile in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.  He pursued a lively career in the theatre and cheap literature, and was prominent in politics and contemporary anxieties about witchcraft.  The idea of Satan also provided an intellectual resource for explaining unacceptable or “evil” behaviour.  This paper explores how women used this resource in three related contexts: the “voice of the devil” in spiritual autobiographies, the experience of demonic possession, and voluntary confessions to witchcraft.  In each case, the devil was used to explain thoughts or actions that were forbidden within the patriarchal culture of pre-modern England.  He provided a means to express and explain “unnatural” ideas.  But by attributing these ideas to the promptings of Satan, women were obliged to reassert the normative values of their culture; and the outcome in each situation was the reassertion of male authority.

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Mixed Blessings: Missionaries & Social Conflicts in Asia and the Middle East
Michael Strmiska
Lecturer in World Religions and History, Miyazaki International College, Kano, Kiyotake-cho, Miyazaki-gun, Miyazaki-ken, Japan

The purpose of this paper is to explore the positive and negative impacts of Christian missionary activities in several different countries in Asia and the Middle East. While missionaries have provided indubitable benefits, such as schools and hospitals, education and medical care, for needy populations in Asia, these benefits have not come free of cost. The institutions and services provided by missionaries are often presented along with religious propaganda , which sometimes includes explicit appeals for conversion to Christianity. Where missionary efforts at large-scale conversion are successful, previously cohesive communities are sometimes split into Christian and non-Christian factions which become distrustful and antagonistic. Native populations who convert to Christianity are sometimes pressured to reject and denounce indigenous religious traditions, posing a serious threat to the continued survival of important components of cultural heritage. Resentment against missionaries has sometimes resulted in violence, as in the killing of missionaries in India in 1999.
As missionaries are often foreigners funded by foreign church organizations, missionary activities may stimulate xenophobic reactions, including violence against foreigners. In the post-9/11 global  political climate, the potential for missionary activity provoking terrorist actions in international hot spots such as Indonesia and Iraq is considerable. Nevertheless, the Christian affiliations of political leaders such as the American President George W. Bush and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair appear to have precluded their governments placing any restraints on missionary activities. Rather, their frequent pro-Christian statements have sometimes given the appearance of blind support for missionary activities, regardless of the possible social and political  fallout from missionary activities in countries where their presence is controversial.
This paper will examine missionary activities and their beneficial and problematic consequences both for particular nations and for international relations, as well as including some discussion of existing laws and international agreements concerning the rights of religious groups to proselytize versus the rights of people to be free from such proselytization.
This is my rough proposal. If you feel it needs further fine tuning, let me now. I think this paper would stimulate discussion at the conference, and for me, it would be a great opportunity to focus more closely on a topic that has been in my peripheral vision for some time.

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“Wickedness” as the Expression of Subversive Difference in Aesthetic and Decadent Fiction
Adelina Sánchez Espinosa
Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Granada, Spain

This paper explores the connection between evil, wickedness and the expression of difference in late 19 th century fiction, this difference being expressed both as a change in the sexual and social politics of late Victorian texts.
It is well-known that the opposition to conventional morality preached by the so-called Aesthetes and Decadents was an essential moment in the transition towards modern literary modes and attitudes. However, more attention needs to be devoted to the way “wickedness” and “evil” were used as the subversive tools to confront censorship and the demands imposed by a traditional “Grundyist” readership.
Thus, at a time when censorship imposed its demanding constrictions on the freedom of writing, the treatment of “wickedness” and “evil” was an essential weapon in order to preserve the writers´ own identities. Self-expression, in these cases, was manifested as “difference” from what was considered the norm, mostly in terms of the treatment of the gender roles and sexual politics of the texts.
Our thesis will be illustrated with the works by Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy. We will argue that the presence of evil and wickedness subvert their most immediate and traditional readings and that this subversion opens up alternative readings of the otherness of the texts themselves. The different shapes of the expression of “difference” will be approached. The duplicity of the divided self, the dichotomy between the devilish woman and its angel counterpart, the Faustian and Apollonian others, the subversion of the Christian myth, etc. will all receive our attention at this point.
Ultimately, the main goal of this paper is to vindicate the importance of evil as an essential weapon in the expression of rebellious attitudes towards a society which condemns difference.