Finally, a Happier Ending.

To me, “A Very Surprising Narrative of a Young Woman, Who Was Discovered in a Cave” was nothing like the stories or "fallen" women that we have been reading. I couldn't have been more relieved to read a story that wasn't so depressing.

Obviously, The Panther Narrative has many differences than many other texts we have read. The first main difference that I noticed was that this woman has confidence, stands up for what she wants, and gets out alive. She's in love with a man that her father doesn't like, so does she obey her father and leave the man? No! She runs away with him! Also, she fights back against the man who wants to sleep with her and cuts off his head! What I thought was interesting was that she isn't even punished for this. She gets rewarded in the end with her father's money.

This story shows change because the woman disobeys her father, runs off with her lover, kills a man, and nothing bad happens to her in the end. Not only is she not killed, but she isn't punished at all. I think this shows how the authors are not teaching anymore with these texts, they are entertaining. In the earlier texts, ministers were using them to teach young women what not to do and what will happen (death and a lifetime in hell) if you do what the "fallen" women did. In The Panther Narrative, the writer doesn't really seem to be teaching anything. The story seems like an adventure narrative used to entertain its readers, especially women.

The Panther Narrative seems like it would attract women readers and give them a source of entertainment, not scare them by threatening their lives. The woman in this story is portrayed as strong, smart and fearless, which is something for other women to look up to. I think this shows how societal views of women as either an evil witch or a pure goddess has changed dramatically.

Have times really changed?

When I read the prompt for this blog post and how it dealt with the similarities and differences between Puritan women and women today, my first thought was, "Oh, it's completely different! Women have so much more freedom today that they did then!" But then as I started to really think about it, I started to see otherwise.

I am from a (really) small town in Texas, where everyone is pretty conservative for the most part. I started to compare life there and the way women are viewed to Puritan women and how their actions were viewed. In my high school, girls who got around were viewed as just that: girls who got around. It's not a good reputation to have. Everyone knew about it, talked about it, and judged these girls. Everyone in the community, including teachers and parents, had their disapproving thoughts about the girls with the wild lifestyles, and it was obvious. No, they weren't booing them in the grocery store, but the looks weren't hidden. This made me think about how women in today's society (I guess it kind of depends on where you are exactly) don't have it much easier than women in Puritan times. No, they aren't getting hung anymore, but I bet the harsh looks they receive day after day start to get old. People still have judgements about the "easy" girls, and they are hardly ever good ones.

When my I was in middle school, my best friend had an older sister who was a senior in high school. At the beginning of the school year, she accidentally got pregnant. She married the father, but they divorced about a year later. Now, she is working and raising her son, pretty much on her own. Besides paying for child support, I don't think the father has much to do with his son. When she had the child, her parents always used her as an example to her younger sister (my best friend) about what not to do, and how constant partying, drinking, and not obeying their rules will lead to a situation like her sister is in. And might I mention that they never mentioned the father of the child. The blame was always set on the mother, as if the father didn't do much wrong. This reminded me of how the ministers would use the "evil" Puritan women as examples to young women about how not to act.

I definitely think society has created a new punishment for the girls with the "friendly" reputations. Although women today have more freedom and rights than women in the Puritan times, when a girl "runs around" with a lot of guys, its definitely looked down upon. In my high school, these girls were treated with much less respect. This is something I still see today on TCU's campus. Certain girls have those reputations, and people treat them poorly for it. I guess I can't really say how it affects those girls emotionally, but I couldn't imagine it not having some kind of negative effect. Although it's true how there are girls here at TCU like this, I think it's true everywhere. I don't think it has much to do with the fact that we are on a college campus. Wherever you go, there will be the same girls, with the same reputations, receiving the same cold looks. So yes, times have changed, but I don't really think judgements have much.

Which Witch is Which?

I thought that this article by Rountree was definitely an interesting read. Usually, what comes to my mind when I think of a witch is the stereotypical mean old woman in the black pointy hat casting spells over a boiling black pot. Rountree reminded me that real witches are quite different than the ones in Disney movies. She made a great argument of how witches are feminists who are sensual and desire power and independence, especially from men.

I am beginning to have a better grasp of what witchcraft is and what witches actually do. Like I said earlier, growing up, characters in Disney movies created my first impressions of witches. Therefore, I grew up with connecting witches with Halloween, pumpkins, black cats, and flying broomsticks. Now I am starting to get a different idea of what a witch is, a more realistic one.

Reading this article made me think of a TV show I saw a few years ago. On a Halloween episode of Boy Meets World, one of Corey's friends got into a crazy predicament with a witch. He didn't know she was a witch at first. The girl that played the witch (lets say her name was Lauren, I don't remember) was very pretty and seductive with dark red lipstick... you can imagine. Anyway, the guy practically melted when he met her and was completely under her control, or spell. Later on in the show, the viewer finds out that she and a huge group of other witches, who were all very sensual and seductive young women, were just using the poor guy to sacrifice him on Halloween night. The witches hated men and seemed to be fighting for feminist reasons, just like the witches Rountree was describing in her article. Luckily, Corey's older brother intervened and saved the day.

My idea of witches and witchcraft has definitely changed over the years. When I was really young, I thought of them as evil old ladies with magic spells and potions. Now that I am older, I have realized how that idea is not very realistic. Rountree's explanation of witches, as feminists with a desire to have control and independence in their lives, definitely makes more sense to me. Although that part makes sense to me, I still have tons of questions. In her article she talks about feminist witches as a sub-group of feminists, which makes me wonder what the differences are between feminist witches and feminists who don't consider themselves witches. I'm not sure I completely understand it.

Wonders of the Invisible World

I guess the first encounter I ever had with witchcraft of some kind was when I was a little girl and saw the movie, "Hocus Pocus." I just absolutely loved that movie and demanded to dress up as a witch every year on Halloween. That's about as close to witchcraft I've ever come.

In the movie, "Three and a Half Men," there is a scene when two people are upstairs having a discussion. If you look really closely, there is a little boy standing behind the curtain in the background, that is obviously unintended by the director of the movie. The story is that the little boy died many years before in that house that the movie was being filmed. When I first head of this, I was in junior high school and of course, I believed the story. When I found out that it actually wasn't true and that the boy in the movie was actually a cardboard cut-out, I began to find it almost impossible to believe any other ghost story that I was told.

Unfortunately, I have never seen a "ghost," so I find it sort of hard to believe in the idea of a supernatural world, but I have lots of friends who swear that they have encountered ghosts with really convincing stories. Therefore, I am not really sure where I stand on the idea. My friend Kelly believes very strongly in the supernatural world because when we were in high school, she "knows" she saw a ghost in her house. Of course, the first time she told me about her encounter, I didn't even come close to believing her story. I thought (and still do) that she just imagined it in her mind. After a couple of years of claiming that she saw the same ghost a few more times, she began to slightly persuade me that the event really did happen. Now I don't really know what to think.

I can't think of any instances where my friends used the term "witch hunt," but I have definitely heard it before on television a lot. They usually aren't talking about witches, but about chasing other people associated with that bad connotation. It's interesting to think of what that phrase came from.

In our contemporary world, I think that many people consider evil to be a bad moral decision or some other negative intentional act, but not necessarily a result of the devil. I'm not really sure how I would explain the existence of evil in the world because I don't really understand it. Many times when I hear of a murder or some other horrible act, my usual question is, "I don't understand, why would someone do that?" The usual response to that question is, "I don't know. They must just be crazy or messed up in the head." Here, the evil action is associated with a mental disorder, but maybe it was an act by the devil. Who knows.