The Beautiful Witch

“It’s best beware of the witching hour in which the witches show their power.” So reads the text on this postcard. But what kind of witch and what kind of power is being displayed here? This postcard is just one example of a “beautiful witch,” a theme in Halloween postcards with much to whisper about today.

Halloween in the early 20th century was hugely focused on fortune-telling games, and game after game centered on an unmarried girl or woman learning the identity of a future husband. More importantly, they were almost without exception passive in nature. The point of each game was to learn what the future would bring, not to shape the future. The title of an 1871 Scribner’s Monthly article says it all: “Halloween or Chrissie’s Fate.” 1Fate could be revealed on Halloween, but it was assumed women must first wait until Halloween to know fate, and then wait for fate to deliver what had been foretold.

Which is why the emergence of beautiful witches in postcards is so interesting in its timing. This was a period in which women no longer wanted to be passive. They were called “New Women,” and one of their trademarks was the “Power of Initiation,” or taking matters (romantic, political, economic) into their own hands.

So consider the beautiful witch. This is a modern transformation of a topic that had been the domain of the old crone and the weathered hag (pointed black hat, wart on the nose) for centuries. But within that image of the old witch lay a certain degree of power. The witch had the power to do more than prophesize. She could take an active role in changing the course of fate, the very “power of initiation” that marked the New Woman of the early 20th century. Postcards of traditional witches often depicted them in their laboratories, in front of their cauldrons, or over their spell books doing precisely what young girls at parties couldn’t: creating spells, charms, and potions that would actually force action. Understanding that women desired this level of power helps to create a logical bridge to the emergence of beautiful witches.

Putting the beautiful witch in context

This postcard suggests that witches showed their power on Halloween. For beautiful witches, this could mean the power to bewitch men in magical ways and the ability to put men under some sort of spell. But of course, this was simply pretext. Ultimately the power of these women lay not in a single night of Halloween magic, but in mystical powers that women possessed year-round through their beautiful faces, hair, clothes, manners, and so on. Halloween witchiness merely provided an exaggeration or enhancement of a power which perplexed and frustrated men throughout the year.

It’s best beware of the witching hour in which the witches show their power.

To some, this might seem like the ultimate male fantasy, which still forced women to assume they had to look beautiful to have any power at all. And that’s a fair claim. But remember that postcards were circulated primarily by and for women (see the research). Part of the pleasure of sending and receiving postcards of beautiful witches surely had to be in imagining a break from the passive associations of Halloween that had existed for decades. Part of the liberating effect of these images lay in the suggestion that women had (at last!) the power of initiation inherent in witchcraft.

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