Baba Yaga & The Wicked Stepmother

Man, o’ man, would I hate to have a stepmother, because it seems that in these stories all they want is to kill, or make people miserable. I read Baba Yaga and The Wicked Stepmother, and I have to say they paint an interesting view on the world, and a particularly interesting one on family, and the women within one. Both the stories I read included nefarious stepmothers, attempting to do wrong to their children.

            This brings you to a point of asking, why are women stereotyped into these kinds of roles, particularly stepmothers? One thought is that one might feel as though stepmothers do not care for the children of the husbands past, and even resent them, in a real-world context. So, when creating these tales of witches, these feelings from the authors come forward into the story.

I am pointing this out because in the tales I read, the women in the family having evil intentions reoccurred more than the witch being evil. In The Wicked Stepmother, the stepmother isn’t a witch It doesn’t seem, at least not in any magical sense. Instead the “witch” is actually providing aid to the children, and when the stepmother finds out she kills the witch. It’s worth mention that the witch is a goat, and also the children’s birth mother. Witches are odd. Anyway, these stories have an interesting perspective on women and the roles they each play in a family, from both positive and negative perspectives, witch or no witch.