The Maiden, The Mother and the Other One. The Satirical Use of Stereotypes within Terry Pratchett‘s Witches Series

Abstract

Terry Pratchett is an author that has created the vast fantasy world of Discworld, which is contained in over forty published books. In a subseries that takes place in a remote area of Discworld, a kingdom named Lancre, he focuses his storytelling on witches, which are the female magic users in his world. The witches represent nature and wisdom while their male counterparts, the wizards, represent science and order. The witches do not always require magic in their profession as they are very adept at reading people and know when simple psychology is the better remedy, this practice they call using headology. The witches are, at first, based on the three witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and then later on, the Triple Goddess stereotype. The Triple Goddess stereotype originates from early mythology, all the way back to the Great Goddess who gave birth to all the Great Gods and the Moon Goddesses represented by the phases of the moon. In this essay I explore Pratchett’s subversion of these stereotypes when creating the witches of Lancre, women that over the course of the series come to embrace all aspects of their lives in spite of modern society’s view that what they are embracing is not socially acceptable. In addition to the subversion of stereotypes, Pratchett subverts the fairy tale as we know it, shedding light on common misconceptions about how happy an ending needs to be.