Feminist Ethics and Magical Feminism in The Witch, by Robert Eggers, and Gretel & Hansel, by Oz Perkins

Cynthia Beatrice Costa; Fernanda Aquino Sylvestre

doi:10.14393/LL63-v40-2024-15

Authors

Cynthia Beatrice Costa Universidade Federal de Uberlândia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3063-0121
Fernanda Aquino Sylvestre Universidade Federal de Uberlândia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9387-1395

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14393/LL63-v40-2024-15

Keywords:

Feminist ethics, Magical feminism, Cinema, The Witch, Gretel & Hansel

Abstract

Based on notions of feminist ethics and magical feminism, we illustrate the initiation into witchcraft as a shift to a new morality for the teenage protagonists of the films The Witch (2017), by Robert Eggers, and Gretel & Hansel (2020), by Oz Perkins. These folk horrors subvert the character of the witch of the woods by giving her a coming-of-age background story, all the while keeping some key-elements from traditional fairy tales. We suggest that the leading girls undergo a moral transformation: in becoming witches, they cease their roles as caregivers, abandoning a care-oriented ethics that was imposed on them and embracing a new hedonistic, egotistical one.

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Author Biographies

Cynthia Beatrice Costa, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia

Doctor in Translation Studies with a degree from UFSC. Professor in the Instituto de Letras e Linguística at UFU, in the Literary Studies graduate program at the same university and in the Translation Studies program at UFSC.

Fernanda Aquino Sylvestre, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia

Doctor in Literary Studies with a degree from UNESP-Araraquara. Professor in the Instituto de Letras e Linguística at UFU and in the Literary Studies graduate program at the same university.

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