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June 2015 Vol. 52 No. 10

Stavreva (Cornell College) has provided an interesting work investigating women's narratives, both historical and fictional, containing power that can enact violence on the person at which the words are aimed.  Building on work from critics such as Diane Purkiss (a literary scholar interested in witchcraft and the intersection of literature and history), Stavreva looks at these words as performative acts and demonstrates their ability to enact physical effects.  These women had the ability to perform what Stavreva calls "witch-speak.”  Using court records, plays, and the public declarations of Quaker women, Stavreva builds her case that these acts became a way in which women could exhibit greater strength than was often credited to them and upset the social hierarchy.  This study has much to add to understanding how the transgressive work of women’s words and the power that they contained was seen as both threatening and a very active part of the society and stage of early modern England.

--J. D. Sharpe, University of Houston

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.