The Persicutuion of Women

A key feature within the play is the fact that Hero is convicted of infidelity without proper evidence, she is instantly shunned. The main reason for this is simply her sex, women during the time were seen as inferior and beneath men. they were given many restrictions their sole role was to become a wife and mother, they were not allowed to enter the men's "world of work". As a result women who defied these restrictions or went against their husbands (in this case Hero's presumed cuckoldry of Claudio) were shunned in society.


One of the most extreme occasions of such an issue is the historical persecution of witches. often women who lived alone, where older, prospered or went against societal norms were accused and often sentenced without a fair trial. These women were often tortured and put to death with methods such as drowning, stoning, burning and hanging.

Picture of a Witch Trial.

Article found on early Witch hunts:

The witch trials in the early modern period were a period of witch hunts between the 15th and 18th centuries, when across early modern Europe and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshippers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches' Sabbaths. Many people were subsequently accused of being witches, and were put on trial for the crime, with varying punishments being applicable in different regions and at different times.

While early trials fall still within the Late Medieval period, the peak of the witch hunt was during the period of the European wars of religion, peaking between about 1580 and 1630. The witch hunts declined in the early 18th century. In Great Britain, their end is marked by the Witchcraft Act of 1735. But sporadic witch-trials continued to be held during the second half of the 18th century, the last known dating to 1782, though a prosecution was commenced in Tennessee as recently as 1833^.

Over the entire duration of the phenomenon of some three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 100,000 people were executed.

Among the best known of these trials were the Scottish North Berwick witch trials, Swedish Torsåker witch trials and the American Salem witch trials. Among the largest and most notable were the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Würzburg witch trial (1626–1631) and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631).

The sociological causes of the witch-hunts have long been debated in scholarship. Mainstream historiography sees the reason for the witch craze in a complex interplay of various factors that mark the early modern period, including the religious sectarianism in the wake of the Reformation, besides other religious, societal, economic and climatic factors.

Interrogation and proofs

Various acts of torture were used against accused witches to coerce confessions and perhaps cause them to name their co-conspirators. The torture of witches began to grow after 1468 when the Pope declared witchcraft to be "crimen exceptum" and thereby removed all legal limits on the application of torture in cases where evidence was difficult to find. With the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 the accusations and torture of witches again began to increase, leading to the deaths of thousands.

In Italy, an accused witch was deprived of sleep for periods of up to forty hours. This technique was also used in England, but without a limitation on time. Sexual humiliation torture was used, such as forced sitting on red-hot stools with the claim that the accused woman would not perform sexual acts with the devil.

Besides torture, at trial certain "proofs" were taken as valid to establish that a person practiced witchcraft. Peter Binsfeld contributed to the establishment of many of these proofs, described in his book Commentarius de Maleficius (Comments on Witchcraft).

• The diabolical mark. Usually, this was a mole or a birthmark. If no such mark was visible, the examiner would claim to have found an invisible mark.
• Diabolical pact. This was an alleged pact with Satan to perform evil acts in return for rewards.
• Denouncement by another witch. This was common, since the accused could often avoid execution by naming accomplices.
• Relationship with other convicted witch/witches
• Blasphemy
• Participation in Witches' Sabbath
• To cause harm that could only be done by means of sorcery
• Possession of elements necessary for the practice of black magic
• To have one or more witches in the family
• To be afraid during the interrogatories
• Not to cry under torment (supposedly by means of the Devil's aid)
  Feminist interpretations
  Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, various feminist interpretations of the witch trials have been made and published. One of the earliest individuals to do so was the American Matilda Joslyn Gage, a writer who was deeply involved in the first-wave feminist movement for women's suffrage. In 1893, she published the book Woman, Church and State, which was "written in a tearing hurry and in time snatched from a political activism which left no space for original research."Likely influenced by the works of Jules Michelet about the Witch-Cult, she claimed that the witches persecuted in the Early Modern period were pagan priestesses adhering to an ancient religion venerating a Great Goddess. She also repeated the erroneous statement, taken from the works of several German authors, that nine million people had been killed in the witch hunt.
  In 1973, two American second-wave feminists, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, published their own pamphlet examining the witch trials, Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers, in which they put forward the idea that "the women persecuted as witches had been the traditional healers and midwives of their communities, and that their destruction had not merely been a blow against female power but against natural medicine and therapies. The witch trials were therefore a victory for both patriarchy and a flawed, male-dominated, modern science." Although they had initially self-published the work, they received such a positive response that the Feminist Press took over publication, and the work then began worldwide distribution, being translated into French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Danish and Japanese.