"And I think of my mother then, and her own peculiarities. Her reckless taste for surviving, that makes her like an animal, wild and unknowable."
In the 17th Century, England was thrust into a so-called Witch Craze.
Plagued with Civil War and uncertainty, this decade saw the highest recorded number of executions for Maleficum, leading to some of England’s largest and most famous witch trials, such as The Pendle Witch Trial, where 10 out of 12 women were convicted.
The epicentre of this hysteria, however, seemed to be East Anglia, and the county soon became synonymous with witch-hunting.
This was largely thanks to Sir Matthew Hopkins, or the witchfinder general as he called himself, who was responsible for the hanging of over 100 men and women during the 1640s.
So far removed from our present day, it's easy to look back and view these figures as shocking but not particularly moving.
The women who lost their lives so unjustly are simply a number in a history book to us.
That is how I always viewed them until I read The Manningtree Witches.
The outcasts
In an article for the BBC, John Goldman points out, those suspected of witchcraft tended to represent a challenge to society, whether it was through their appearance or way of life, and this was probably the scariest thing about them.
“People who were different in any way, through age, or physical disability, or mental disability, were picked out by those who wanted to believe there was some specific reason why things had gone wrong,” he said.
These people are exactly those that A.K Blakemore is trying to give a voice back to.
'You are much too young to be concerned with dignity, my girl. Dignity it an old woman's game. What of your life?'- Beldam West
The novel follows Rebecca West, a young devout Christian woman living in the throes of a Civil War in 1643. She shares her dwellings with her mother, the Beldam West, an unpredictable but fiery character with a loose tongue and a weakness for beer.
The pair have a strained relationship, and Rebecca, who isn't quiet about her lack of respect for the Beldam West, is often chiding her mother about something.
But, they also have a deep understanding of each other, and that unfathomable bond between mother and daughter becomes more prominent between them as they fight to survive in a world that doesn't favour headstrong women.
Quite early on, their town welcomes a new innkeeper, Mister Matthew Hopkins, and not too soon after his arrival, whispers of shapes in the night and afflicted livestock start to engulf the town.
When a young boy is stricken by mania, fingers start pointing, and Hopkins begins to search for what he came to Manningtree to find- Witches.
What I found when reading this novel is that, despite being powerless to the changes around her, Rebecca is not a shrinking victim. She has strong opinions and rebellious nature within her internal monologue.
She is cunning and smart, and men are right to fear her for that.
A new life
The Manningtree Witches breathes life back into those fiery characters, who, as Blakemore says, "scratched out their existence on the very edges of society, and who have otherwise gone voiceless, or been muted by victimhood."
Through her poetic writing, she makes you feel the despair, frustration, and pain of those destined by society to lose, but also their incredible resilience and burning desire to carry on in spite of it.
She makes you feel a connection to them and a new level of respect for the things women had to do just to simply survive.
It's hard to read this novel and not identify with its characters and, in turn, with the history of abuse, bigotry, and misogyny.
You are faced with the ugly truth of the plight of women that came before you.
Their stories also make you think of the ways in which women are still expected to perform a role, which, if they resist, still leaves them branded as hags in other ways and deemed not worthy of respect or even status as a human being.
But a knack of surviving- that is a more promising inheritance. And if we are to survive, we will only survive together.
In modern times, witches have crept out of their hiding places and back into the zeitgeist, and practicing witchcraft has become somewhat of a trend.
Witches are now even involved in social movements like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion.
The latest figures from the UK Census show that, in 2011, witchcraft was being practiced by 1,193 people. A further 53,172 were practicing Paganism, and 11,026 were practicing Wicca, both of which are branches of witchcraft. Altogether, that represents less than 1% of the country, but the fact people are openly identifying with witchcraft as a religion is interesting.
It is hard to say exactly how many people are practicing this today, nearly ten years later, because the ONS does not recognize paganism or witchcraft as a religion, so there is not enough data to know the exact population size.
What is clear, however, is the growing acceptance of the witch, who seems to have become a symbol of power and defiance against social norms.
Society has always been scared of what it cannot control, and a group of headstrong women with bags of wit and laughter in the face of oppression seem to be scarier than the Devil himself.
How to spot a witch
There were various methods used to determine whether someone was a witch or not, and all were totally ridiculous!
Here are some famously used by Mister Matthew Hopkins:
They had a wart or mole that could be their 'Devil mark'
They owned a pet (particularly if it is a cat)
She floated when thrown into a river with her thumbs tied to the opposite big toe
They were poor and/or elderly
She didn't bleed when 'pricked' with a sharp object or feel any pain
Someone in the village said they were one