The First Witch of Boston

Margaret’s tinctures and herbal remedies play a large role in the narrative and become one of its most significant motifs. They represent Margaret’s expertise and help the author to explore Women’s Knowledge as a Threat to Patriarchy. Margaret learns her knowledge as an apothecary (an individual who prepares and sells medicines), herbalist, and midwife from her grandmother. This element of Margaret’s backstory is an important nod to both feminized bodies of knowledge and inter-generational knowledge transmission and is an important point of historical engagement. Women liked Margaret, who worked as healers and midwives, were common in 17th-century England and its colonies. Like Margaret, their knowledge was typically passed down from older female relatives. In a society where knowledge, reason, and intellect were associated with men rather than with women, apothecaries, herbalists, and midwives were figures of resistance to patriarchal norms. They demonstrated that women were as intelligent and capable as their male counterparts and that they could perform labor beyond mothering and household management.

Because they were figures of resistance and rebellion and because they possessed a body of knowledge that even male physicians did not, they were also seen as threats to patriarchal norms.