ironically, two weeks of summer vacation yielded approximately zero more media i could recommend to anyone. i barely read a few pages of a book (i had brought two paperbacks, and uploaded a dozen on my e-reader). i didn’t read any articles, even though i have at least two dozens saved. i did watch two movies, mainly because we had three consecutive days of unrelenting rain.

what did i do during that vacation? i honestly don’t know. i hung out with my family, reconnected with friends i hadn’t seen in a long while, i took some walks. every thing just went really slowly, every day. it was very nice. taking things slow, and not spending every minute of every day scrolling on the phone, or being distracted by stories or music or any background noise.

so save this list, come back to it whenever you feel like it. but also, take some time to be in silence, with yourself or with the ones you love. our brains don’t need to be stimulated all the time. we can make pretty good thoughts ourselves too.

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books

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll

“The Land of Laughs was lit by eyes that saw the lights that no one’s seen.”

Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

Whether I’d actually been born with a gift was beside the point. What was important was that I believed I was.

Memoirs of Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar (originally read in French)

Déjà, certaines portions de ma vie ressemblent aux salles dégarnies d’un palais trop vaste, qu’un propriétaire appauvri renonce à occuper tout entier.

(Already, certain portions of my life resemble the bare rooms of a palace too vast, which an impoverished owner renounces to occupy entirely.)

movies & series

articles

Art for Our Sakes by Zadie Smith

I want to be wanted by a human. I want to be in relation with other humans. That’s what I believe I am on this earth to experience.

An Ant Reads Ayn Rand by K.A. Hughes

yes, that is what the humans would do, because a human first thinks of oneself, and she knows this is why they will be a short-lived species.

The End of Books by Sheila Liming

The decline of books—of their value, ubiquity, or availability—is the decline of the effort to push ideas into circulation and make knowledge matter.

Lessons From the People’s Historian, Howard Zinn by Dave Zirin

Instead of history being a narrative of the triumph of the wealthy and powerful, it becomes something written by underdogs armed with courage. Instead of being objects, young people become subjects and potential changemakers.

essays & short films

fin.

bree beauregard

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euro summer is almost over, and i’ve had my fill of tourists. i live in Florence, where all summer, american girls in peasant skirts and bandanas have flooded the streets in seemingly unending waves. my friends and i play a game: one point for every peasant skirt, one point for every bandana, five points if she’s wearing both at the same time. i once walked past a group of 22 girls: 17 of them had the skirt-bandana combo! ka-ching!

the fashion of tourists is as fascinating to us locals as the fashion of locals is to tourists, and i am, of course, still both. traveling is a way of connecting with the local fashion too, not just the history or the language or the food. every country, every city, every neighborhood has its own traditional dress and its own modern trends. watching how people move through a place they actually call home is half the reason to go anywhere.

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so while i genuinely wonder how the peasant skirt and bandana became the unofficial euro summer uniform, i’m just as curious about what these girls make of the places they’re passing through.

the trouble is that most of the “this is what girls in Milan/Rome/Paris are wearing” content is thinner than i’d like. i keep waiting for the analysis and it rarely comes. the last straw was a video about Milanese women, their whole style summed up as business-like: slacks, button-ups, block heels. the influencer then recreated the look to wander the city for the day. which baffled me, because those women weren’t dressing to explore the city. they were dressing for the office. they had somewhere to be at nine.

it’s an easy thing to forget, that Europeans work and live in the cities we visit. in Florence, a small city swallowed by a massive influx of visitors, you can feel the strain of it. “it’s not Disneyland” is the local refrain, usually muttered by someone just trying to bike to work through streets full of people wandering about, taking pictures, with no awareness of their surroundings (i say this with love, truly).

and the machinery of tourism is genuinely sad to watch. restaurants that cater only to visitors, neighborhoods slowly shedding their character, whole cities putting on a performance for people who will only stay for a day or two. it happens everywhere, not just here. but there’s a way to move through a place with more awareness, and it starts with a simple acknowledgment: the city wasn’t built for you. it isn’t a performance. it’s beautiful and alive and chaotic because people actually live here, and they don’t owe you the perfect picturesque fantasy.

so yes, this applies even to fashion commentary. you’re not at fashion week, you’re a guest in someone’s ordinary tuesday. what the girls are wearing in Milan or Madrid or London, on a weekday, in the middle of their real lives, is exactly that: their real lives. women everywhere dress one way for work, another for aperitivo, another for a date, another for a beach day. the “local look” you’re studying might just be what someone threw on to catch the tram.

and we do the same thing, don’t we? i’m fairly sure your everyday outfit back home isn’t a peasant skirt and bandana with sneakers and a bag built to hold a water bottle, a camera, and a fan. we all dress differently on vacation. we become a slightly performed version of ourselves the moment we leave home. there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we don’t mistake our version of a place for the place itself.

so next time you see a well-dressed Italian woman in her slacks and block heels, don’t file her away for a trend report. remember she’s probably late for something. remember she has a desk to get to, a meeting, a kid to pick up, a life that was here long before you arrived and will go on long after your flight home.

the best thing i’ve learned from living in a city other people come to visit is that the good stuff was never on the surface anyway. it’s the small bookshop where the owner recommends weird books i’ve never heard of. it’s the bar where they have cheap wine on tap. it’s the church you duck into by accident to escape the rain. none of that shows up in a “what are they wearing” video or “what you should do on a two-day trip” carousel, because none of it is a look. it’s just life, quietly happening whether you photograph it or not.

so wear the peasant skirt. i mean it, wear whatever you want. just remember you’ve wandered into someone’s home, and the kindest thing a guest can do is pay attention.

fin.

bree beauregard

thanks for reading and being here! if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee :) and join us on discord!

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a playlist for your morning coffee:

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these are some of the things i have kept for no reason.

i could never be a maximalist. my shelves are cluttered, i have boxes big and small filled with things, even my journals are bursting at the seams with postcards and stickers and airplane tickets. i’m sentimental, plagued by nostalgia, always have been. i have a desire to remember. to remember everything i have ever done, ever felt, ever thought, ever experienced.

the thing is though, most of the things i find stashed in boxes, i don’t even remember where they’re from. i’ll find a rock hidden in a corner of the library and rack my brain for hours and still not have a clue where i got it, or why i kept it. what was so special about it? i kept it to remember something, but that something is already long gone.

other things i could tell you exactly what they mean. what trip it was from, who gave it to me and when. there’s a whole story behind it, sometimes more than one. these make more sense i suppose; i keep the thing, and the memory that comes with it.

and then there are the nonsensical ones. why keep a lone sock when i know i will never wear a mismatched pair? do i believe its twin will materialize out of thin air one day? i keep broken pieces of ceramic and tiny strings of yarn because, hey, they might be useful for some future creative project i know will never see the light of day. logically, i know i shouldn’t be keeping any of these things. sentimentally though, i hold out hope.

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so no, i could never be a maximalist. things are just things, and all that. but memories and hopes live in the things we choose to keep, in the objects we can’t quite bring ourselves to throw away. there are so many happy memories, so many old friendships, so much of my past contained into this one necklace from Egypt, i could never part with it. and perhaps i see the future in the balls of yarn and the broken ceramic, waiting for a project that may one day materialize. even the rock i can’t explain is proof that i was somewhere once, that something made me stop, pick it up, and carry it home.

so all the things i keep for no reason turn out to have a reason after all. it’s not logical, but it was never meant to be. we don’t keep these things because we’re bad at letting go. we keep them because they’re the small, quiet evidence that we were here. and that is reason enough.

fin.

bree beauregard

thanks for reading and being here! if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee :) and join us on discord!

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a playlist for your morning coffee:

The constant scrolling is affecting all of us. Literally. It doesn’t matter what we’re consuming: news, silly cat videos, crochet patterns, lifestyle vlogs, think pieces. It can be negative, positive, angry, light-hearted. Our brains are still registering all of it too quickly, too haphazardly. It’s too chaotic.

When I scroll I go from knitting tips and patterns, to aesthetic vlogs, to feminist discussions, to people falling on their faces. Love it all, but woah does my head hurt after it. I even get extremely bored after a while. It’s just too much all at once.

So, while social media can be good in small doses, we also need to indulge in downtime that doesn’t feel so fast-paced. Hence this list of longer-form media you can save and come back to later, whenever you’re in the mood to pick up a book, watch a movie, or read/watch a longer essay.

Enjoy:)

books

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck

  Rule #3 Please leave towels on the floor if you wish them to be cleaned. Hang up those you wish to use again.

• After Dark by Murakami

  Something is about to happen in this room. Something of great significance.

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

  But none of those deaths meant anything. I don’t think it’s crazy to want mine to. Or to study people whose deaths mattered, you know? People who at least tried to make their deaths mean something.

movies & series

• The Faculty (1998)

• Companion (2025)

• Station Eleven (2021)

essays

• Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel? by Michel Chaouli

  Where did guilt and virtue enter the picture? I read by myself; I read for myself: Why should I be answerable to anyone but myself?

• Gen Z but two centuries ago by Emily Herring

  While Musset’s enfants du siècle felt frustrated that a brighter future lay forever beyond their reach, many today don’t even dare to imagine that a better world is possible at all.

• Territorial Spirits by Joseph P. Laycock

  “Several of these people seemed to want to be possessed,” he complained, “as if that could make sense out of their lives.”

youtube things

side note, apparently i like things in 3s. oh well. save this list for later and enjoy a moment of relaxation without too much scrolling:)

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bree

thanks for reading and being here! if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee :) and join us on discord!

also enjoy this chill playlist i made:

this piece is a companion to how to build a housewife, part of the sisters to witches series.

I hadn’t watched The Witch (2015) when it first came out. In fact, last week, as I was finalizing my research on week 6 of the curriculum, it occurred to me that I should probably give it a go. It had been on my watchlist for a very long time (a decade!) and what better time to watch it than now, freshly immersed in everything witchcraft. _{(i say freshly though if i’m honest i’ve been into everything witchcraft for many many years. anyway!)}

As a horror film, it was pretty standard: a few jump scares, the gloomy New England atmosphere, the witch as the scary villain. But in terms of historical themes, the movie delivers a much stronger performance. Not only did Robert Eggers carefully craft a historically accurate cinematography (the costumes, the sets, the spoken English), he also did a magnificent job in portraying the witch-hunt mania gripping European minds of the Early Modern period.

(note: spoilers below)

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this essay is part of the sisters to witches curriculum. join us on discord to discuss it (and many other things!)

un. ding-dong the witch is alive

We all know her. She is old, has a crooked nose, probably a huge mole on her chin. She rides a broom into the moonlight. With her coven of sisters she dances around the fire in the middle of the woods in a strange ritual. They are all naked; they sing and laugh in a grotesque fashion. The witch lives outside of civilized society, having made a pact with the Devil himself.

We’ve know these witches from both horror and folk stories, usually portrayed exactly this way: horrible, disfigured, evil, deviant. In historical accounts of witch-hunts, though, they were women of all ages and of all backgrounds. All of them were innocent of the crimes of which they were accused. They lived in villages, towns, cities. They were young and old, married and widowed and not yet ready for marriage. They were midwives and housewives and good, obedient daughters.

With all these differences between hundreds and thousands of women, across Europe and the colonies, the question isn’t (cannot be) what is a witch? but rather what was the witch created for?

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deux. from community to isolation

(the severing of women from each other)

The witch-hunts didn’t happen overnight. It was the culmination of decades of the careful spreading of a new and worsened image of The Witch. A key consequence of the accusations of witchcraft, and the fear of witches, was the severing of women’s bonds to each other. From the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, women had enjoyed access (if still restricted) to female communities and work in professional guilds and artisan spaces. With the advent of the Counter-Reformation and the spread of witch-hunts in the Early Modern period, women’s communal bonds would be tested and, ultimately, dissolved.

In the Middle Ages, these female communities were mainly found in self-governed convents; female spaces seldom visited or cared for by the Church. Other communities included the Béguines, a non-religious space without male authority where women could live out their days surrounded by other like-minded, independent women.

But beyond self-sufficient, restricted female communities, women also enjoyed their own distinct roles and duties in villages and towns: they worked as midwives, healers, artisans, and more. They had their own female spaces shared with their neighbors and friends, where they shared knowledge and news and everyday pains and joys. The word “gossip” used to be akin to “friend” before it became a derogatory word, again during the witch-craze of the Early Modern period.

The drastic change against women-centered communities and knowledge came during the late Renaissance, as society turned towards individualism and the seeds of capitalism were planted. The rise emergence of a wealthy mercantile class, reaping the benefits of growing trading empires in both Europe and its colonies, accelerated the promoting of the individual over the community. This nascent individualistic mindset weakened communal bonds with the idea that one’s personal success was more important than the community’s long-term survival.

Once the idea of the witch was introduced, and suspicions led to arrests, torture and death, women’s position became extremely precarious. Midwives were no longer seen as essential pillars of their community: they were treacherous women acquiring their knowledge through witchcraft and devilish practices. Young women were accused of making men lustful; proof of their dealings with the Devil. How could a woman save herself from the stake but by accusing another woman of witchcraft, before being accused first?

The constant fear of accusations, the spreading of rumors, the actual torture and death of women (whether seen or heard about) had a debilitating effect on women everywhere. This was done over decades and centuries, constantly and obsessively, by the state and by religious institutions. In effect, this was the deliberate torture of the female psyche1, a way to not only dissolve the bonds of women and eradicate their communities, but a way to ensure their spirits would be broken for many generations to come. By the end of the witch-hunts, women were left powerless, deliberately isolated from one another, and at the mercy of men.

trois. the bad witch vs the good magician

(the severing of women from knowledge)

Now that women could no longer rely on each other, their networks were broken, and they had no one to turn to, it was time to strip them of their access to knowledge. Because, as the saying goes, knowledge is power. Access to education has always been restricted not only to women, but to anyone considered “unworthy” or even “unhuman”: women, Black people, Indigenous peoples, even unlanded men. Education and knowledge have always been feared in the hands of the persecuted: they’re the key to ascending the steps of power.

The “real” witches of pre-Early Modern Europe were midwives, healers, older women who held the traditional knowledge their communities relied on. They were highly regarded members of society, positive figures other women could aspire to become. The science they, and other women, possessed and shared was indispensable. They knew about pregnancies and birth, about medicinal herbs and healing methods, about contraceptives. Knowledge that had been passed down through generations.

But once the witch-hunts spread, men sought to appropriate that knowledge for themselves and themselves only. That science was deemed too dangerous to leave in the hands of inferiors (the women). The demonologists of the time, tasked with outlining what witchcraft was and how to recognize a witch, went to great lengths to distinguish “High Magic” from its devilish cousin. Because magicians (well-born men serving aristocrats and princes) should not be punished for practicing such important “sciences” as astrology and alchemy. Meanwhile, women were persecuted for practicing the same arts, or for using folk knowledge to care for their communities.

As science advanced, midwives, now cast as witches, were excluded from practicing medicine alongside their male counterparts. Even though they had, objectively, more knowledge both practical and theoretical, the creation of the witch as an evil figure barred women from work and education for centuries. Wealthy men would go on to to earn an education, attend universities, while the knowledge that women had held for centuries and millennia, was deemed wretched and distrustful.

In the end, it wasn’t about the practice itself, but about who was practicing it. Knowledge is power, and women were being robbed of theirs.

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quatre. the good housewife

(the severing of women from their labor)

What’s the best way to leave someone powerless in an emerging capitalist society? Take away their means of earning their keep.

As previously mentioned, in the Middle Ages women were able to survive in a multitude of ways: in self-governed female communities, as religious figures, as artisans or midwives or healers, as housewives, as nobles, as political figures. They were economic actors in a communal society.

At the end of the Renaissance, women slowly began to lose their rights. In France, they were declared “legal imbeciles” and could no longer conduct any kind of legal activity by themselves. Before then, in many European countries, they could have enjoyed the status of femme sole (a single woman, legally independent). Everywhere in Europe, from Catholics to Protestants to philosophers, everyone (men) was finally cooperating on one thing: the vilification of women. From then on, women were essentially legally infantilized, stripped of any legal way to protect themselves.

Since women could no longer make contracts, hold property, or represent themselves, they could no longer work, either. Now, any work done by women was, by default, “housework.” Even if the work was to be sold at a market, a woman’s work was always going to be seen as “nonwork”. The labor of women became, truly and resolutely, free and disregarded. Many women had to turn to prostitution (in fact, we see at this time a “massification” of sex work) as the only way to earn a wage. Though that did not last long: laws were swiftly put in place to make prostitution illegal, as well as any contraceptive practices, or the distribution of such “recipes”. Because those activities, the only remaining accessible wage-earning occupations available to women, were going against the plans of the state. Women were to stay at home and refrain from any type of economic activity.

But they were not totally useless. The emerging political class became concerned with population decline, as it was believed that “a large population is the wealth of a nation.”2 So women, now conveniently stripped of any means of work, would stay home and produce citizens for the nation: an endless production of labor by housewives whose work was not recognized and could only be legally represented in the justice system by a male relative. Very convenient indeed.

Now that the evil witch had been created, and countless women were being sent to their deaths, there was only one thing left to be in order to survive: a good housewife. and so a new kind of femininity emerged: the passive, obedient, thrifty, almost silent, diligent, wife. This was the ideal forged on the stakes, built on the bones of innocent women. The positive figure of the witch, the one who cared for her community, the one her neighbors came to for help, was turned into an evil woman to be tamed and banished.

Now, a woman could only aspire to be a housewife, at the mercy of a man.

cinq. the hatred of men

(the severing of women from their social class)

Another important consequence of the witch-hunts was the spirit-breaking of the men. The witch-craze, obviously intended to cause great harm physically and psychologically on women, also taught men to fear and hate the women of their own communities. Therefore, class solidarity was broken in irreparable ways, a major victory for the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie.

The propaganda started with the portrayal of women as sinful and demonic. But this is hardly new: Eve was the original sinner, tempted in Eden and bringing about the expulsion of humanity onto Earth. In the late Renaissance, the figure of the witch takes a more concrete shape: she’s not just any strange recluse living on the outskirts of society. She flips religion and its morals on its head: she’s a woman who binds herself to the Devil in a perverted sort of marriage, she drains a man of his potency while simultaneously inflaming his lust. She is sin personified. All women, in the end, are sinful from the start and should be treated as such.

The men were subjected to years and decades of this propaganda, not only being told that women are sinful but that they would be the cause of their own sins. This constant terror sowed a deep psychological alienation from women. On top of this obsessive campaign of women’s vilification, the men who resisted were themselves at risk of prosecution. No one was ever truly safe from the stake: the political, noble, and religious classes held the power, not the laboring men of the villages.

Over time, the demonization of women and their portrayal as inferior to men, took deeper root in the collective minds of men, and the chasm between the genders only grew wider and wider. With weakened bonds not only between women, but between the men and the women of the lower classes, their collective power became less of a threat to a political class growing ever richer.

The witch-hunts accomplished their final goal: setting the exploited class against each other while the elites grew their own fortunes and power, unchecked. The mania of the witch wasn’t about magic; it wasn’t about men versus women; it was about who would gain the most on the other side of that pain: the wealthy elites.

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six. and here we are

The witch-hunts are a thing of the past, a relic of our barbarous history, of ancestors who didn’t know any better.

And yet.

We never reinvent the wheel. In the same countries where witch-hunts took place, we have now criminalized contraceptive practices; we have revived the ideal of the traditional housewife; we have gender wars, online and on social media; we have a growing anxiety about population decline among the political class. And what happens? The women are blamed. For not having enough children, for being too educated, for not wanting to stay home with the children. A witch-hunt can be a witch-hunt without the burning pyres in the middle of the public square.

When we watch horror, when we tell folk stories, the witch is always there because we can’t erase her legacy. She was created as a means to manufacture the perfect woman: an obedient housewife, dependent on the man, a source of labor-production for the state. The witch’s purpose is to demonize, to control, to sexualize, to brutalize, to torture, to scare, to manipulate, to kill. The witch is the symbol of the brutality that capitalism and patriarchy have inflicted on all of us.

In the end, the witch is the woman we needed to fear so we’d become the woman they needed us to be: the good housewife, docile, quiet, providing free labor and an endless stream of future workers. They feared women with knowledge, women with land and money, women with connections, women standing together. They feared women with power. They feared the witch.

fin.

bree beauregard

thanks for reading and being here! if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee :) and join us on discord!

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references

• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch

• Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches (original title: Sorcières: La puissance invaincue des femmes)

• The VVitch (2015)

• Julia Kristeva, "Stabat Mater"

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you can find part one here. this essay is part of the sisters to witches series and curriculum. join us on discord to take part in the discussion!

un.

Ludwina lies in her bed, refusing any sustenance except the eucharist. Without food, she is bound to her bedroom, too weak to leave her family home. But that hardly matters. People come to her, out of curiosity, or desperation. For rumor has it that Ludwina can heal wounds and save souls. In her holy starvation she communes with God, and in return he blesses her with a multitude of mystical gifts. If you drink from the miraculous milk of her breasts, you may be healed of your ills. If you appeal to her at her bedside, she may pray for the salvation of your loved one’s soul.

But beware: she knows the evil that lurks behind the façade of men. A priest may soon find himself shunned by the community if Ludwina reveals he harbors dark thoughts. Her own family must comply with her strange behaviors to protect themselves from the fury of God. After all, Ludwina’s self-inflicted pain is not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of all souls on earth and beyond. As a servant of God, a chosen one, Ludwina must be heard and respected.

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The story of Ludwina of Schiedam (early 1400s) is only one of many examples of women choosing pain as a way to gain control over their own lives. Self-agency was often lost as girls approached adulthood: their families would arrange marriages for them, or send them away to convents, or to work as servants or laborers on far-away estates. Any refusal of these predetermined paths were more often than not left unheard, or ignored.

It’s no surprise then that many women took drastic measures to have their voices heard. In the case of Ludwina, it is said that, while she did harbor strong religious faith, she also had problems with her mother which only grew greater in adulthood. The clashes between the two women may have left Ludwina in a difficult position within her family. Following an accident that left her in chronic pain, she may have grown to be too big of a burden for a mother that already resented her.

In pain and facing displacement from her well-to-do beautiful family home, Ludwina may have seen self-imposed starvation as a way to regain control over these uncontrollable situations. Being bound to her childhood bed may have been a better fate than being sent off to marry some merchant’s son she had no care for. Ludwina was only one of a long line of women who chose starvation as a tool to not only prove their faith and devotion, but to escape situations they found abhorrent.

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this essay is part of the sisters to witches curriculum. join us on discord to discuss it (and many other things!) part two, for paid subscribers, will be posted on Friday, May 15th.

pain is the most …

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i haven’t posted this kind of list in a while, and i am sorry for it. i love reading substack essays: everyone writes about all kinds of things that never even c…

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note: i sent an empty post yesterday while trying to setup the scheduled post for today. sorry, human error, it will probably most definitely happen again.

a woman emaciated from fasting, skin stretched on the bone, teeth missing. she has nothing to cover herself but her long matted hair, like primal fur. she looks unsteady, one foot forward on the hard stone ground. but her hands, youthful, feminine, beautiful, are held high in prayer.

Mary Magdalene is doing her penance in the desert following Jesus’ Ascension. penance for what, exactly? for sins the Church invented for her.

it was claimed she had once been a prostitute (highly debatable). later, a converted disciple present at the crucifixion. she was beloved enough to be the one Christ appeared to after his resurrection. yet the story goes that she still felt called to cross the desert as a demonstrable act of penance. what is that penance for? and why did Donatello immortalize her suffering?

standing in front of Mary Magdalene in the Opera del Duomo is a surreal experience. i love Donatello as an artist: he was always willing to push the boundaries, and was never afraid to show emotions and flaws and the realities of his chosen subjects. his Maddalena is one of his most powerful works of art. made of wood, the life-sized figure shows every detail of the woman’s suffering. the only hint the artist gives us about her former life as a celebrated beauty is her hands: they’re seemingly untouched by her harsh journey through the desert, still plump and delicate in their prayer.

of course the biggest shock is to stand in front of someone who appears to be in immense pain. because Mary Magdalene, in Donatello’s rendition, seems alive in front of us. she is walking towards us. i don’t know if she’s praying or pleading, and that is what strikes me the most. her suffering is supposed to be self-inflicted, some holy experience one is embracing to attain an enlightened state. but it doesn’t feel chosen. it very much feels imposed on her by the powers-that-be. because Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, because she was beautiful, because she was beloved by Christ (when she shouldn’t have been?).

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i’ve never really enjoyed slasher movies. the violence, the blood, the gore, it’s all a bit much for me. or maybe it’s because the villain is an actual person going after other human beings with man-…

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This is part II of the carnal possessions essay pair, the second in the sisters to witches series. Part I, on Mary and the Annunciatio…

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un. the first possession

When I first saw Simone Martini’s Annunciation at the Uffizi, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Like much of the Trecento art, it is drenched in gold: the background is entirely made up of gold, the halos are golden, the angel is draped in gold. If you want to be dazed by gilded gold, seek out 14th century art. It is a beautiful painting, but Martini’s is just one among many others, and that day at the Uffizi, I was focused on those others.

I’ve been back at the Galleries many times since, almost always in the Trecento rooms. And I have noticed that particular (and particularly large) Annunciation. I have noticed Mary. I have noticed the way her body twists away from the angel, how her arm pulls her shawl tight across her chest and her face as if to shield herself. I have noticed her face, her downturned mouth and knitted eyebrows: a look of disgust, anger even. She looks like a woman interrupted in her reading by someone she does not want in her space.

For a Trecento painting, this is a remarkable amount of emotions on display1. If we look past the mesmerizing gold and rich fabrics, we hardly see a joyful announcement of pregnancy. Martini is showing us a woman recoiling from the words spoken to her. Ave gratia plena, dominus tecum. Yet it doesn’t feel like the Lord is with her, certainly not with grace. Mary just looks like she wants to leave the room.

This painting was the beginning of this whole curriculum, of my questioning of women’s bodies in both religion and horror (society, really). I’ve encountered many an Annunciation since, but two others have lived in my brain and heart just like Martini’s: Fra Angelico’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s, Three paintings depicting the same scene, three artists imagining the same moment, three different reactions to the same event: the moment God enters a girl’s body and makes it His.

The Annunciation was the first possession narrative in our current Western culture. A force more powerful than a woman enters her body without her meaningful consent and changes it forever. In horror, that would be the moment they’d call an exorcist. But we choose not to when the perpetrator is God.

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the first time i went to the Uffizi, i had already been in Florence for two months. i was waiting for the crowds of tourists to disperse, though, as i’ve come to l…

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un. the monstrous nun

Convents were historically used as dumping…

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un. the mystery of convents

What is a nun? What is she doing? What do her days look like? I’m sure most of us today would not know how to answer those questions. Life behind convent walls have a concrete air of mystery. And it was just as much the case centuries ago. What are these women doing by themselves, separated from society, with no men around?

Nuns have fascinated the imagination exactly because of their inaccessibility. Women living on the margins of society have always been considered suspicious. Even if nuns are technically existing within the system, they have historically enjoyed a level of autonomy beyond that of most other women. In fact, since they are adhering to the role given to them by their fathers, brothers, priests and rulers, their removal from society (from men) only becomes more intriguing and problematic.

Pietro Aretino’s The Secret Life of Nuns, dating back to the 16th century, is a wildly fictionalized, highly sexualized, account of what supposedly happens behind the walls of convents. It simultaneously shows how the mystery of nuns feeds the wildest fantasies, while also providing an actual social commentary on how Venetian women were unwillingly locked away to submit to a strict religious life.

Why wouldn’t nuns fascinate us? Anything hidden, anything secret, is bound to intrigue us. That’s why secret societies, cults, conspiracies, have always been at the forefront of the collective imagination. What is happening behind closed walls? And how infuriating it is, for a society ruled by, and made for men, to be kept away from the communities ruled and organized by women.

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part two will dive more into the horror element of religious women and will be free to all subscribers. coming March 18th!

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“Nuns already are suspect, unnatural, sisters to witches.” - Lauren Groff, Matrix

Religious horror has a woman problem. Or rather, religion has a woman problem, and horror exploits it.

The convent as haunted house. The possessed girl. The nun as monster. The witch burned at the stake. The pregnant woman whose body isn’t her own. They’re the residue of centuries of religious institutions shaping, confining, punishing, and at times, empowering women.

I’ve always been a fan of horror, though it started more as a “I love being scared” sort of thing, which evolved into a “there’s a lot of women in horror movies, why is that?” thing, into this now full-blown personal curriculum. Over the years, I’ve also noticed how much religion is also a particularly strong theme explored in horror, with deeply feminist roots as well. As such, this 8-week curriculum explores these deeply interconnected subjects through literature, film, and historical analysis.

Is it strangely specific? Yes. Is it an intense, strange, riveting topic? Also yes. While constructing this curriculum, I already knew the core pieces I wanted to explore (The Unworthy, Matrix, The Nun, Immaculate) and the themes associated with them. But as I dug deeper and deeper, I realized just how much of horror is religious and woman-centric, and how much of it is historical and patriarchal in nature. And how much is simply: a fear of women.

Who this is for: Anyone interested in horror, feminist theory, religious history, or the places where all three overlap. You don’t need an academic background, you just need curiosity and maybe some tolerance for discomfort (it is horror, after all).

How to use it: Take it week by week, every other week, or just pick the topics that interest you most. Read and watch what you can, skip what doesn’t call to you. The supplementary texts are optional, of course. The critical essays are worth the effort as they offer the basis in feminist, historical, and art theory (mostly) required to understand the global picture.

Note: I intend to write essays based on each of the weeks. If you’d like to do that as well, please do so (and do let me know!) but that is of course not a requisite. If you’d like to read my essays, make sure to subscribe:)

Note #2: if you want to skip to just the reading list, I have compiled every book, film, essay at the end for easy reference.

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Join the chat on discord and share your progress with others following the curriculum!

Themes

Confinement

Convents, cloisters, and religious sites as spaces of both entrapment and power.

The Monstrous Feminine

Horror’s portrayal of female bodies and desire, its projection of men’s fantasies and ideals, etc.

Possession and Ecstasy

The blurred lines between mystical holy experiences and demonic influences (visions, religious physical manifestations).

Martyrdom and Suffering

Female pain as spectacle and divine sacrifice (and resistance/rebellion).

Heresy and Transgression

The women who violate religious and societal norms and boundaries.

Gothic Aesthetics

Religious iconography, architecture, ritual, and clothing adopted as horror’s visual (and emotional) language.

Analyzing Art

The biggest trap when engaging with art is stopping at “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” (I do this quite a lot, and also, not everything needs deep analysis) That’s fine, but for research, you do need to go deeper.

Here’s a simple framework you can use to get started:

Observe

Before you even start to think about analyzing anything, just observe and describe. What are you seeing, reading, hearing? What’s in the frame? What kind of language/words/structure do you find in the text? What sounds dominate a scene? You can pick a short scene, a passage from a book, anything that spoke to you and just focus on that.

Contextualize

Research! When was this made, and what was happening during that particular time? What artistic trend was it working within or against? Example: a 1983 essay is written during the end of the second-wave feminist movement. A 2015 Puritan horror film arrives during renewed debates about body autonomy. Context matters when analyzing and critiquing art.

Interpret

Now we think. How is the female body depicted? As sacred, profane, monstrous, powerful? Who has agency? Is religion the source of horror or the refuge from it? What’s not being shown? You don’t have to rely only on external sources either: make up your own stance, you have ideas of your own!

A few questions to ask if you’re still unsure where to start:

• Is religion subtle, or a primary pillar of the story? Does the horror exist because of it?

• Who benefits and who suffers? (hello power dynamics!)

• How does this use the space to portray emotions/story/themes?

• What does this say about female autonomy/choice/consent?

• How does it make you feel in your body? (emotional reactions are still an important part of horror. read Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous Feminine)

You can also use comparison:

Compare the texts and films to each other, throughout the weeks. Track recurring images: veils, blood, enclosed spaces, doorways, hands, water, etc. Notice how the same motif can shift meaning in different contexts, and how the same themes are used over and over again.

The Curriculum

Week 1: The Convent as Enclosed Space

Introduction to religious horror and cloistered female spaces

Read

Lauren Groff, The Matrix: Medieval convent life, female power, and religious vision. One of the original foundation texts.

Watch

Immaculate (2024): Contemporary convent horror exploring bodily autonomy and religious control.

The Novice (2021): Obsession, discipline, and self-destruction. Not explicitly religious but it still is a great film to explore the themes of female discipline, especially in a closed group. (optional)

Critical text

Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine”: Foundational feminist horror theory. Note: many references to Julia Kristeva’s Stabat Mater (on next week’s reads) so feel free to also include that one here.

Week 2: Possession & the Female Body

Demonic possession as body horror

Read

Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch” (short story, in Her Body and Other Parties): Body horror meets religious folklore.

Watch

The Exorcist (1973): A classic possession film, of course needed to be included here.

Veronica (2017): Spanish possession horror centered on female adolescence. (optional, but I do like that film a lot)

Critical texts

Carol Clover, “Her Body, Himself”: On gender and identification in horror.

Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater”: On Mary and motherhood.

Week 3: Martyrdom and Spectacle

Female suffering as religious experience

Read

Flannery O’Connor, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” (short story): Southern Gothic religious horror and adolescent femininity.

Excerpts from St. Teresa of Ávila or Julian of Norwich: Historical texts on religious ecstasy and visions. (optional)

Watch

Saint Maud (2019): Religious mania, self-destruction, and the desire for transcendence through suffering.

Martyrs (2008): explores suffering as a way to transcendence. extreme content warning: graphic torture and violence. (optional)

Critical text

Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast

Week 4: The Nun as Monster/Saint

Women as both holy and horrifying

Read

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle: classic gothic domestic horror.

Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (optional)

Watch

The Nun (2018): The demonic nun as corrupted sacred feminine.

The Nun II (2023)(optional)

Benedetta (2021): Controversial historical nun drama (optional) (btw, based on a real nun whose life was amazingly entertaining, Benedetta Carlini, so read up on her at least, if you don’t want to watch that film)

Critical text

Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary: on the construction of the Marian devotion.

Week 5: Transgression and Heresy

Women who break boundaries

Read

Agustina Bazterrica, The Unworthy: sin, shame, female community, power and control. (this one is a must!)

Shirley Jackson, “The Daemon Lover” and “The Tooth” (short stories): Psychological horror with religious dimensions.

Watch (optional)

The Last Exorcism (2010): Found footage exorcism.

Critical text

Margaret R. Miles, Carnal Knowing: on female desire in religious art.

Week 6: Witch Hunts and Historical Horror

The persecution of women as real horror

Read

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (nonfiction, focus on Part 2): classic historical analysis of witch hunts, as systemic violence against women.

Watch

The Witch (2015): Historical New England horror exploring the monstrous feminine.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016): a supernatural horror film exploring the violence done to women’s bodies. (optional)

Critical text

Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History

Week 7: Body Horror and Sacred Femininity

The female body as site of horror and holiness

Read

Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea: Body transformation in queer horror.

Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild” (short story): SF/horror exploring bodies, consent, and transformation.

Watch

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): Pregnancy as horror, institutions as conspiracies.

Titane (2021) Content warning: graphic violence, sexually explicit, intense body horror. (optional)

Critical text

Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption (excerpt on medieval bodies).

Week 8: Synthesis and Contemporary Voices

Where feminist religious horror is going

Read

Leopoldo Gout, Piñata: Mexican religious horror with pre-Columbian elements.

Cassandra Khaw, “A Song for Crocodiles” (short story, in Nothing But Blackened Teeth): Asian religious horror and folklore.

Watch

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017): Mexican horror with religious elements and fairy tale structure.

Pearl (2022): Religious repression and female rage.

Final project, if you want one: Write your own manifesto on feminist religious horror. What do you now believe about the relationship between religion, horror, and female identity? What did these eight weeks reveal?

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A Note on Content

The texts and films deal with religious trauma and abuse, sexual violence, body horror, mental illness, historical persecution, and graphic violence. Martyrs and Titane in particular are intense. Please approach all of this with self-awareness, and take breaks as needed. Even though this is an 8-week curriculum, you obviously do not need to go through it in eight weeks. Skip over content that hits too close, analyze what feels liberating. Honestly, I am not even sure if I will go through it all: many of these films and books I have had on my lists for a while, and I want to read/watch them, but will I?

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Complete Reading & Viewing Lists

Novels

1. Lauren Groff, The Matrix — Week 1

2. Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger — Week 4

3. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Week 4

4. Agustina Bazterrica, The Unworthy — Week 5

5. Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea — Week 7

6. Leopoldo Gout, Piñata — Week 8

Short Stories

1. Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch” — Week 2

2. Flannery O’Connor, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” — Week 3

3. Shirley Jackson, “The Daemon Lover” — Week 5

4. Shirley Jackson, “The Tooth” — Week 5

5. Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild” — Week 7

6. Cassandra Khaw, “A Song for Crocodiles” — Week 8

Nonfiction

1. Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (Part 2) — Week 6

2. Selected mystic writings: Teresa of Ávila or Julian of Norwich — Week 3

Core Films

1. Immaculate (2024) — Week 1

2. The Exorcist (1973) — Week 2

3. Saint Maud (2019) — Week 3

4. The Nun (2018) — Week 4

5. The Witch (2015) — Week 6

6. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) — Week 7

7. Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) — Week 8

Supplementary Films

1. The Novice (2021) — Week 1

2. Veronica (2017) — Week 2

3. Martyrs (2008) — Week 3 (extreme content)

4. The Nun II (2023) or Benedetta (2021) — Week 4

5. The Last Exorcism (2010) — Week 5

6. The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) — Week 6

7. Titane (2021) — Week 7 (extreme content)

8. Pearl (2022) — Week 8

Critical Essays and Theory

1. Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine” — Week 1

2. Carol Clover, “Her Body, Himself” — Week 2

3. Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater” — Week 2

4. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (excerpt) — Week 3

5. Margaret R. Miles, Carnal Knowing (excerpt) — Week 5

6. Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History (excerpt) — Week 6

7. Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption (excerpt) — Week 7

8. Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex — Week 4

Additional material

Books

Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional · Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent · Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House · Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace · Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic · Melissa Broder, The Pisces

Films & Series

Carrie (1976) · A Dark Song (2016) · Raw (2016) · Incantation (2022) · Marianne (2019, series) · Midnight Mass (2021)

Nonfiction

Leila Taylor, Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread · Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy · Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection · bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze” · Jane Caputi, “Films of the Wounded Womb” · Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

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Another Note

This curriculum (and my own essays/research) revolves mostly around Christianity and Catholicism, as well as Medieval and Renaissance Europe. That is a personal choice, as it is what I am most familiar with. However, the themes, the questions, the feminism/religion/horror aspect can easily be translated across religions, cultures, times, spaces, etc. As this is a “personal” curriculum, please adapt it for your own personal use.

fin.

bree beauregard

thanks for being here. you can also find me on TikTok and Instagram. if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee (:

stay tuned for part 1 and 2 of the monstrous nun, coming next week.

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