07/05/2025
One of the most fearsome characters to the patriarchy was once the weaver-woman. The term spinster, used as a derogatory label for an unmarried older woman, originated in an effort to condemn the successfully self-employed woman who did not need financial support. Spinning and weaving were good trades, and these women did not need to marry in order to survive.
When women gathered to work, as they often would when weaving or spinning, such a gathering was feared by the overculture for its otherworldliness, for its hidden nature where anything could happen outside the watchful eye of male authority.
In From the Beast to the Blonde, Marina Warner writes, “Typical meeting places for women alone, like public laundries and spinning rooms, were feared to give rise to slander and intrigue and secret liaisons. Of all the professions, official and unofficial, those which allowed women to pass between worlds out of the control of native or marital family seemed to pose the greatest threat to apparent due order.”
To weave has always been the witch’s work, and witch’s work has always threatened the powers that be.”
~ Danielle Dulsky
www.danielledulsky.com
Art by Red K Elders
www.redkelders.com
