She is not a criminal
Witchcraft, wicked witchcraft, burning the bodies deemed wretched by men. This has long been the suffering women have endured as the tarring of Eve by men gripped civilization. Christian fathers pointed the finger firmly at their wives and daughters, seeing in their bodies the seeds of sin and doubt. Wretched they reduced women to legal infants, piling on abuse and misery when the crops fail, accidents happen, and a suspicious death stalked the land. Women choked, women ducked, women smashed all the in the names of fear. To be woman was long to be a walking crime in waiting, a suspect under her father and husband’s roof, petite treason waiting if their subjugation was called out. She is not a criminal in principle, only shaped thus by men for their own ends.
This is what first wave feminism fought back against, the insidious nature of societal infantilization before the law. To be woman was to be without property, to have no rights to your children, to be cast aside by society when your husband died. It was to be something lesser, where boy children inherited it all, leaving their mothers and sisters at their mercy. To be woman was not just second class citizenship, it was to be property and have the shadow of penury hanging forever over you. When your body was the right of your father to sell and your husband to abuse, all that you had left was the mercy of others.
