From this point, I started to read about the history of the European witch hunt to see if my intuitions were true and if stereotypes from that time were still applied, especially on single women. In my childhood, I have been really fascinated by witches such as Floppy Le Redoux in “The Glassblower’s Children” by Maria Gripe and in 2003, I was passionate about Starhawk (“Dreaming the dark: Magic, sex and politics”), a Californian neo-pacific witch, ecologist, feminist and anti-globalist. And then, I realized that those two types of women were united as witch figures and those initial concerns were linked to my old fascination for this character.

But I couldn’t choose between the two and none of them would motivate me quite enough so I would start writing. Why did you choose to work on the figure of the witch? What does she represent to you, personally ?Īt first, I knew I wanted to write on two topics : Women who won’t have children by choice (which is my case) and the social perspective on aging women, which is much harsher than aging men. Journalist for Le Monde Diplomatique, she published two key essays on the representation of the woman’s body ( Beauté fatale, 2015 ) and on the figure of witches (“Witches : The unbeaten power of women”, 2018) that can be linked to the image of independent women in our modern societies.

INTERVIEW – Mona Chollet is one of the major feminist figures in France.

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