of her otherhood , reimagining it as a unifying term that embraces a shared position on the margins .
Though this redefinition of the witch reclaims some power , it risks overwriting the witch ’ s real history , burying the individual for the sake of the many , as Willis suggests in ‘ The Witch ’. Rich argued that ‘ writing is re-naming ’, and this is true for Sexton who ties witch to woman poet , but ‘ The Witch ’ is not intended to reinvent , but establish the dangers of the term ’ s contradictoriness . Willis recognises how expectations of witches have changed drastically over time , from historical victim of ‘ iron spikes ’ and ‘ lead in the eye ’, to the sexually deviant one able to ‘ become a cat in order to sneak into a good man ’ s chamber ’. These become outdated when we hear of how ‘ In Hollywood the sky is made of tin ’, but the old belief that ‘ A witch will neither sink nor swim ’ encapsulates the witch ’ s impossible situation