Growing up reading fairy tales, I was struck by how many times a princess needed a man to save her from distress. The norm of having women be gentle and submissive has been a theme since the decline of hunter-gatherer societies and continues to this day. I slowly began to realize  that the villains in many stories were older, single women who were cast out from society and had some type of magic power . When examining explanations, we can see the link to witch hunts which have been written about since Saul encountered the witch of Endor and wrote about it in the bible warning the readers “not to let a witch live” and talking about the ill fates of those who practice witchcraft. This is an interesting note because he believes that the witch is a guiding force after getting no response from god about what he should do in battle and changes his mind when god reprimands him for not trusting that he would give him answers. Witches have been around since the beginning of time and are known as “wise women” to some and “practitioners of the devil” to others. This duality in nature is something I will deconstruct in my work and talk about why these folktale witches were created in the first place. Some are learning lessons, others are warnings, and yet others are out of jealousy and spite. By examining witches, we can see how women broke gender role expectations and were reprimanded by society for doing so. The story of Yamauba is an example of this since the origins of this story stem from a tradition of exiling women from societies that were too weak or too ‘difficult’ to put up with. These women were often accused of misdeeds wrongfully, said to have magical powers, or commune with spirits. These women started living off the land deep in the woods, often looked slightly haggard in appearance, and took to finding natural remedies for their ailments. The gender bias against women was the demise of many of them who couldn’t survive in the harsh landscape. Still today, women who don’t adhere to the societal gender norms are seen as immoral, disrupters, and uncontrollable. The way we think and act towards women who are seen as peculiar hasn’t changed from BC to the present.