“It is clear that there can be no single correct interpretation or understanding of Baba Yaga.”
– Andreas Johns
Perhaps no other folktale villain is as ubiquitous as the evil woman.
If you’ve ever read a fairy tale, or listened to the yarn of folklore, you’ve come across a malicious stepmother, a wicked witch, a nasty queen, or some other form of angry, unpleasant female—or even a combination of several. She’s probably ugly; either she’s a conglomeration of unsightly features (warts, hooked nose, thin lips, razor teeth, discolored skin) or she’s the antithesis of the feminine ideal—jealous, severe, vain, as opposed to altruistic, ripe, gracious. She’s likely old, or if she’s not, she disguises herself to appear so, usually in the form of a hag or crone. She may—and probably does—eat her victims, which are usually men or children (or both). She might—and very likely will—harm rather than help. She typically possesses magical power or is otherwise practiced in dark arts and witchcraft; she could literally even transform into a monster (the Greeks, who influenced much in Renaissance art and literature, were particularly keen on this—see Medusa, Charybdis, Lamia, et al).
Regardless of her appearance or her magical attributes, the stereotypical villainous woman is probably solitary and already marginal, if not at the onset of the tale, then certainly by “happily ever after.” In some stories, she’s vanquished mercilessly—made to dance in iron shoes until she drops dead, the fate of Snow White’s evil queen stepmother, for example.
In sum, the evil woman of folklore and fairy tale is to be feared.
In particular, she is to be feared by children, especially young girls.
Harvard professor of folklore and mythology Maria Tatar suggests these typecast villainous women are especially scary because they reflect, at least historically, the most powerful person in a child’s life, and the most instructive to young girls: their mother[i]. Mothers are complex creatures who command tremendous authority over their children, and motherhood is a thing of unmistakable duality. On one hand, a mother nurtures, teaches, feeds, protects, and ensures survival of her child(ren). On the other, she makes rules, polices behavior, and doles out discipline. This is as true for human and animal mothers as it is for Mother Earth, who may be cruel or kind in turn, alternately giving and vengeful.
With few exceptions, most notable being the kindly if dim-witted Old Mother Hubbard who works hard to please her dog (relatable), mothers are typically killed off or absent in fairy tales, leaving other women, oft in the guise of stepmothers or other maternal figures, to scare the wits out of their children. In some stories, such as the Brothers Grimm’s “Cinderella,” the father (alive in this version) not only overlooks but actively condones the stepmother’s behavior—he even takes an axe to the pear tree a young Cinderella planted over her mother’s grave. Suffice it to say, in fairy tale and folklore, “mothers” are usually bad news, and fathers, when they’re not creating issues for a young heroine, offer little to no help.
Perhaps the most ambiguous and dynamic villainous woman of fairy-tale lore is Baba Yaga. A well-known, even popular Slavic folklore figure, Baba Yaga is a symbol of the matriarchal society from which she originated (for as patriarchal as Russia often describes itself, it is nonetheless “imbued with an infantile matriarchal cult[ii]”). Pagan matriarchal cultures are still alive and well in Russia today, such as within the Pinezhsky region, a “remote spot in the Russian North famous for its mystical beliefs, spells, and ancient wooden churches[iii].” Here, women are a force cementing power. Beliefs, spells, and traditions are passed down through the female line; women here have even been known to don mustaches—a curious accessory that scandalized a 2018 photoshoot with Vogue Italia[iv] in the Arctic village of Chikinskaya.
From her looks to her diet, Baba Yaga fits the mold of evil woman. She’s skinny, with long, tusk-like iron teeth and a hooked nose that sticks to the ceiling. Some depictions note her “bony” legs, which may indicate extreme thinness or actual skeleton-bone legs, while others suggest that her nose is so large to make up for the fact that she’s blind. In true “hagsploitation” fashion, additional emphasis is often placed on the repulsiveness of Baba Yaga’s breasts, buttocks, or vulva[v]. (The Encyclopaedia Britannica simplifies this flattering description into “ogress”[vi].)
Baba Yaga is something of a contortionist, and may be found stretched inside her dwelling, from one corner to another, usually hovering over her stove. She lives either alone or with her sisters deep in the forest—itself a symbol of the crossing-over from life to death in Slavic lore—in a hut that stands on chicken legs, is fenced by the skulls and bones of her victims, and is locked with human teeth. No broomstick for this forest-dwelling witch, Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar and wields a pestle, sweeping away her path of flight and creating tempests as she goes. She has many other magical tools in her keep that speak to her associations with fertility (without the participation of men, who’ve usually donated their bones to her fences). A known cannibal, Baba Yaga kidnaps and stews children. She is strongly associated with water birds and bird-maidens and often portrayed alongside mushrooms, particularly the red-capped and highly poisonous Amanita muscaria[vii].
Yet, for all her ferocity, Baba Yaga never initiates confrontation. She is happy to live isolated in her forests, though she is nonetheless held responsible when trouble arrives on her doorstep. Many of her tales see her as a wise benefactor who is fair, if harsh. Protagonists almost always escape or are sent home with gifts. No one is ever eaten (though one unlucky daughter did find herself disassembled and returned home in a box). In fact, many of Baba Yaga’s most classic stories bear a striking resemblance to Cinderella’s, including her most famous tale, “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” wherein Baba Yaga takes on both the role of fairy godmother and evil stepmother (it is one of Vasilisa’s step-sisters who ends up in the aforementioned box). Because of her evocative and ambiguous nature, Baba Yaga is often viewed as a harbinger of transformation. For better or worse, she is a woman who keeps her promises and demands respect.
Like many fairy tale and folkloric characters, Baba Yaga gained international recognition in translation in the 1870s after the original publication of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in 1812. However, Baba Yaga’s stories—of which there are thousands—probably date back to the medieval period. She is documented in woodblock prints (lubki) in the 17th century, and first mentioned in writing in Mikhail V. Lomomosov’s 1755 poem “Iaga Bab’a.” Her first narrative came in a story by Vasilii Levshin in 1780. Beyond her Slavic origins, there are many cultural adaptations of Baba Yaga-like characters, including Japan’s Yama Uba (or sometimes yamauba), Bulgaria’s gorska maika, and Hungary’s vasorrú bába, among others across the world.
A mercurial character, even Baba Yaga’s name merits discussion. “Baba” is typically regarded as a babble word meaning “grandmother” or “old woman,” a childish form of modern Ukrainian and Russian words for grandmother (babusia and babushka, respectively). In contemporary use, “baba” is a pejorative synonym for “woman,” usually paired with adjectives like old, dirty, or foolish, and sometimes applied as a taboo to various animals, natural phenomena, and objects (specifically, unsurprisingly, mushrooms). In more historic applications of the word, baba was attached to peasant women, midwives, and even pelicans, which may speak for Baba Yaga’s long beak and chicken-legged hut and certainly complements her dalliances with fertility.
“Yaga” is even more etymologically murky, as there is no scholarly consensus on the word’s origin. All interpretations are equally unpleasant (some link to the Russian verb meaning “to ride” or early Latin’s “snake”) and usually boil down, no pun intended, to “witch.” “Iaga,” another common spelling, has close association with “rage.” Ultimately, while Baba Yaga is most commonly interpreted to mean “Grandmother Witch,” it’s been suggested that her original named is so sacred and so feared that it could not be said aloud and has simply been lost to history.
As villainous as Baba Yaga is often depicted, scholars insist she is evolved from a goddess. Indeed, there are many indications that connect Baba Yaga to pagan goddesses and ancient deities, specifically the Greek goddess Persephone, queen of the underworld, with whom Baba Yaga shares themes of spring, the dead, the underworld, destruction, life, and nature. These elemental connections pair with Baba Yaga’s mythos of strong winds, dark forests, and animals, which, used to symbolize her wildness, are distinctly characterizations of Mother Earth herself—unpredictable and distinctly maternal.
Though blood-thirsty, Baba’s tendencies are not unlike the sacrificial rituals of the ancient Slavs. Her chicken-legged hut and bone fences, too, may have been inspired by nomadic hunters, who built storehouses on top of tree stands to keep their hard-earned spoils away from animals, or by the Sámi, an indigenous people throughout Scandinavia and northeastern Russia, who still today build their storehouses on stilts with webbed pedestal feet. Likewise, Neolithic burial practices put bodies of the deceased on raised platforms so corpses could dry and their bones be preserved, which may have inspired Baba Yaga’s skeletal fencing (which she shares with Hans Christian Andersen’s sea witch from “The Little Mermaid,” whose underwater home is constructed from the bones of sailors lost at sea).
In more recent times, Baba Yaga has been employed as a tool for socialist propaganda in the former Soviet Union, which often saw the cunning witch outwitted through “problem solving, ingenuity, courage, and hard work”—traits valued in Soviet citizens and the vospitaniye of Soviet youth[viii]. Today, she is an integral part of folklore nomenclature, existing everywhere from operas to advice columns, films, and literature (including the co-opted “boogeyman” of the John Wick franchise). She’s even been depicted in comics and as a character in the popular video game Fortnite.
Most importantly, she’s become a proto-feminist icon.
But why this transformation from elemental goddess to terrifying grandmother witch to icon? Well, for one, Baba Yaga is a boundary-crosser, a shape-shifter, a reminder that freedom lies beyond the border of social conventions[ix]. Baba Yaga is womanhood personified, power and paradox, equal parts feared and beloved. She has a heart, but her sympathy must be earned—and if it is not, she will consume you (literally). Baba Yaga represents the duality of Mother, yes, but she is also ripe in her Maiden and commanding in her Crone. Old women, in story and in practice, keep their communities thriving through their wisdom, knowledge, and art (including herbal medicine, baking, and fertility practices). They are the keepers of old truths; they judge and reward, hurt and heal, as it suits them. They represent freedom to shed convention, to conjure the versions of ourselves that we wish to become, to bask in the unapologetic ferocity of being woman—even when they are punished for it.
It is no wonder, then, that Baba Yaga has been and continues to be one of folklore’s most popular characters. And it is no surprise that, now more than ever, women across the world find solidarity with this wild woman living her truth and her peace hidden from the society’s strappings.
Baba Yaga’s stories offer an initiation from childhood to womanhood. She represents duality, complexity, ambiguity, and power, and she shows us, in story after story, how to embrace those most dark and dangerous and definitely-not-normative qualities in ourselves. Baba Yaga flaunts her “horrible” traits in the face of those that would contain her or relegate her to domestic roles or the banality of social constructs. She changes her shape at will and doesn’t shy away from her traits and tools, but neither is she ashamed of those that mark her as wild, wicked, or untamed.
Baba Yaga is mother to us all, and it is from her that women learn life’s most important lesson: to be ourselves, to be free, to be wild, and to never apologize for the power we wield.
[i] Blair, E. (2015, October 28). Why are old women often the face of evil in fairy tales and folklore? NPR. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/28/450657717/why-are-old-women-often-the-face-of-evil-in-fairy-tales-and-folklore
[ii] Goryunov, M. (2023, February 28). Russia is for Russian men! The Moscow Times. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/11/09/russia-is-for-russian-men-a41148
[iii] Sasha Kulak, O. P. (n.d.). A pagan matriarchy in the Russian north clings to fading traditions . The Calvert Journal. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/12279/pagan-magical-matriarchy-russia-z
[iv] Redazione. (2018, September 4). Chikinskaya. Vogue Italia. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.vogue.it/moda/cover-fashion-stories/2018/09/04/chikinskaya-vogue-italia-settembre-2018
[v] Wigzell, F. (2006). [Review of Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale, by A. Johns]. The Slavonic and East European Review, 84(4), 746–748. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214364
[vi] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2022, November 28). Baba Yaga. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baba-Yaga
[vii] Dugan, Frank. (2017). Baba Yaga and the Mushrooms. FUNGI Magazine. 10. 6-18.
[viii] Armknecht, M., Rudy, J. T., & Forrester, S. (2017). Identifying Impressions of Baba Yaga: Navigating the Uses of Attachment and Wonder on Soviet and American Television. Marvels & Tales, 31(1), 62–79. https://doi.org/10.13110/marvelstales.31.1.0062
[ix] Barnett, D. (2022, November 28). Baba Yaga: The greatest ‘wicked witch’ of all? BBC Culture. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221118-baba-yaga-the-greatest-wicked-witch-of-all
