Character Analysis
Imagine that a Dr. Bronner's-loving hippie traveled back in time to 1600s England, and you've got a nice description of Anys Gowdie.
The First Hippie
Anys is Eyam's resident medicine woman, using herbs and other natural remedies to help her patients. As it happens, this technique is looked upon with distrust by the villagers: "I knew how easy it is for widow to be turned witch in the common mind, and the first cause generally is that she meddles somehow in medicinals" (2.2.50).
Anys earns extra distrust due to her freewheeling nature. She lives outside of town. She embraces her sexuality. She sees wives as "shackled to their menfolk as surely as the plough-horse to the shares" (2.3.26). Because of these proto-feminist beliefs, Anys inspires Anna as she begins her own quest of feminine self-discovery. Anys is second only to Elinor in this regard.
Unfortunately, Anys' tendency to listen "to her own heart rather than having her life ruled by others' conventions" (2.3.25) bites her in the butt. Once the plague takes hold of Eyam, the desperate villagers pin the blame for the disease on Anys and her aunt, Mem. The villagers are convinced that the Gowdies are witches. So the villagers go on the attack. Mem survives the experience, but Anys is lynched by the angry mob.
In her final revenge, Anys uses the villagers' fears against them by accusing them of being in cahoots with Satan, making them suspicious of one another. And, in fact, the only people doing actual evil things are...the villagers. So she's kind of right. Think of it as Anys' final show of disrespect to a society she never deigned worthy of joining.