Though it has been established that the concept of the witch is primarily used to demonize strong women whose strength derives from their deviation from the patriarchal norm, I argue the witch’s significance in literature and social development goes beyond gender or sex. Labeling a woman as a witch made her into a form of the Other. In many ways, the witch can stand in for any person who diverges from the "majority," which is imagined to be composed of dominant groups such as heterosexual and cisgender people, particularly men, Caucasians, and Protestant Christians, leaving people of other races, cultural backgrounds, and gender and sexual expressions vulnerable to suspicions and accusations of witchcraft. This thesis examines this broad form of othering through a brief survey of literature of the United Kingdom and the United States from the seventeenth century to the present to demonstrate how the role of the witch has shifted over time as attitudes toward the Other has also changed: from that of outright fear and paranoia to a fetishized form of celebration (so long as the status quo remains intact).