Historians explain the overrepresentation of [female demoniacs] differently, pointing to their status as subordinate in the social hierarchy of early modern Europe: women were expected to submit to patriarchal control by husbands and fathers, and children were expected to submit to parental control and the authority of their elders. Possession interfered with this hierarchy by granting a kind of contradictory agency to the demoniac. According to early modern demonologists, the demoniac's speech and actions were directed by the demon, not the person whose body the demon was inhabiting. So, although the demoniac was deprived of their normal agency while possessed, a diagnosis of possession allowed the demoniac to break and even mock social expectations. Whether consciously or uncon-sciously, in fraud or in sincerity, the performance of possession gave new power to the possessed. In losing their agency to a possessing demon, demoniacs gained it in the world. Women believed to be possessed were granted licence to do things normally forbidden to them, and they could become active participants in the discernment of what was vexing them without needing to take full responsibility for whatever statements they voiced.
