I know it's bad form to point up your own posts, but since it's more connected to a thread I started a few months ago than where I put it, I'm posting this again as its own topic... hope no one minds! :\

my working theory:

The spaces witches inhabit act as extensions of the body; figures like Baba Yaga are practically appetite personified. They cannot consume themselves; for the witch in Hansel and Gretel to eat her own gingerbread house would be an act of self-destruction, leaving her homeless and helpless. Like all healthy bodies, witches turn their appetites to things beyond themselves and take nourishment into the body. To starve is literally to turn the appetite inward and eat oneself alive, and that is what the passive victims often seem to do...
I'm also thinking of cannibalistic women, and the consumption of children in general. In one light it is rebellion against a feminine role which is to some extent self-sacrificing: a pregnant woman is being consumed from within, her sustenance is being stolen (you could say shared, but the baby will take it regardless). Eating children turns the tables on their innocent but demanding appetites. On the other hand, you could argue the consumption of children is an act of *jealousy,* a desire to get a child inside one by any means at one's disposal.

As you can see, the Insatiable Woman thread has helped me immensely to shape my ideas . I am still a little uncertain what to do with Baba Yaga, though. My argument has an inherent contradiction: if the witches are "healthy" for turning their appetite outward (but denounced because ambitious women are dangerous) and the victims/heroines (only in specific stories, mind, I'm not suggesting the terms are synonymous) are upheld for being good, self-denying little anorexics, then why does the witches' food fail to sustain them? Why is Baba Yaga still "Old Boney Legs"?