The issue at issue here concerns the different theories as to why the witch hunts took place. This is a topic that has many different views and opinions. It is unlikely that we will ever truly understand the exact reasons, but historians can draw plausible and logical conclusions based on supporting information and evidence. Not all ideas have as much evidence as others, and some theories have been virtually ignored or debunked. Hester's ideas in "Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunts" take the feminist stance and rely on the theory of misogyny to explain what the possible reasons behind the witch-hunts were. Hester argues very simply that one aspect is that witch hunts were a way of social control of women and a way of reasserting the authority of a patriarchal society; a way to restore and maintain the male status quo in the evolving social order (Hester). Hester's theory is at least partly true; in general the accusation of “witch” was made much more often against women than against men. In the Holy Roman Empire they accused approximately 24,000 people of being witches, of which 76% were women. Germany and Hungary also had a large number of accused, the majority were women, over 80%. There are exceptions in countries such as Russia, Normandy, Estonia and Iceland, where the main victims of witch hunts were men. There are also places where witch hunts were relatively equal for both sexes, such as in France and Finland. These exceptions reinforce one of Holmes' ideas about witch hunts. Holmes argues that it wasn't so much misogyny but rather that women, more often than men, possessed attributes that during this period led people to think... middle of paper... .Purkiss, Diane. The witch in history: representations of the early modern age and the twentieth century. London: Routledge, 1996. Scarre, Geoffrey and John Callow. Witchcraft and magic in 16th and 17th century Europe. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.Sharpe, James. Tools of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. Paperback edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.Wills, Deborah. Malevolent education: witch hunts and maternal power in early modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Oldridge, Darren. The Witchcraft Reader. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2008. Holmes, Clive. “Women: witnesses and witches”. Past and Present 140 (1993): 45-78.Hester, Marianne. “Patriarchal reconstruction and witch hunts”. Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Faith (1996): 288-306.