Character Analysis
Season of the Witch
We first see Mother Malkin when she's buried alive, upside down, in a pit that's covered with thirteen iron bars. Tom hears this witch is "as evil as you can get" (5.80). Why, you ask? Because she helped deliver babies... and ate them.
When she's not eating fresh baby, her other activities include: escaping from graves, eating rats, possessing butchers, and trying to kill Tom. See, there are four types of witches in this world: the benign, the falsely accused, the unaware, and the malevolent. Mother Malkin is by far the malevolent-est. (Yes, we totally just made that a word.)
Although Alice lives in a gray area between the malevolent and the benign, there doesn't seem to be any gray area with Mother Malkin. She's made of the darkest evil. If you told us she was volunteering at a library or a soup kitchen in her spare time, we would not believe you.