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The witch panic started in Salem, Massachusetts hanged 19 people and inspired a wide-swept fear of the Devil and witchcraft that lasted for over a year. Historians have discussed why this panic occurred for years, producing a slew of opinions on what caused one small community to erupt into such fear. Two such historians, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, attempted to understand the 1692 Salem witch trials by analyzing Salem Village’s social and economic tensions dividing the community in the book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Yet the two historians ignore the largest group of participants in the witch trials: women. When looking at the documents recording the events of 1692, however, a historian cannot escape the importance of the young girls who were first afflicted and started the accusations.
After reading “Devil in the Shape of a Woman: The Economic Basis of Witchcraft “by Carol Karlsen I was intrigued by Karlsen’s interpretation, and upset about the ways women were treated. During these witch hunts women and men alike were accused of the crime, but the majority were women. I found it interesting that she related the commonly known Puritan beliefs, which lead to accusations of witchcraft, with gender roles. She ultimately says that Puritans feared these accused women because they symbolized female independence. I found it shocking that women, often the wealthier, had a greater chance of being let go of their accusations if they had a husband to spoke on their behalf.
In both The Crucible and in modern day witch hunts, witch hunts are caused out of fear or for personal gain. Jill Schonebelen wrote a research paper on Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights. Throughout this article, it mentions the persecution of witches today in communities around the globe, mentioning the flashbacks of similar strategies that were used in the past, doing different types of tortures. In Modern days, recent generations have abandoned wonderful traditions. Rather, recollecting others with distasteful memories such as witchcraft.
As Whitney mentioned, the witch hunts occurred in the 17th century were due to the fears of women becoming “economically and psychological” independent, and threatening the male control of property and social order. Those women were viewed as “discontent” meaning the refusal of accepting their predetermined social status (Whitney 85). In contrast, men who had high authority and social status like the Putmans and Parris could purposely manipulate women and instigated the public resentment to falsely accuse, and cruelly eliminate their enemies such as Rebecca and other accused witches. Certainly, the girls and women in the Putman and Parris’s families who made the false accusations of witches and witchcraft were wielded by
The idea that witches can and will cause death is also easily traced throughout a significant portion of Newfoundland’s witch history, as it is noted that some of the earliest accounts of Newfoundland’s witches came in the form of the Basque women in 1609, who reportedly confessed on trial “to having travelled through the air to attend satanic assemblies in Terre-Neuve , perching atop ships’ masts, poisoning the catch as it dried on the sore, and sinking ships” (Rieti 2008, xi). Witches, in these instances, are meant to be seen as synonymous with killers—poisoning the catch and sinking the ships are both accusations that indeed could have led to deaths if it were something they were accused of—and their
Yelitza Andrade Pyles English 11 Honors 12 October 2015 Witch-hunts Justification In Salem, Massachusetts 1692 the Salem witch trials began when a group of girls lied and said that they were possessed by the devil and the accusations of several innocent people being involved with witchcraft took place. Trials later took place after the accusations for the hearings of each person and to hear their story. Many people who had hearings lied to the court and said that they were possessed to not get executed and to save their lives but many did not want to lie because it was wrong and an injustice. The event led to 19 executions of all innocent people and 100 other innocent women, men, and children were put in prison because of the false accusations.
This jealousy was created from other’s female gender, age and marital status. Based on document B provided, the accusers were around the age of 16-20, female, and accused mostly women (41-60), that were married of being a witch. Drawing to a conclusion, the accusers, younger and single girls, were jealous of old, married women who had their future set for them
Salem Witch Trials of 1692 The Salem Witch Trials were a terrible time in the early days of American History. The Puritan villagers were frightened about losing their new home due to starvation, Indians, and illness. Fear allowed the trials to happen. The puritans began to lose control of the strict religious tenant that brought them here to the new land.
Alexia Mendez Ms. O’Brien AP Euro 1 November 2017 Witchcraft DBQ Starting in the fifthteenth century, a witchcraft craze occurred. People, left and right, mostly women, were being accused of being a witch. These people, innocent or not, once accused were put into prisons where they were questioned and tortured until they would confess being a witch.
Gender roles played a heavy role in colonial society, and the women who did not conform to these roles were easy targets for witchcraft accusations. Women who were post-menopausal, widowed, unmarried were not fulling their “duty” to society of bearing children and thus could come under fire (Lecture.) Those who were aggressive, out spoken, or did not do as another wished could also bring cries of “witch!” (Lecture.) This is highlighted in Cotton Mather’s Accounts of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, one of these accused women Susana Martin stands trial with many of the testifiers being men who had been wronged by Martin in some way or another.
‘In the context of the period c1550 to c1650 to what extent were religious changes most responsible for the persecution of witches in Europe?’ The ‘European witch craze’ in which widespread moral panic suggested that wicked satanic witches were operating as an organised threat to Christianity; those accused were portrayed as being worshipers of the Devil, engaged in acts of malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches’ Sabbaths. Those arrested, convicted and executed were statistically old, poor women. Midelfort’s ‘domino theory’ explains the escalation of persecution as the consequence of attempts “to enforce social and moral discipline (…) one of the consequences of the general movement of reform and repression”.
Bridget Bishop, a resident of Salem, was the first person to be tried as a witch. Surprisingly, Bishop was accused of witch craft by the highest number of witneses. After Bishop, more than two hundred people were tried of practicing witchcraft and twenty were executed. Many of these accusations arose from jealous, lower class members of society, especially towards women who had come into a great deal of land or wealth. Three young children by the names of Elizabeth, Abigail, and Ann were the first three people to be “harmed” by the witches.
the common eye was the distinction of malicious witchcraft, however: any magics that involved the devil’s work or diabolical action was completely heretical. Bailey takes the broader stance and supports the view that ‘superstition’ was a flexible idea manipulated by religious authority, writing: “[Superstition] was, in fact, among the most versatile, broadly applicable terms that Christian authorities used to establish boundaries between licit and illicit action…” Since the ‘Christian authorities’ could therefore judge what was heretical and what was not, it seems clear to look to the clergy for a consensus – however, this is not the case that Bailey puts forward. He uses the example of a woman in the German Rhineland who sook a ‘questionable blessing’ for her son who injured his finger. The local clergy opposed this ritual when she asked for permission: yet, after travelling to the nearby Landau, she met a clergymen who held no qualms performing the ritual .
Carol Karlsen 's The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England provides a sociological and anthropological examination of the witchcraft trends in early New England. By examining the records, Karlsen has created what she suggests was the clichéd 'witch ' based on income, age, marital status, etc. She argues that women who had inherited or stood to inherit fairly large amounts of property or land were at particular risk, as they "stood in the way of the orderly transmission of property from one generation of males to the next." These women, Karlsen suggests, were targeted largely because they refused to accept "their place" in colonial society.
A witch hunt is a campaign directed against a person or group holding unorthodox or unpopular views or a search for and persecution of a supposed “witch”. Throughout history the idea of “witches” has changed dramatically from the 1600s when the events in Salem, Massachusetts where people were accusing women and child of using spells to bewitch people, bring chaos to a town, and associated with the devil (satan). Today people associate “the witch hunt” with a trail or hunt without physical proof or a valid reason to pursue this cause. Hysteria is an exaggerated and/or an uncontrollable emotion and/or excitement, especially among a group of people. This is one factor that allows people the perfect opportunity to create chaos and use scapegoats
