The Witch Of Blackbird Pond Analysis

The Witch of Blackbird Pond is an American Historical Fiction novel published in 1958, written by Elizabeth George-Speare. The novel tells the story of young Katherine (Kit) Tyler post her departure from Barbados, beginning when The Dolphin, the ship she’s carried on, approaches the New England Shoreline. Kit immigrates to Wethersfield, Connecticut, following the death of her Grandfather, who had cared for her all her life in Barbados. She plans to live with her aunt, her uncle, and her cousins, not expecting the new life that lay ahead of her. When she arrives, a new and completely different culture than that of her home bombards her, that of the prudish New England Puritans. They lead a harder life, full of chores and religious duties, which Kit is unaccustomed to. She learns to leave her wealthy past from Barbados behind, dropping her silk dresses and more frivolous avocations in exchange for dull, hard Puritan life. At the edge of her uncle’s farm lives an old Quaker woman named Hannah. She’s ostracized for being a Quaker, living alone in the swamp that is Blackbird Pond after fleeing imprisonment from another Puritan town. Kit is told the old woman is rumored to be a witch by her

Because the book was written as fiction, and in the mid-twentieth century, it cannot be counted as fact, or as a true example of seventeenth-century life. However, the book does provide a semi-accurate picture of what 1600’s New England would have been like, by giving examples of the labors, toils and hardships of Puritan settlers, and their downfall in terms of social acceptance. In conclusion, the Witch of Blackbird Pond explored topics of Puritan life and the struggles of those who lived outside of it in Puritan communities, painting a realistic picture of early Northern-American