Anne Barstow in her book, ‘Witchcraze’ stated that women were subjected to male perversion and even sexual abuse during the period of witch-hunting. She therefore comes to the conclusion that the men used the witch-hunting as an excuse to satisfy their sadism and that women were their primary target, rather than attempting to purify the world of diabolic pacts. This is evident in the records describing methods used to force information from the convicted witches in which these brutal methods were permitted by the legal process during interrogations. In her perspective, witch-hunters were likely to have been carrying out the witch hunt and interrogations while being blinded by their “perverted sexuality”. Robin Briggs agrees to some extent, …show more content…
This is particularly as her theories, as stated by historians such as Fudge, make large assumptions, and she also tries to deny the fact that 20% of the accused men were charged for being a witch during the period. Historians hold different perspectives for different reasons and sometimes for different historical evidence they have found. Anne Barstow may have found the statistics of the high percentage of women being executed to support her argument that misogyny was the main cause of witch-hunting. However, this statistic must be checked to make sure it did not include any bias. Also, compared to other historians such as G. Scarre, J. Callow, and B. Levack, Barstow gives only a few countries which may indicate that she removed some countries which did not agree with her theory, or was not impactful enough. This detracts from her argument as this manipulation of data can become obvious through the comparison with other data, and therefore leads to her argument being unreliable. Also the fact that Anne Barstow is a feminist historian may have affected her argument as she would have been convinced that witch-hunting in the Early Modern Europe which gives way to a possibility that her argument is biased. Thus Barstow’s argument requires an historian to be careful in agreeing or using her theories for support, and hence is barely
My research question has to do with how puritan women are represented by the tried witches, and with background information on what Bishop was accused of as well as the fact the judge did not believe her, I am able to refute the logic of why she was executed. Bishop was not committing any actual crimes (by law) which means she was simply going against social norms. For example, Bishop was accused of murdering children, however there was not evidence found on where those bodies were, or exactly who she killed. There was no proof of any of her accusations being true, accept for the dolls she had in her house. In fact, once these “poppets” were found, “Bishop’s fate was sealed, and she was hanged in June 1692” (Associated Press A3). It seems as if the court wanted used the only source of proof they could find to hang her. The reputation Bishop gained throughout her court hearings scared the people of Salem because she never conformed to the female Puritan way of
Karlsen highlights with an remarkable accuracy, the prejudices connected with areas of the particular portrayal of women along with the linkage of the "lady as-witch" idea inside United states tradition. Many contemporary individuals ended up being perplexed by such hasty action against a force that has no evidence. Karlsen brings a plethora of ideas to the table regarding these prejudices and explains in detail, the injustices performed against entirely innocent individuals.
It cannot be ignored that the large majority of those accused of witchcraft were women, although regions fluctuated on average 80 percent of witches were women. This may be used to argue that witch-hunting
One of such factor was to restore moral balance and insecurities in the society. The two notorious witch hunters in the book John Stearne and Matthew Hopkins are presented hunting witches in East Anglian mainly through interrogating the suspects. The main method that is used in the interrogation is torture and some suspects mainly the elderly women confess of being witches. Some of them are killed as an act of removing these evil acts from the society. Generally, witches are associated with evil acts in the society and therefore them being wiped from the society was a sign of ensuring morals are maintained in the in the society and eliminating insecurity issues related to witches. Another short term factor that led to witch hunt was to ensure that the society lived and uphold Christians’ values. The witch hunters used the teachings of the Bible in hunting the witches with the objective of hunting them out from the society. This was aimed at wiping out evil acts from the society and ensuring the people lived the Christian
The term witchcraft is defines as the practice of magic intended to influence nature. It is believed that only people associated with the devil can perform such acts. The Salem Witch Trials was much more than just America’s history, it’s also part of the history of women. The story of witchcraft is first and foremost the story of women. Especially in its western life, Karlsen (1989) noted that “witchcraft challenges us with ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society and with women themselves”. Witchcraft also confronts us too with violence against women. Even through some men were executed as witches during the witch hunts, the numbers were far less then women. Witches were generally thought to be women and most of those who were accused and executed for being witches were women. Why were women there so many women accused of witchcraft compared to men? Were woman accused of witchcraft because men thought it was a way to control these women? It all happened in 1692, in an era where women were expected to behave a certain way, and women were punished if they threatened what was considered the right way of life. The emphasis of this paper is the explanation of Salem proceedings in view of the role and the position of women in Colonial America.
The witch hunts in early modern Europe were extensive and far reaching. Christina Larner, a sociology professor at the University of Glasgow and an influential witchcraft historian provides valuable insight into the witch trials in early modern Europe in her article 'Was Witch-Hunting Woman-Hunting?'. Larner writes that witchcraft was not sex-specific, although it was sex-related (Larner, 2002). It cannot be denied that gender plays a tremendous role in the witch hunts in early modern Europe, with females accounting for an estimated 80 percent of those accused (Larner, 2002). However, it would be negligent to pay no heed to the remaining 20 percent, representing alleged male witches (Larner, 2002). The legal definition of a witch in this time, encompassed both females and males (Levack, 1987). This essay will explore the various fundamental reasons for this gender discrepancy and highlight particular cases of witchcraft allegations against both women and men. These reasons arise from several fundamental pieces of literature that depict the stereotypical witch as female. These works are misogynistic and display women as morally inferior to men and highly vulnerable to temptations from demons (Levack, 1987). This idea is blatantly outlined in the text of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' written by James Sprenger and Henry Kramer in the late fifteenth century. This book is used as the basis for many of the witch trials in early modern Europe (Levack, 1987). The text describes women as sexually submissive creatures and while remarking that all witchcraft is derived from intense sexual lust, a women is thus a prime candidate for witchcraft (Sprenger & Kramer, 1487). In this time period, men are seen as powerful and in control and thus rarely...
The European witch-hunts that took place from 1400 to 1800 were complete monstrosities of justice, but the brutality seemed to have been concentrated more in certain parts of Europe than other parts. This is especially true in the British Isles during the witch trials of 1590-1593, where Scotland, a country with a fourth of the population of England, experienced three times as many executions as them. Before these particular trials, England and Scotland were both only mildly involved in the hunts, but a Scottish witch’s confession in late 1590 unveiled a plot to kill King James VI by creating a storm to sink his ship. This confession led to the implementation of others and quickly festered into the widely publicized hunts throughout Scotland in the late 16th century.
John Ruston Pagan’s book, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, is split into sections describing the different components of sex and law in early Virginia. Pagan describes these components through the story of Anne Orthwood, John Kendall, and their bastard son, Jasper. Anne Orthwood was born an illegitimate child. There was much shame and disgrace for illegitimate children. Although illegitimacy made Anne’s life especially hard, she also faced the same pressures as other members of her generation. Her generation was dealing with shortages of land and labor; increasing prices, rent, and unemployment rates; and declining wages. These struggles caused many people to emigrate from Britain to the Americas.
The dialogue a narrator uses with characters in a short story reflects on how the story is being understood by the reader. A character’s dialogue is assumed to be controlled by the author, and then the reader comprehends the dialogue through different points of view in which is told by a narrator. Which point of view the author uses can change how the reader may understand the story. Understanding a story is not just based off the ability to comprehend the plot, setting, characters, and theme. But importantly, understanding what point of view the narrator is in and whether the narrator has dialogue with characters within the story is important. The short story “Lusus Naturae”, written by Margaret Atwood, it’s a short story told by a first person narrator who is a main character in the story but has very minimum dialogue with the other characters. Another short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, is
A Sociologist’s Perspective,” share various opinions while developing their own theories. The comparison of these observations will focus upon why the witch trials occurred when they did, why did they stop when they did, why did the witch trials occur when they did, and who was persecuted and who was responsible for the identification and punishment of witches. Concerning why the witch hunts occurred when they did the agreed upon opinion by all three author’s is the social unrest and uncertainty felt due to the Protestant Reformation and the schism it created amongst the populace, the effects of recovering from plague and war, and the enforced patriarchal structure of a society that was changing. It was during the Reformation that Christians,’ Protestant and Catholic alike, endeavored to convict all individuals guilty of heresy, with witches acting as the scapegoat.... ...
Although witch trials were not uncommon in Puritanical New England, none had reached such epidemic proportions as Salem. In 1691 the mass hysteria began when several young girls dabbled in witchcraft and began acting strange. When villagers took notice the girls were seriously questioned and so they began naming people, mainly woman, who had supposedly bewitched them (Boyer, p66). Several other who had been accused were woman displayed ‘unfeminine’ behavior and those who
There have been various explanations by different historians for why the majority of Witches accused were woman. One of the first models concerning Witchcraft and gender to be produced was the ‘Witch-cult‘ idea. This theory was devised by Margaret Murray in the early 20th century and revolved around the idea of Witchcraft being an actual pre-Christian religion. This pagan woman-based religion centred around ‘The Horned God’ who from the Christian point of view was Satan. Murray writes that the ‘God of the old religion becomes the Devil of the new.’ This religion concerned woman in that it was being supressed by the Christian Church which was a male dominated organisation with an exclusively male hierarchy. In effect the whole Witch-hunt affair was a persecution of woman by men, both being polar opposites even in religion. Murray’s thesis proved very popular with radical feminists from the 1960s onwards, providing the feminist movement with a sort of rallying point, further exaggerating the sex specific elements in the Murray model. Murray’s thesis however, was attacked from day one and continues to be discredited to this day due to the lack of evidence in support of it and th...
Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.
(Ray p.32). However, as more fragments of textual evidence occur, historians are making new evaluations of how the witch trials were exaggerated by recent literature. Some historians like Richard Godbeer,
In Trier, which was the site of many witch trials, there was the trial of Dietrich Flade. Flade was a man, part of the elite, and was highly education, basically the opposite of a perfect witch. This case shows how the stereotype may help to put witches on trial but it won’t be the only reason they’re there. Lorraine, where Camont is from, was the center of some intense witch trials in the sixteenth century making in easier to put people on trial for witchcraft because the more witch hunting that occurred the more almost normal it became. This was especially true in the case of Nicholas Remy who used evidence drawn from his cases not only to prove other cases, but to write his book Demonolatry as well. In a way it was a self-fulfilling cycle. In many other cases the witches did fit the stereotype like the trial record of Suzanna Gaudry. She was a women similar to Camont in her ability to fit the stereotype of a witch, and also similar in that she only confessed under torture. However, it wasn’t her physical attributes that put her on trial but that fact that she “sought refuge in this city of Valenciennes, out of fear of being apprehended by the law…” for the crime of witchcraft. This goes to show the lengths witch hunters were willing to go to catch witches, no matter if the person was or wasn’t