Did you know the people who were assumed witches were not always bad? These people had children and families. Yet they were still accused of terrible things and punished in the worst ways. The people who were usually accused were women. The age did not really matter it was more of what they did or did not do. These women did everything for the men in their families but got nothing in return. Salem was not a very good place for women because their purpose was mostly to take care of the children and serve their husbands. They had no rights at all even in their church.
The Church of England was not a good religion during the sixteenth century, the puritans want to practice their own religion but the Church of England would not allow them. People didn’t want to obey the churches authority anymore. The Puritans it particular did not want to follow the Church of England. Over time, “the church of England began to crack down on those who refused to bow to their authority” (www3.gettysburg.edu) this caused the Puritans to leave England. The puritans left England and went on a dangerous journey to be free from the church. It was so bad that, “it got to the point where the puritans decided to face the dangerous journey to the New World rather than be persecuted for their religion” (www3.gettysburg.edu) these people would rather put their lives and families in danger than to be put down by the Church of England. There were ranks inside the church and women were at the bottom.
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
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Pascale B. "Roles of Women and Children in Salem." The Salem Times 1693. n.p., n.d. Web. 18 February 2014. .
Karlsen, Carol. "Witchcraft: Prejudice and Intolerance Targeted Gender During the Witch Hunts: Effects on Early Mode." setonhill.edu. n.p., 1998. Web. 18 February. .
Donna M. Campbell. "The Salem Witch Trials." wsu. n.p., 2010. Web. 18 February 2014. .
Ryan Thomas. "10 Tests For Guilt at the Salem Witch Trials." http://listverse.com. n.p., July 27, 2012. Web. 18 February 2014. .
Women started to accuse other women and they also accused a few men. Murrin details that this caused a challenge in the local judical system: “…a number of judicial irregularities, including an unusual heavy dependence by the courts on spectral evidence ( when an accused witch’s spirit or specter, supposedly tormented the victim) and the use of open confessions by the accused to escape punishment” (339). New England had a organized way of doing things when it came it witches, but once accusations arose in Salem they started a new system which led their town into hysteria. “The Salem witch panic stands out, in part, because the judicial execution of twenty people within three months became an event of enormous drama in a region that hanged comparatively few offenders and in a colony that hanged only five people for witchcraft before 1692 and only one before 1656”
The Salem, Massachusetts Witch Trials have generated extensive evaluation and interpretation. To explain the events in Salem, psychological, political, environmental, physical, and sociological analysis have all been examined. The authors Linnda Caporael, Elaine Breslaw, Anne Zeller, and Richard Latner all present differing perspectives to speculate about the events of the Salem Witch Trials. This changing interpretation and perspective has resulted in an extensive historiography to explain the
Le Beau, Bryan F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Rosenthal. Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Salem 1692, two girls ,Betty Parris, age nine, and her eleven year old cousin Abigail Williams, had a dream. They wanted to be the best actors in the village. They worked very hard to do that and they got twenty people killed. Betty and Abigail were Puritans and they are not supposed to lie or they would end up with the devil in the afterlife, but it seemed like they didn’t care. That’s why we ask, why were people blaming the innocent for being witches in Salem, 1692? The Salem Witch Trials were caused by two poor, young girls who acted possessed. There were also other people who took the risk of lying and accused other people. Most of the accusers were under the age of twenty and woman. The little girls caused the Salem Witch Trials hysteria by pretending to be possessed. Most of the accusers were poor and lived in the western part of the town.
Brooks, Rebecca . "The Salem Witch Trials." History of Massachusetts. N.p., 18 Aug. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. .
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died an innocent death. All of those innocent people were accused of one thing, witchcraft. During 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts many terrible events happened. A group of Puritans lived in Salem during this time. They had come from England, where they were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs. They chose to come live in America and choose their own way to live. They were very strict people, who did not like to act different from others. They were also very simple people who devoted most of their lives to God. Men hunted for food and were ministers. Women worked at home doing chores like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. The Puritans were also very superstitious. They believed that the devil would cause people to do bad things on earth by using the people who worshiped him. Witches sent out their specters and harmed others. Puritans believed by putting heavy chains on a witch, that it would hold down their specter. Puritans also believed that by hanging a witch, all the people the witch cast a spell on would be healed. Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe. As one can see, the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
Kent, Deborah. Witchcraft Trials: Fear, Betrayal, and Death in Salem. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
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.
Carlson, Laurie M. A Fever in Salem A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1999. Print.
During the 1690s, the Salem Witchcraft Trials occurred. However, they did not start in Salem, they occurred first in Danver (Starkey vii). This atrocity of an event was first started because of the fantasies of very little girls. These girl’s accusations created the largest example of witch hysteria on record (Starkey viii). During this time, the authorities had arrested over 150 people from more than two different towns (Gragg ix). Salem however, was not the only town that had girls saying there were witches in their town (Godbeer ix). Many people tried to escape, but that didn’t go to well for them (Godbeer x).
The Puritans were Englishmen who chose to separate from the Church of England. Puritans believed that the Anglican Church or Church of England resembled the Roman Catholic Church too closely and was in dire need of reform. Furthermore, they were not free to follow their own religious beliefs without punishment. In the sixteenth century the Puritans settled in the New England area with the idea of regaining their principles of the Christi...
McBain, J. ‘The Salem Witch Trials: A Primary Source History of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem, Massachusetts’, (Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2002)
-Sutter, Tim. “Victims of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.” Salem Witch Trials. 17 February 2010. .
Blumberg, J. (2007, October 24). A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials. Smithsonian Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/?page=2&no-ist