Damned Women

Damned Women
Author: Elizabeth Reis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1999-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501713337

In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.

SALEM POSSESSED

SALEM POSSESSED
Author: Paul Boyer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 1976-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674282655

Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion which climaxed in the Salem witch trials From rich and varied sources—many neglected and unknown—Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the people and events more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the massive literature. It is a story of powerful and deeply divided families and of a community determined to establish an independent identity—beset by restraints and opposition from without and factional conflicts from within—and a minister whose obsessions helped to bring this volatile mix to the flash point. Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the disintegration of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.

Witchcraft Trials

Witchcraft Trials
Author: Deborah Kent
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2008-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780766029064

Enhanced with sidebars and colorful maps, each book in this engaging series focuses on an event or era in American history, spanning from the time before Columbus' arrival to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750

Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750
Author: Marion Gibson
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2006-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826483003

A collection of materials, including works of literature as well as historical documents, this work provides a broad view of how witches and magicians were represented in print and manuscript. It presents the voices of witches, accusers, ministers, physicians, poets, dramatists, magistrates, and witchfinders from both sides of the Atlantic.

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England
Author: Carol F. Karlsen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 393
Release: 1998-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393317595

In this work, Carol Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in 17th century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society. "A pioneering work in . . . the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft".--Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University.