The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials will always be remembered as the most eventful time in American history. This event was so close to home that it began to effect towns and villages in the same area. Then the witch mania began overseas and affecting the whole world. Many people wonder how such an awful events such a small town and become a worldwide event. This made everyone take a look back and think, if this can happen in a small town such as Salem, then it can happen anywhere. These events here opened up a door for a whole new world where anything out of the ordinary was considered witchcraft and was punishable by death. Others might be question what did claiming you knew where a witch was effect you and your family. These girls that the witch accusations came from what caused them to make these cries for help.

In Mary Beth Norton's book In the Devil's Snare this follows what the town's people went through on an everyday basis. People had to deal with family members being accused and being put to death. Mary Beth Norton gives the best description of what happened during the Salem, Massachusetts witch hunt and trial. She does a play by play of each day leading up to trials and following the end. Mary Beth Norton purpose for writing this book is to show her reexamination of the Salem witch trials. She also wanted to understand how people in Essex County and New England in general reacted to the witchcraft allegations. She states "thus when I read published materials or visited archives, I cast my net widely, looking for correspondence and journals covering the entire period of the late 1680s through the early 1690s."(Norton pg.4)

This book became an exploration of the history of frontier warfare and its impact on the collective region as well. In the Devil's Snare exposes these links found by Norton and she invokes into a dual narrative of war and witchcraft. In Puritan society, the reinforcing hierarchies of gender, age, and wealth ordinarily cast young women working as household servants at the social bottom. They were supposed to labor in humble and silent obscurity, deferring to their male elders and betters. In Essex County in 1692, however, a group of teenage girls, most of them servants, inverted the social hierarchy by claiming supernatural powers to discern witches. They boldly spoke out in meetinghouses and courts -- centers of community power that were ordinarily closed to them except as a passive audience. The accusing girls also implicitly challenged the patriarchy by calling the tune for the prosecuting magistrates and by imperiling the reputations and the lives of some high-status men and women. "As in no other event in American history until the rise of the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century,"(Norton pg.2) Norton remarks, "women took center stage at Salem: they were the major instigators and victims of a remarkable public spectacle."(Norton pg. 2)

The book uses graphs and charts in the book that she later in the back cites where she has found the information.(Norton pg. 315-323 graphs) With all the other information such as the people she has stated the Indian attacks. Mrs. Norton talks about the Julian calendar and how the years were written in two years.(Norton pg. 326) This can help us better understand why there seems to be a lack of information so to speak. She had over one hundred resources I like to see when an author actually puts time into their work and makes sure they are giving you as much

information possible on this event. We have to take into consideration also that many documentation were either changed or burned after the Salem witch trials simple because it was such a horrific caused by the towns peoples own fears within themselves and alterative motives, that they didn't want all their information and crimes committed to be out for everyone to know. Mary Beth Norton simple does an amazing job at her explanation for the trails and the events going on in this time.The book starts in January 25th in the year 1691 Mrs. Norton lets you know what was going around this time period, the Wabanakis tribe and how violent they could. They felt like they were the reason for the miss fortune for the New Englanders they were stealing live stocks and hurting and killing families. The portray it later on in the story that their satanic rituals were the why the Salem witch trials happen, why the accusations were made. Stated in the book the first confession by one of the Andover men he clearly says "to examine the magistrates that the devil and his witches had targeted Salem Village for destruction."(Norton pg.17) Sadly it has become blatantly aware that many of the girls that were close to Samuel Parris's daughters and niece Betty and Abigail Williams became getting these afflictions. Once the attention set in on these girls things began to haywire. You have to think during this time period though woman let alone children had very much say so, so once these girl had the power and the control to pick who would be the next accused it was an empowerment they had never encountered.

In the book Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Crucible by John H. Ferres it's based in New England in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. We start off with a group of girls going off to the woods to do some "supposed" Indian spells with a servant Tituba. This is forbidden in any

Puritan town because witch craft is considered from the devil. So while they are dancing they are caught in the middle of this act by Reverend Parris. Once clearly identifying the girls it is soon found out that one of girls there is his own daughter. I feel in the simple fact that Abigail Parris father was the preacher and the act they were partaking in could bring down everyone, the girls thought it would be easier to just blame it on possession. That's what is done later the girls are under question about the activities one of the girls Betty wakes from a sleep and is screaming this pushes the belief on witches in Salem upon everyone.

As the story goes on we find out there was a secret relationship between John Procter and Abigail when he was working on their house. This has caused some tension in the book between John Proctor's wife and Abigail. This is brought up later in the story when Betty is ready to end the act that everyone was going on. "I told him everything; he knows now, he knows everything we did, you drank blood Abby! You didn't tell him that!"(Ferres pg.110-112) This is where we see girls turning against other girls. This doesn't stop the witch trails though the girls still have to cling on to some hope that they will be able to get themselves out of the mess they are in. In actuality they really don't get themselves out of the mess they created they just end up targeting