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 | | Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum ISBN-10: 9780674785328 ISBN-10: 0-674-78532-0 ISBN-13: 9780674785328 ISBN-13: 978-0-674-78532-8 Paperback 1974-02 Harvard University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion which had been growing for more than a generation before building toward the climactic witch trials. "Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entagled in it. | ||
Reviews | ||
... I originally read this during my Salem phase back in high school. Back then I read simply because I was going through every Salem Witch Trial book on sight. But I came across this again and read it with a keener eye and a hell of a lot more intelligence. Regarding the trials, I wasn't there and I am pretty darn glad I wasn't. So of course I do not dare make a firm judgement over the causes--we only have so much trustworthy evidence of the event. So I appreciate Boyer's neutrality even as he puts forward his well-researched theories.This is indeed a social book. Boyer discusses the social outlook at the time: the Puritan life, making a mark in the new world, and the relationship between men, women, and servents. I feel that Boyer doesn't put in all the factors he might have, but he does make a good case for what got these people's minds moving in the way they did. | ||
Primary research at its best Being a genealogy/historical records buff, I loved Salem Possessed. Rather than relying on court records or newspaper articles, the authors look at previously overlooked records to discover the origins of the Salem with trails. The authors use Parris's sermons, wills, civil court records, tax records, censuses, and more. The books' thesis is that the witch trials sprung from personal power struggles, family legacies, and societal conflicts between agrarian and commercial lifestyles. A must read for anyone who thinks they know about the witch trials. | ||
A Rational Look at an Irrational Moment From an enormous body of surviving documents, the authors piece together a micro-historical account of life in 17th century Salem (Danvers), MA, comparable to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's classic description of a medieval French heretic town, Montaillou: the promised land of error. Their conclusion: "the witchcraft outbreak was rooted in the prosaic, everyday lives of obscure and inarticulate men and women. ... The spark which finally set off the volatile mix [of geography, economics, politics, and the times] came with the unlikely convergence of a set of chance factors in the early 1690's." Among these chance factors were the arrival of a new minister (Samuel Parris) and his voodoo-practicing slave (Tituba), heightened interest in fortune telling and the occult, a long-standing feud over land between the Putnams and Porters, the Montague-Capulet marriage of Joseph Putnam and Elizabeth Porter, and perhaps most of all, the peculiar political and economic status of Salem Village. One of the reasons life in Salem, even before 1692, is so well documented is because its inhabitants were a querulous, litigious bunch, frequently bringing lawsuits against each other: "What made Salem Village disputes so notorious, and ultimately so destructive, was the fact that structural defects in its organization rendered the Village almost helpless in coping with whatever disputes might arise." About fours years before the witchcraft crisis, both the King of England (to whom colonists owed allegiance, and looked to for support), and the Governor of Massachusetts were removed from office. A new governor was not in office until 1692, after the crisis had already begun. What people in Salem most quarreled about land. Salem Village quite literally had its back up against a wall, the Ipswich River. There was no room for expansion, and average landholding size had decreased by half, from 250 acres in 1660 to 125 in 1690. (Carol F. Karlsen makes a good case in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: witchcraft in colonial New England, that women, rather than their male counterparts, who inherited or controlled land were "at risk" of being accused witches.) When young girls resorted to fortune telling to know who their future husbands might be, they were seeking urgent, practical, economic help in a "down market." The farming community of Salem Village was also encroached politically and economically from the more urban, coastal Salem Town to its south, and eastern Salem Village which naturally aligned itself with Salem Town. Salem Village had "no ecclesiastical apparatus." It had no church and had to travel a long distance to Town Center for communion. Salem Village balked at paying taxes without what it considered necessary services, and in 1690 requested independent township status. In the decade or so before the witch crisis, Salem Village had gone through three unordained ministers before settling on the divisive, but ordained, Samuel Parris. Those aligned with Parris, mostly farmers located in western Salem Village, "treated those who threatened them not as a political opposition but as an aggregate of morally defective individuals ... it was a perfectly normal procedure for a town to rid itself of deviant and threatening individuals - by changing them if possible, by exile or execution if necessary." As does Richard Godbeer in Escaping Salem: the other witch hunt of 1692, Boyer and Nissenbaum ask why events in Salem went so awry. There had been many witchcraft cases tried throughout the colonies and in Salem before 1692. For two centuries, Europe had been in the midst of a "witch craze" that claimed as many as 100,000 people. (By comparison, the Spanish Inquisition only executed about 5,000.) But in previous cases - in the colonies, and in Salem - executions were rare. It's surprising to read that elsewhere, before 1692, people were accused of witchcraft and brought to trial more than once over their lifetimes, without suffering execution or significant punishment. And therein might lie some explanation. There was an intellectual and class distinction about what constituted witchcraft. To the literate, learned community, the crime of witchcraft was making a covenant with the Devil; a kind of super-heresy that not only denied Church dogma, but actively aligned itself against the Church, and God. Among the "obscure and inarticulate men and women" of Salem Village and elsewhere, witchcraft was magic; spells, amulets, potions, and the like that gave witches advantage over someone. It was easy to show someone had advantage - their livestock did not die when others did, or their children were healthy, or they were rich, had more land, and so on - but it was more difficult to show someone made a pact with the Devil. Who could give witness but the Devil himself (who lies), and the accused, his servant? Magistrates were more likely to err on the side of the defendant, and acquit accused witches - sometimes, even reversing a jury's verdict - to the consternation, fear, and dissatisfaction of the accusers. An ideal condition for vigilantism. (In 1933, in my hometown, mobs broke into the jail, and beat two accused kidnapper/murderers senseless, then dragged their bodies across the street to the park where they were hanged, their bodies mutilated, and set afire. One reason "obscure and inarticulate men and women" in my town took such drastic action was s string of kidnappings, most notably that of Charles Lindbergh's son, that had gone unpunished.) What made Salem Village erupt was not just pent-up rivalries and conflicts, but what's now called lack of "adult supervision." Why didn't someone simply tell the young accusers to go to their rooms and behave themselves? Why were they taken seriously? (English law at that time, did not admit evidence from anyone younger than fourteen years old.) It can't be overlooked that Tituba, and the original accusers were members of Reverend Parris' household. Already the target of attacks from forces aligned with Salem Town, Parris easily equated himself, as representative of the Church, with the Church and God himself under attack. "The prevailing motif of that commentary [in Parris' Sermon Book] - from 1689 to 1692 at any rate - is one ofn encircling menace: a menace which thrusts closer and closer to the heart of the Village as it becomes increasingly cosmic in origin. In this quite specific sense, Parris unconsciously helped set the scene for the climax of 1692." Boyer and Nissenbaum make a good case that the antics of the accusers - mostly young girls, but including young women as well - had more in common with the behavior of people at revival meetings such as the "Little Awakening" in 1734 Northhampton, MA, or the "Great Awakening" and "Second Great Awakening" in 19th century Kentucky. The very use of the word "awakening" - a stage in mysticism - is significant. As medievalist Teofilo F. Ruiz points out in his UCLA course The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition, mysticism has always been one of the few avenues open to women to achieve equality of power and influence. Boyer and Nissenbaum conclude, "the young people of both Northhampton and Salem Village at least momentarily broke out of their `normal' subservient and deferential social role to become the de facto leaders of the town and (for many, at least) the unchallenged source of moral authority." Reverend Parris, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, benefitted in his role as leader in this war against "the invisible world." Again referring to the similarities between Salem and later revival movements, the authors conclude: "The crucial difference between the two episodes is the interpretation which the adult leadership of each community placed upon physical states which in themselves were strikingly similar." The beleaguered Parris saw witches. Others would later see God. What was needed, and arguably, was eventually provided by Governor Phips, was someone to say "Reverend Parris. Have you no shame!" | ||
Salem, 1692 Why did the social fabric of Salem break down so thoroughly that by 1692 people were being accused of and executed for witchcraft? This book attempts to answer that question with a number of possibilities. For me the clearest answer had to do with the separation of Salem Village and Salem Town and how they perceived each other: Town was bigger and had the political clout to control the Village; Village wanted independence, which meant the right to elect its own leaders and, even more important, be independent in church matters. What was truly unusual about this arrangement for Salem was that the Village was caught in the middle between Town's dominence and the taste of independence it was allowed to savor - but never really have. This bred contempt and eventually the only means they felt available to force resolution, which went beyond the political and ecclesiastical realm in which they had no power anyway: witchcraft. The authors lean toward the psychology of guilt and accusation in proposing answers, which might be all well and good, but the answers are more basic and obvious than that, I think. A well written book, admirable for the extent to which original sources are utilized. | ||
Excellent narrative on a misunderstood period of history This book chronicles the interesting events that shaped Colonial history in the fall of 1692. Hundreds of people were accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts, and 19 of the accused (probably all innocent) were put to death. The mass hysteria that invoked this terrible event was brought on by a combination of communal hysteria, frustration with wealthy social classes, and the rigid interpretation of Puritannical laws. An excellent narrative for anyone interested in the development of early North America. | ||