FREE ESSAY ON SALEM WITCH TRIALS

SALEM WITCH TRIALS

The Salem Witch trials started in 1692 resulted in 19 executions and 150 accusations of 
witchcraft. This is one of the historical events almost everyone has heard of. It is a
topic that is 
talked about, and can be seen as controversial. A quote by Laurie Carlson shows just how

controversial the topic can be. (A) character myth is certainly what the witch hunts in
Europe 
and Salem have become, though they have more basis in fact than most myths. The stories
of 
the witch hunts are character myths for our time, to be told by feminists, left-wing
intellectuals, 
and lawyers for President Clinton, each taking what he or she needs from the story,
adding or 
subtracting as it seems fit. (1).
The trials began because three young girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann 
Putnam began having hysterical fits after being caught engaging in forbidden fortune
telling. 
That's right fortune telling, not dancing naked in the woods like the story has been told
to many 
times (2). The fortune telling occurred because they were trying to find out what type of
men 
they were going to marry. Betty Parris' father was a reverend of the town on Salem, 
Massachusetts. The Reverend, Samuel Parris called in senior authorities to determine if
the 
girls' affliction was caused by witchcraft. Although Betty was sent away fairly soon, and
did not 
participate in the trials, the remaining two girls were joined by other young and old
women in 
staging public demonstrations of their affliction when in the presence of accused
witches. 
The events in Salem have been used as a theme in many literary works. Anthropologists 
also take interest in these writings because they display some of the characteristics of
village 
witchcraft as well as some of the features of the European witch craze. Many commentators

have seen the Salem witch craze as the last outbreak of the European witch craze which
was 
transported to North America. As in African and new Guinea villages, the original
accusations 
in Salem were made against people who the accusers had reason to resent or fear.
Moreover, the 
first few of the accused fit the definition of marginal persons likely to arouse
suspicion. 
However, as in Europe, the accusations spread, and soon encompassed people not involved
in 
any of Salem's grudges or problems. As in Europe, there was a belief that the accused
were in 
league with the devil. 
Supposed experts went out to do scientific studies to diagnose witchcraft. 
Interestingly, during the colonial period in Africa, just after WWII, there was a number
of witch 
finding movements in Africa that closely resembled the Salem episode. Typically in these
witch 
finding movements, the witch finders would come in from outside a village and claim to be
able 
to rid the village of all of it's witchcraft. At this period there was great dislocation,
with people 
moving around because of government employment, suitable farmland, and many other causes.

Some people were improving their economic status as a result of these change, and others
ended 
up being worse off. Whereas in the past, everyone in a location had followed the same
religion, 
people were now exposed to Christianity and the local religions of people who had moved
to 
their region, or whose regions they had moved to. In the cities of central and Southern
Africa, 
many local religions and Christian sects could be found, as well as Islam. Belief in
witchcraft 
tended to unite people across religious differences. Frenzies increased throughout time,
people 
began to be accused who had not aroused any particular jealousies, possibly because they

possessed a peculiar looking item which might be said to contain magical medicine. These

crazes tended to die down, at least after considerable conflict and property damage, and
the 
witch finders would then move on to the next town. As witchcraft accusations still
occurred in 
the areas, we can conclude that the movements did not get rid of witches forever. 
Witch Trials 4
There have been three basic approaches taken to the analysis of the Salem witch trials. 
Scholars have sought psychological and biological explanations for the symptoms displayed
by 
the bewitched girls. Sexual repression in Puritan New England, the low status of women, 
especially young women, in the community and the lack of opportunity for any sort of 
entertainment are among the psychological explanations which have been offered. Group 
Psychology , or the tendency for out of control behaviors to spread in crowds, have also
been 
mentioned. Various dietary deficiencies at the end of a New England winter is the third
option 
that was studied as an option to blame for the symptoms. Calcium deficiency is known to
cause 
muscle spasms and hysterical states. It has also been suggested that some of the spectral

evidence (claims to have been visited or actually sat upon, choked, etc. by the spectres
of 
accused witches) might have been the result of a condition known today as sleep
paralysis. 
The reasons why witchcraft was blamed for the symptoms, rater than psychological 
disturbance, physical illness, or even religious conversion have often been sought in the
theology 
of the Puritan inhabitants of Salem. Another generation of New England Puritans, just
over 
fifty years later, did experience a similar outbreak of spasms and hysterias in young
girls seen as 
salvation, which led to The Great Awakening, a series of mass conversion experiences 
throughout New England. A core belief held by New England Puritans, which may have led to

both interpersonal suspicion and conceptions of a secret world, hidden from living
humans, was 
the notion of predestination, the belief that God had already determined who was to be
saved 
and who was to be damned.
In the Salem Witch Trials, both church members and non-church members were accused 
of witchcraft. For a true believer, a decision to make a false confession or alibi might
really 
appear to be sacrificing a hope of eternal life for an extra few years of life on earth.
During the 
century after the Salem Witch Trials, the New England Congregationalist church struggled
to 
reconcile the notion of predestination with a culture to place strong emphasis on
individual 
ambition and responsibility. The Great Awakening was one of the evidences of this new 
opportunity for individuals to actively seek evidence of salvation, but even back then,
there was 
dispute as to how open church members should be. Jonathan Edwards, the minister who 
diagnosed the Northampton, Massachusetts girls as being visited by divine spirit, rather
than 
bewitched, eventually was dismissed from his pulpit for insisting that only those who had

experienced conversion, and not those who simply awaited it, might take communion.
Witchcraft confessions were incomplete without reference to attendance at secret 
meeting to worship Satan. Acknowledgments that the accused and others had signed secret 
documents enrolling in Satan's secret services was even more hoped for. Belief in a
secret 
world where forces of good was at war with the forces of evil prompted for a search of
visible 
clues that at least some people were involved in a Satanic plot. This search might be
seen as a 
negative mirror of the search for clues that one was saved. In the film The Burning
Times, some 
of the clues that were seen included strange marks on the body (e.g. birthmarks and extra
nipples 
- which were considered witches teats used to suckle demons). More controversial was 
spectral evidence. The afflicted girls and some male witnesses said that they had seen 
spectres (normally invisible spirits) of the accused either in the courtroom or at other
times, 
and that these spectras tried to cause harm to them. These actions included choking, 
frightening or tormenting them. No doubt, some of those who confessed, and their lives
were 
spared, were able to justify confessing on the ground that their spectras might have done

things of which they were not aware.
A book that discusses much of what occurred in Salem called Salem Possessed, 
attempts to explain the witch craze primarily in sociological, political, and economic
terms. It 
also uses some means of Theological and Psychological views to explain the occurances
(3). 
Boyer and Nissenbaum suggest that Salem was in a state of some transformation at the time
of 
the witch trials. Several ministers had left Salem as a result of factionalism in the
village of 
Salem. Minister Samuel Parris, in 1962, was involved in several disputes over his salary,
the 
ownership of his home, his supply of firewood, and many other things. Boyer and
Nissenbaum 
go on to tell that they believe the core of the trouble was a tension between the Salem
town and 
the Salem village. From what one can capture from Salem Possessed, is the idea that it is

possible that the whole situation was taken too far. Since Parris obviously had some
enemies, 
when the problems with his daughter arouse, people found that this was a way to get back
at 
Parris. Instead, it actually got back at the entire town. People who were not
anti-Parris, were 
not aware the rumors about the girls were not all true. Instead, the other residents of
the town 
panicked, and started pointing fingers at everyone.
One of the earliest people to be arrested, and eventually hung was Bridget Bishop, who 
ran an unliscenced cider shop out of her home in Salem village. Boyer and Nissenbaum that

there were personal enmities, based on land ownership and inheritance in Salem Village
and 
neighboring towns. There was a general potential for schism between those parts of the
village 
near Salem town vs. the area further away from the town. The authors of Salem Possessed 
note that most of the accused witches lived in the Salem town side of the village, while
most of 
the accusers lived in the side that was further from town. 
What finally stopped the witch craze was it's spread beyond Salem, so that important 
people in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony, began to get accused. Even a 
famous figure Cotton Mather was named at one point, even though he was never formally 
charged. There was a breaking point however. This was when the governor's wife was
accused. 
The Governor then called an end to the trial. Eventually everyone who was still in jail
was 
released, and some compensation was paid to the survivors.
Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, uses the Salem Witch Trials as a metaphor for the 
obsession in the U.S. during the 1950's, with a vast, hidden communist conspiracy,
threatening 
that all was good in America. (4). This suggestion is trying to show that the girls
symptoms 
were interrupted as they were because of communism. The kinds of evidence that was used
in 
the trials could also be looked at by this comment as writings of communism. Miller made

certain alterations to his play for theatrical convince. These alterations tell us
something of the 
nature of recent witch hunts, as compared to those of the 17th century. The communist
fear lead 
to many arrests and blacklisting. Indeed, many people who worked in industries such as
the 
entertainment and media business, including Miller himself, did not have left-wing
sympathies, 
but it is unlikely that many, or any, were actively working for the Soviet Union.
Pressure was 
put on publishers and film studios to not allow suspected Communists to work. Arthur
Miller 
himself, already a famous playwright, was at least partially blacklisted until he could
prove that 
he was a normal American. One of the things that helped Miller prove this to the
skeptical was 
that he married Marilyn Monroe. Jewish intellectuals like Miller were automatically
suspect, 
and given Miller's history of divorces, his stand would not have been good. He, however,

managed to get out of being blacklisted, primarily due to his marriage with Marilyn
Monroe.
Sexual conformity during the McCarthy era led Miller to exaggerate the sexual aspects of

the Salem story , changing the ages of some of the characters to make sexual
interpretations 
more credible. Sexual innuendoes were certainly not absent in Salem, but sexual politics
were 
were just as present in the McCarthy era as they are today . 
As this topic was studied, at first I began to see comparisons between feminism and the 
witch trials of 1692. A book by Frances Hill claims to be a feminist psychoanalytical
reading 
of the events in Salem Village, 1692 (5). While this book began with the topic of women,
it 
veered quickly from the topic, and did no more to prove that this is a feminism case,
than it did 
to disprove it. Another book, by Carol Karlsen, is another attempt to show the relation
to 
women and how they were treated, and how it relates to feminism (6). This book does show
that 
the typical witch was: female, married (at least at one point in her life), without any
sons, past 
childbearing stage, and related to, or friends of another accused witch. Once again, not
enough 
conclusive evidence was given, so rather than further an idea, that might not be
completely true, 
the conclusion of this paper is that women were no more picked out to be victims in these
cases, 
than they were victimized everyday, in all situations. The people Salem Village did not
only 
pick women to be witches because they were women, rather because the prosecutors had a 
problem with either the woman, or indirect problems with her, through her family.
Granted, 
these women were picked out for who they were, they were not just picked out because they

were women. 
Works Cited
(1.) Carlson, Laurie Winn. A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England
Witch Trials. Ivan R. Dee. Chicago. 1999.
(2.) Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials.
Doubleday: New York. 1995.
(3.) Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Stephen. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of
Witchcraft. Harvard: Cambridge, MA. 1974.
(4.) Burns, Margo. Twentieth Century New England with Special Emphasis on the Salem Witch
Trials of 1692. Online at www.ogram.org/17thc/crucible.shtml
(5.) Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials.
Doubleday: New York. 1995.
(6.) Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New
England. Random House: New York. 1987.