FREE ESSAY ON THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN BOOK REVIEW

THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN BOOK REVIEW

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is a book that deals with the persecution of females in
colonial America. Many women were killed and many were banned from the colonies for being
accused of being witches. The men of the time had the same beliefs of their fathers,
husbands, and sons. The men were hard struck in their effort to do away with woman that
stood out or were different.
The main reason that the females were persecuted was due to the men being afraid of the
women getting too much power. The men got nervous when the women had private meetings and
discussed topics that only men of the time should have been talking about. The men took
this as a threat that the women were trying to take over, or that they were trying to
change their role in the society. The Puritans strived upon there adherence to the rules,
and this caused a problem when a woman would do something as unheard of as tell her
opinion. The accusers could be someone that the women were talking in private to that
would tell a man of the town. The men had brainwashed nearly all the women to ensure that
there was a check on the women that they could not reach. One trait that the men found to
be very evil was that of beauty. Beauty was said to have control over the men. The men
said that the women with beauty could posses the men's minds and cause them to do things
that they would not do otherwise. 
Witchcraft was used as an enforcement of social order by punishing the women to
discourage any other women from straying away from the rules. The men thought that if
they made the women scared to do anything wrong, they would not do anything wrong. This
worked to an extent, yet there were some women who fought till their death for their
rights. The men found it very easy to take their pressures from society and blame it on
women and on witchcraft. If someone grew ill, they would blame a woman close to them that
may have had a prior occurrence with them. The men would find any reason that they could
to divert the problems of their society. The Puritans lived by such a strict structured
life that they had to find a reason for everything to happen and they had to find blame
for their ills. The witches eased their yearning for resolution and gave their society a
warning to stay in the parameters of the law and in the light of the word of Jesus.
The creation for the need of witches came with the men of the societies need for a place
to blame ills. The men made the idea of witches prominent so that they could carry on
with their life and have all sins paid for. The men saw the woman of the town as more of
a servant and less of an equal to them. When women got together and talked over the
bible, their men, or things going on in the town, it was considered to be against the
rules. The men had rules for everything. There religion was so strict that the women
would be lucky to not have been called a witch in their lifetime. The men blamed
everything that happened to a woman, and said that she was a witch casting a spell. The
witches were necessary because the society needed a place of blame. The needed to feel
that they were doing write and that the wrong was not part of them but an evil force that
was interfering with their relationship with God. That is what was most important to the
people of the early colonial America, to be in touch with what God asked of them. For
these reasons the men and sometimes women of New England tended to blame all ills on the
obvious problem, the women.
Once again the book dealt with the persecution of women and how the men dealt with the
woman that they thought to be of problem. The men needed a place to take their problems,
and they needed a way to say to God that they had fixed the problem. So they ended up
persecuting women of a crime to which they were innocent. Although the persecution was
wrong, their society needed a way to blame its wrong doings and move on with their life
under God's vision.
Bibliography
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. By Carol F.
Karlsen. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.