Yvette Lessard

History 310

Patton

Witches and Wives: How Gender Made the Salem Witch Trials

At the closing of the 17th century, two young girls in a tiny colonial village in Puritan

Massachusetts began to have what appeared to be epileptic fits. Soon, the strange behavior spread to

other girls. They accused three women of witchcraft: Tituba the slave girl, the homeless Sarah Good,

and a woman who was known to have breached the sexual morality of the Puritans, Sarah Osborne.

These first few women were easy suspects of witchcraft, as none of them fit into the Puritan ideology

and looked like stereotypical witches (“Secrets of the Dead”). Previously, there had been sporadic

accusations of witchcraft in the region. These accusations were targeted towards both women and men,

and the accused (males at least) easily won their cases and were able to turn judgment onto their

accusers (Caporael). Women wouldn't have quite as good luck. But in 1692, the tune changed and

accusations spread like wildfire. As time passed, more and more women, and even men, began to earn

accusations from the girls and others. By the end of the trials, over 200 men and women, mostly

women, had been accused, and nineteen were executed (“In Search of History”). How was it possible

that not just one but several communities would be driven to murder so easily? The gender ideology

and repressive society of the Puritans had created a climate able to support the hysteria of the witch

hunt, spark the initial accusations, and shape the trials to come. It was in these three areas which gender

played a pivotal role in the Salem witch trials.

Puritan life in the Massachusetts Bay region was strict, rigid, and uncaring, especially in the

wilderness town of Salem Village. Life was hard, and meant to be so. In the minds of the Salem Village

Puritans, like most devout Christians of the period, the supernatural touched everyday life. Misfortune
was God's punishment and deserved, while good fortune could be interpreted as a reward or, as may

have been the case with one victim, a result of service to the devil. Temptation and the path to

damnation was considered a real problem. The religion was inherently misogynistic, perhaps even

more so than traditional Christianity (“In Search of History”). Puritans were unique amongst the

English settlers in that they were the only group to bring women with them, intending to truly colonize

the land and form families, which they viewed as vital to society (DuBois and Dumenil 71). The place

of the woman was traditional, but unique. Not only were they expected to work in the home, care for

children, and be submissive, they were also seen as entirely inferior. Most importantly, they were seen

as inherently sinful and morally inferior, easily suspected of wrongdoing and promiscuity. While

women in the time period typically had little power or rights and were expected to be submissive,

Puritan ideology dictated that women could not so much as be active in the church, as they were too

sinful. Women like Anne Hutchinson who did so were banished and even accused of witchcraft

(DuBois and Dumenil 75). The law of the church was the law of the community, and women had no

choice but to at the very least appear to be following these laws. With so much focus on the

supernatural in daily life, the idea of women as inherently evil because of Eve, as well as weak-willed

and lustful, women were the first to be suspected of working with the Devil. In addition, it was thought

that women fell easily into the Devil's services because they lusted after him—making women whose

sexuality did not align perfectly with the ideal yet more suspect.

In addition, European gender roles shaped notions of witchcraft, which in turn shaped the

setting for the witch hunts. The witch's tools were domestic: brooms, herbs, poppets (dolls), cauldrons

and other things for cooking and cleaning. When the girls complained of needles pricking them, it

made every woman suspect. The tools of a man were more diverse, and not identified with the

supernatural. This made it even easier to point to a woman and call her a witch—after all, what Puritan

woman hadn't been seen with a witch's tools?

Gossip may have also played a role in creating the climate for the Salem witch trials. Secrets
and rumors passed through the town regularly, and what neighbors whispered of each other was often

taken as fact—public humiliation was the usual punishment for private problems. In this light,

suggestions of indecency or sinfulness were especially dangerous . This may have been a reason why

those accused found themselves on one side of a village-wide feud. Those living closer to the worldlier,

larger and less conservative Salem Town were much-hated by the farmers further from the road (“The

World Behind The Hysteria”). With women and girls confined to the household and likely bored to

tears, and gossip a powerful force in the village, the girls had a distinct view of who was considered

pious and who was considered worldly, the distinction largely following political and geographic

closeness to Salem Town. Whether they truly believed these rumors or simply used them as a guide is

uncertain, but the prevalence of gossip, coincidence of their victims and the placement of women in the

household makes it certain that they were exposed to the politics and that it affected their accusations.

A final way in which gender roles may have made the Salem witch trials possible lies with the

core group of accusers, a group of girls which began with Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams and

eventually included several others. While male children were able to get out of the household and

domestic sphere, and had more freedom, female children were likely more tightly-knit as a result of

being locked into the same household chores. Women in Puritan society relied on tight-knit groups of

other women, who they worked with daily (DuBois and Dumenil 77). Women, essentially, had a close-

knit society within a society which would have helped allow for the events of the witch hunt to take

place. With gossip and more importantly suggestions able to spread so easily, it makes sense that girls

whose lives were locked together would act in similar ways.

All of this alone could have created a climate ripe for the Salem witch trials. However, there

was more. The girls who appeared to be afflicted did not at first accuse any of witchcraft, it was not

until others suggested witchcraft and began to pressure them for names that they gave any. Raised in

Puritan society, the girls would have had little freedom. Children were not given the same care as they

are in today's world—they were expected to work and to act like small adults. Adult women had to be
silent, submissive, and hardworking—girl children had to be that tenfold. When an entire village turned

it's ear to them, and then towns and cities, it would have been easy to give in to the reverse of gender

roles. The experience must have, if nothing else, been an incredible departure from the restrictive and

oppressive lives the girls knew. Where once the girls had to listen and had no power over themselves or

others, now all were listening to them and they had the power to take lives. It is likely this happened,

since after the initial fits, the girls' behavior became convenient and power-seeking. Those who voiced

skepticism of the girls' claims soon found themselves accused, and those they accused were

increasingly high-ranked and “untouchable”, rising from society's dredges like the homeless and slaves

to wives of judges and officials. This suggests that the thrill of power, whether for themselves or for

perhaps the approval of their parents, was a goal. And as the claims themselves were wild and

suspicious, it can only be concluded that at least the majority of the Salem witch trials were shaped by

the climate in which the girls were raised.

While the direct cause of the girls' epileptic-like fits is still not known for sure, there are several

theories. They may have been faking their affliction from the beginning, desiring the attention and

freedom that daily life in their repressive society did not give them. Doctors examining the girls at the

time, however, concluded that there was nothing physically wrong with the girls. But what about

mentally? In Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?, Linnda Caporael argues that common

explanations such as feuding, land-grabs, and hysteria cannot account for the initial accusations. The

problem, she says, is that historians often overlook what appears to be real delusion in the minds of the

girls and even other members of the village in later accusations. Instead, she offers the first

pathological explanation. Ergot, an LSD-like fungus which can cause hallucinations and fits, can be

found on on rye and other cereal grains grown by the Salem villagers. Further, Caporael notes that

conditions at the time and place of the witch trials would have allowed for ergot to grow—and the

homesteads of the “afflicted” are in line with homesteads which would have eaten ergotised grain.

Much of the village could have suffered from the effects of the fungus, but with a wide and varying
range of effects from individual to individual, affecting women and children most easily. This would

explain the initial epileptic-like fits the first two girls experienced. Even their claims of feeling needle-

pricks and crawling sensations beneath their skin matches what ergot can cause—and note that needle-

pricks inherently suggests a female witch. Later explanations of the fits would include bird-carried

diseases, Lyme disease, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mary Norton's In the Devil's Snare post-

traumatic stress disorder theory, for example, points out that the young girls who made the witchcraft

accusations survived traumatic Indian raids. Diagnosed insanity, Marion L. Starkey wrote in The Devil

in Massachusetts, ran in the family of some of the girls who made the initial accusations. It would have

been easy for other girls to simply copy their mentally unstable friends.

One, several, or all of the theories could be correct. If drugs or mental disturbance caused the

girls to experience hallucinogenic fits at first, the evidence suggests that the girls either recovered from

their condition or were suggestible enough to have their delusions fit their changing situation. Gender

would have played a role in how they took advantage of the initial fits, and their sex would have played

a role, if ergot was involved, in making them more susceptible to its effects.

While gender undoubtedly had a role in the beginning of the witch hunt, it would be vital as the

hunt played out and eventually came to an end. Obviously, gender played a role in who was targeted.

Because of the gender ideology of the time, which made the witch hunt possible and accepted, women

were by and large the most targeted group. Those accused at first fit into the stereotypical image of the

witch: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were old, wrinkled and crooked. Furthermore, they were known

to not attend church (“In Search of History”). That two women could not attend church in a small

Puritan town where everyone knew each other's secret begs the question of whether men avoided

Sunday mass and why that never made them suspect of witchcraft. While the accusations largely

targeted those easiest to accuse—women—gender also had another role. Bridget Bishop, for example,

was an outspoken, independent, and thrice-married woman who had previously survived an accusation

of witchcraft. Despite not being one of the original victims of accusations, she was the first to be put on
trial officially (“In Search of History”). The reason for the eagerness with which she was accused and

tried for witchcraft, both previously and in the Salem trials, would perhaps be that her existence and

lifestyle challenged Puritan gender roles. And alongside the girls' accusations was testimony from

several men who claimed that the often provocatively dressed Bishop's “specter”, or image, had

sexually attacked them in the night (witch's specters were the main form of evidence in the trials).

Whether or not the men had simply fantasized about Bishop was never questioned, it was assumed that

the more pure and morally upright men had been attacked by a woman (“In Search of History”).

The witch hunt came to a climax as the girls pointed their fingers towards yet more shocking

and powerful victims. But once men and the upper class found themselves more and more the targets of

their accusations, there began to be resistance to their claims. Their absolute power extended only so

long as they did not bite the hands of those who let them wield it. It was when rumors circulated that

the girls were going to accuse the wives of two powerful officials that the trials essentially began to

come to an end. The original court was dissolved, and the trials continued in a superior court of law

which did not allow spectral evidence—the evidence which had hung many already. (“In Search of

History”). In this, the power of gender was made clear as well. While women were considered suspect,

and none questioned the notion of the Devil coming to women and demanding their services, men were

not considered as susceptible. More importantly, (white) men and especially upper class men held all

the power in Salem's society. It is easy to vilify another group but not as easy to purge one's own ranks.

The growing resistance to the girls may have come as a result of their targeting men, who were not seen

as easily corruptible—and who actually had power in Puritan society.

In conclusion, the Salem witch hunt would not have been possible if not for the restrictive and

oppressive gender ideology of the setting. The belief that one group was born inherently sinful, and the

social pressure for that group to act a certain way, would create the perfect climate for innocent lives to

be taken. Furthermore, the gender ideology of the time would shape the face of the trials and inevitably

end them.
 Bibliography

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