American History

The Salem Witch Trials: The History of Women as Witches

During the spring of 1692, the infamous Salem witch trials had begun where many innocent lives were ruined due to false accusation. These trials were because of a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts that accused different people of practicing witchcraft. This was also after the time when the British war with France just happened, the smallpox epidemic, and the fears of the neighboring Native American tribes attacking[1]. Ultimately, all these tensions fueled the resident’s suspicions, resentment, and fear towards their neighbors and outsiders. It was a time of accusing each other because of dislike towards each other. Moreover, the witch trials exposed how most of those that were accused targeted mostly women, elderly women.

Deodat London, a minister in Salem Village known for his pamphlet describing witchcraft accusations, wrote a letter to Nathaniel Higginson, an English politician in London, that shows a further account of the trials of the New-England Witches in 1692, in which it first described the “afflicted” experience, as well as those that were accused. Many of the afflicted claimed they would experience being “dumb, deaf, blind, and sometimes lay as if they were dead for a while[2] .” Much of the letter is London explaining things of what he heard without any certainty in his tone that these happenings were actually accurate or true. In fact, he even mentions his curiosity during one of the trials and went to go see it himself. Ultimately, this lets the audience know that even citizens during the Salem Witch Trials had no idea if the accusations were true or not. The idea of witchcraft was only entertained due to church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, which all unfolded in a vacuum of political authority.  Furthermore, the trials were also implicitly used to target women at the time. While London spoke about the trial of an old woman named Dayton, he also emphasized that most that were accusing others were young teenage girls. It is true that it was mostly women that were being suspected of witchcraft, but it was ironic how it was women themselves targeting each other. Essentially, this shows us a reflection of women’s gender roles during the late 1600s.

The Puritans living in the 17^th century in New England lived their lives with total devotion and worship. Therefore, when the bible said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” any accusations of evil witchcraft was not tolerated. In fact, the treatment of Puritan women also rooted from the bible. The bible said only women that were “worthy of honor” were wives or upcoming wives that managed the households, otherwise they are witches if they mess up the functionality within the society.  The Puritan gender norms of a wife were women as mothers, caretakers, and homemakers. If one stepped outside these roles, they were easily targeted as witches and seen as servants of Satan. Puritans lived in a patriarchal society were women disparaging other women were also common[3]. The letter referred to the young girls as “Visionary girls” and it is not a far correlation to see that the reasoning behind their doing is because they have been indoctrinated with patriarchal beliefs. Subconsciously, these young girls were part of feeding in the problem of the oppression of women. The accusations of women being witches can still be reflected into today’s society. When we see advertisements of witches, the depiction will always be a woman and never a man. This imagery of a witches has been used to perpetuate gender inequality and maintain social order that we can still in today’s society where women still struggle to hold power and create a name for themselves[4]. The accusations described in London’s letter proved that many were not certain of its accuracy and yet continued to do so because they let jealousy, fear, and lying get to them. The accusations proved to be bias towards women, harming many innocent people because of their hasty judgement, reliance on authority, labeling, white and black thinking, and resisting to change.

[1] Purdy, Elizabeth R. Salem Witch Trials. Accessed April 4, 2021. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-

amendment/article/1098/salem-witch-trials

[2] Lawson, Deodat. “Letter to Nathaniel Higginson: Salem Witch Trials.” Letter to Nathaniel Higginson | Salem Witch Trials, 2010. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/letters/lawsons_london_letter.html.

[3] Rosen, Maggie. “A Feminist Perspective on the History of Women as Witches .” Dissenting

Voices, Article 5, Vol. 6, no. Iss. 1 (2017)

[4] Rosen, Maggie. “A Feminist Perspective on the History of Women as Witches .” Dissenting

Voices, Article 5, Vol. 6, no. Iss. 1 (2017)

Ray, Benjamin, and The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, eds. Salem Witch Trials: Images. The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 2002. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/generic.html.