Title: In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Author: Mary Beth Norton
Year of Publication: 2002
Thesis:
Salem Witch Trials must be understood in the context of war in New England (King William's, King Phillip's) (see intro). Must also consider theocratic worldview of Puritans (pre-Enlightenment). Argues for a larger picture outside of courtroom into the neighboring areas, as well as looking at men who were accused (and previously ignored). Notes a shift in accusers in prev. cases from adult men to women 25 and younger. Charges changed, too, from "maleficium" to torture & temptation. To the settlers, warring Native Americans and witches proved to be enemies brought by Satan.
Time: Early 1690s
Geography: Essex County, MA
Organization:
Title Page
Dedication
Praise
Introduction
Chapter One - Under an Evil Hand
Chapter Two - Gospel Women
Chapter Three - Pannick at the Eastward
Chapter Four - The Dreadfull Apparition of a Minister
Chapter Five - Many Offenders in Custody
Chapter Six - Endeavors of the Judges
Chapter Seven - Burroughs Their Ringleader
Chapter Eight- All Sorts of Objections
Appendices I-IV
Conclusion - New Witch-Land
Acknowledgments
Epilogue
Notes
About the Author
Type:
Methods:
Sources: Correspondence, journals, court records, gossip
Historiography: Previous studies focus too heavily on women only, on1692 itself, and in the courtroom
Keywords: Salem Witchcraft Crisis
Themes: Class (note that many women accusers are not considered high-status) (introduction)
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"New Englanders instead suffered repeated, serious losses of men and women, houses, livestock, and shipping. In the aftermath of each devastating defeat, they attributed their failures not to mistakes by their military and political leaders but rather to God’s providence. He had, they concluded, visited these afflictions upon them as chastisements for their many sins of omission and commission." (conclusion)
"Accordingly, as in no other event in American history until the rise of the women’s rights movement in the nineteenth century, women took center stage at Salem: they were the major instigators and victims of a remarkable public spectacle."
"The influential Salem Possessed (1974), by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, attributes the crisis to long-standing political, economic, and religious discord among the men of Salem Village, denying the significance of women’s prominence as both accused and accuser."
"In the Devil’s Snare, though, contends that the dramatic events of 1692 can be fully understood only by viewing them as intricately related to concurrent political and military affairs in northern New England."
"Regardless of the specific interpretations they advance, most historians have adopted the same metanarrative, in which the examinations and trials of accused women constitute the chief focus. Accounts of legal proceedings fill their books. Scholars emphasize the common characteristics of many of the accused and largely ignore the background of the key accusers. Few pay much attention to accused men (even the six who were executed), to the important role played by the many confessors who validated the accusers’ charges, or to the judges’ possible motivations."
"In the Devil’s Snare moves out of the legal realm to examine the origins and impact of the witchcraft charges in Salem Village, Andover, Essex County, and Boston as well."
"A large proportion of those accused at Salem were indeed the quarrelsome older women, some with dubious reputations, who fit the standard seventeenth-century stereotype of the witch. Most of them were accused of practicing maleficium—of harming their neighbors’ health, property, children, or livestock—over a period of years, just as had been the case with other suspected New England witches for the previous half- century. Many others among the Salem accused were closely related to such stereotypical women; husbands, sisters, daughters, mothers, and sons of witches also had long been vulnerable to the same charges."
"Moreover, key accusers in previous witchcraft cases had most often been adult men; at Salem, the key accusers were women and girls under the age of twenty-five."
"the conviction and execution rates are rendered even more difficult to interpret because the young women who instigated the Salem witchcraft outbreak were precisely the sort of people commonly given short shrift by the high-status men who served as magistrates in the Massachusetts Bay Colony."
"any of those involved in the crisis, it turns out, had known each other previously on the frontier. Most notably, as already mentioned briefly, a significant number of the key accusers and confessors came from Maine."
"New Englanders instead suffered repeated, serious losses of men and women, houses, livestock, and shipping. In the aftermath of each devastating defeat, they attributed their failures not to mistakes by their military and political leaders but rather to God’s providence. He had, they concluded, visited these afflictions upon them as chastisements for their many sins of omission and commission."
"This is not to say that the war “caused” the witchcraft crisis, but rather that the conflict created the conditions that allowed the crisis to develop as rapidly and extensively as it did."
(Quotes from intro)
Notes: Much of this goes through a single court. (intro)