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After three women were incarcerated for witchcraft, the perceived effects of their spells continued, as more and more people began to disengage from social norms. Similar events took place in other communities and by incarcerating suspects the community returned to normality. Yet, the Salem Village witchcraft did not stop and took a more dramatic turn. As the number of cases of "infected people" continued to rise, more and more women and even men, began to be arrested, trialed and executed. One of the factors that the authors discovered to be substantial in assessing the socio-economic causes of the trials lies in the geographic and social pattern of the accused. Most of the individuals accused and executed not only were not unknown to the accusers, but lived at opposite sides of the Village, and beyond. What the authors have gathered extensive records of the events that prove that accusations were not only falsely or incorrectly build, but also that they were used as weapons against the opposing members of the Porter family and their supporters.
The authors' analysis creates a new understanding of the 1692 witchcraft trials by offering solid and comprehensive data and personal examples of socio-economic causes. As the struggle...
As a conservative community, the Putnam group decided, not very different that the general understanding, that strange behavior should be a cause of a supernatural process. One of the issues that the book doesn't address sufficiently is that this belief of the supernatural had its effects on the overall trials discussions. After reading the book, it does not seem enough to explain the causes by a complex process of power struggle between the two camps. Religious communities, like the Salem Village one, truly believed that removing from their communities people seen as doing witchcraft, would resolve their problem. Although directed in most occasions against the non-autonomy supporters, a valid point can be also found in the fact that the trials had a religious pattern as well. This, obviously, does not reduce the importance of this book in the overall analysis of such an event. It represents a solid contribution and it should be a model for future analysis of other events.
Bibliography
Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Stephen. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard University Press, 1974
Bibliography
Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Stephen. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard University Press, 1974
In this sense, the only category of convicts which were burned to death was that of the so-called "satanic Blacks" as this was considered to be the only way of destroying their 'evilness.' In Puritan New England ideology, Blacks were associated with Satan. This belief was the remnant of an old European image of Satan as a black man which dated back to long before the contact between Africans
They focus on what can be documented, such as church membership and taxation. Critique 2: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman The social historian Carol Karlsen the Devil in the Shape of a Woman eschews economic data and instead focuses more on the symbolic and social orientation of the young girl's anger. Karlsen is specifically determined to understand why so many of the accused were female, poor or, conversely,
movie, The Crucible, was derived entirely from the book entitled, Salem Possessed: the Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul S. Boyer, with only a few differences, owing to technical limitations in movie production. The movie had to reduce the number of characters of the books in order to produce it on cinema. Time lapses were shortened, due again to cinematic limitations in presenting the events. Furthermore, the nature of
Miller focuses a created, heterosexual alliance in his fictional retelling, but I, Tituba concentrates on the outcasts, which formed the actual, majority of the accused. This alliance between marginal categories of persons is humorously underlined with Tituba meets a famous fictional outcast from Puritan society, Hester Prynne, while in jail. Conde creates a jailhouse meeting between the two women, since who knows what transpired while Tituba awaited her fate? Marginal
The strangeness of the judicial system whereby confession lead to freedom and truth lead to death was accurate in spirit in the Miller play, as were some aspects of the accusations, such as favoring older women to accuse and pressing one man to death for a refusal to enter a plea beneath heavy stones. According to the PBS documentary "Secrets of the Dead," the real origin of the hysteria in
religion entered the 18th Century and with it a revival. The growth of the revival was overwhelming.More people attended church than in previous centuries. Churches from all denominations popped up throughout established colonies and cities within the United States. Religious growth also spread throughout England, Wales and Scotland. This was a time referred to as "The Great Awakening" where people like Jarena Lee got her start preaching. Evangelism, the epicenter