Salem Witch Trials Reader

Salem Witch Trials

The event of Salem witch trials happened in the year 1692 in the Suffolk and Middlesex counties of Massachusetts. The case was highlighted due to property disagreements, hysteria and jealousy. All because of personal vendettas, a dozen or more people were hanged even though there was no evidence but only stories and assumptions by the town's women and girls. The case was stretched for more than a year after which the Governor Phips William pardoned the other accused witches because the case had become "too boring." The trial was a result of a few girls starting from Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who were observed to have hysterical fits being and were somehow capable of screaming and contorting their bodies. No medical explanations could be derived for the mysterious illness and neither could the other girls who were getting affected by the same problems could explain their behavior. Hence the women and girls of the county blamed their neighbors, servants and presumed enemies for practicing witchcraft on them. These accusations eventually lead to what we refer as the historical event of the Salem Witch Trials.

Several explanations have been provided in the book as to what were the underlying factors which caused such an apprising the two counties. One would be the explosion of various inconsistencies between the prospering mercantile strata and the common people who were still associated with the economy based on land, which was the property of the merchants "were achieved at the expense of the farmers" (Hill. 93). The book also accounts for the overpowering number of accusations made by the women and girls of the area based on their suspicion. In general the book argues that the Salem town was far more forward and wealthier than the Salem village. The Puritan religion, which was followed more thoroughly in the Salem village forbade

Any form of entertainment, hence the town was more open to different and new possibilities than the village. For instance, one of the first few who were hanged in suspicion of witchcraft was Bridget Bishop, who owned a cider shop in the village which was not licensed.

In the book we also see that there were personal vendettas in relation to the issues of the ownership of land the inheritance process. The author makes an observation that all those who were accused of witch craft were situated in town of Salem, and all those who accused were more prominently placed in the village side of Salem and hence the meeting house was closer to the village as well. This automatically connects to Rev. Parris in a sense that those who were the accusers connected themselves as the supporters of Rev. Parris and the accused including their relatives formed the group which opposed the reverend. Hence a very visible bifurcation of groups took place, one being the pro-Parris group which mostly consisted of all the people whose daughters got affected, the central figure in this group was Thomas Putman, JR. The other group was anti-Parris; which consisted mostly of people from the Salem Town and the central figure in this group was Israel Porter (Hill. 100)

At the time of the trials Salem village like any other colony of that time was under development, both economic and political wise and hence was moving from a Puritan dominant culture to a more independent and commercial one. In this contrast we can say that those who were against the ongoing development formed majority of the accusers where as the accused were in favor of the commercial revolution and were traders or owners of shops etc. This typical struggle between two different social perceptions has been the norm of any American society but in this case it took a deadly turn, where women and men were hunted down in a blood thirst to put a stop to "witchcraft." The most prominent people in this cultural shift were first and for most Rev. Parris who initiated this uprising in the form of seeking the cure for his daughter who was presumably under a spell. The next would be most of the people who used this scandal to fulfill their personal incentives for instance, the Putman family; they were the major dividing group in the Salem colony who were in the favor of separating the town from the village. This family was also one of the very who were very loud in their favor on creating their own church and assigning Rev. Parris as the reverend.