The primary purpose of this study is to examine the history of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the seventeenth-century New England region. It is particularly focusing on the relationships between the gender and witch-hunting. The courts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven ordered the executi...
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the history of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the seventeenth-century New England region. It is particularly focusing on the relationships between the gender and witch-hunting. The courts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven ordered the execution of fifteen people between 1648 and 1663. When the hysteria at Salem came to an end, almost two hundred people had been named as witches in that massive outpouring of suspicion and self-doubt. Though the Salem witch trials were a turning point, village people continued to accuse their neighbors of witchcraft until the early in eighteen century. After the Salem outbreak, however, witchcraft beliefs and prosecutions were no longer sanctioned in the larger culture. The prosecution of women as witches occurred in a society in which men exercised substantial authority-legal, political, ideological and economic-over women. While some New England women shared in the material benefits and social status of their fathers, husbands and even sons, most women were economically dependent on the male members of their families throughout their lives. The people who were healers and midwives in the seventeenth-century New England seem to have been especially vulnerable to the accusation of witchcraft. The ability to heal or tell fortunes was morally ambiguous. The power to heal also could be the power to do harm. The vulnerability of women also stemmed in part attitudes about women"s sexuality and their role as mothers. Whatever the relevant factors, the response of the colonists in the seventeenth-century New England, like the response of Europeans in general, was to assume that women were peculiarly drawn to witchcraft and the devil. According to the legal system, witchcraft was defined as a crime on the basis of the devil"s compact. The old fear of female sexual power had not disappeared. Indeed, the increasing emphasis on women"s lack of sexual power was simply a new way diminishing it, part of a larger eighteen-century reconstruction of womanhood. Woman-as-evil had gradually taken on not a single but a dual shape-one formed by race, the other by class. By the nineteen century, black and poor white women were viewed as embodying many of the characteristics of the witch: they were increasingly portrayed as seductive, sexually uncontrolled, and threatening to the social and moral order. Accusations of Devil worship were sometimes viewed as God"s way of punishing women for illicit sexual behavior. New Englanders associated witchcraft not just with sexual fantasy, fornication, and adultery, but also with bearing illegitimate children, with abortion, and with infanticide-sins attributed to women almost exclusively. Witch-hunting was an ever present reality in the seventeenth-century New England. Though some men were executed as witches during the period of witch hunting, most of those who died in the name of witchcraft were women. The gender politics of witch-hunting is strikingly evident in cases that occurred in New England region. The history of the witch hunting provide the ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society, and with women themselves. The witch-hunting was the systematic violence against women.
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the history of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the seventeenth-century New England region. It is particularly focusing on the relationships between the gender and witch-hunting. The courts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven ordered the execution of fifteen people between 1648 and 1663. When the hysteria at Salem came to an end, almost two hundred people had been named as witches in that massive outpouring of suspicion and self-doubt. Though the Salem witch trials were a turning point, village people continued to accuse their neighbors of witchcraft until the early in eighteen century. After the Salem outbreak, however, witchcraft beliefs and prosecutions were no longer sanctioned in the larger culture. The prosecution of women as witches occurred in a society in which men exercised substantial authority-legal, political, ideological and economic-over women. While some New England women shared in the material benefits and social status of their fathers, husbands and even sons, most women were economically dependent on the male members of their families throughout their lives. The people who were healers and midwives in the seventeenth-century New England seem to have been especially vulnerable to the accusation of witchcraft. The ability to heal or tell fortunes was morally ambiguous. The power to heal also could be the power to do harm. The vulnerability of women also stemmed in part attitudes about women"s sexuality and their role as mothers. Whatever the relevant factors, the response of the colonists in the seventeenth-century New England, like the response of Europeans in general, was to assume that women were peculiarly drawn to witchcraft and the devil. According to the legal system, witchcraft was defined as a crime on the basis of the devil"s compact. The old fear of female sexual power had not disappeared. Indeed, the increasing emphasis on women"s lack of sexual power was simply a new way diminishing it, part of a larger eighteen-century reconstruction of womanhood. Woman-as-evil had gradually taken on not a single but a dual shape-one formed by race, the other by class. By the nineteen century, black and poor white women were viewed as embodying many of the characteristics of the witch: they were increasingly portrayed as seductive, sexually uncontrolled, and threatening to the social and moral order. Accusations of Devil worship were sometimes viewed as God"s way of punishing women for illicit sexual behavior. New Englanders associated witchcraft not just with sexual fantasy, fornication, and adultery, but also with bearing illegitimate children, with abortion, and with infanticide-sins attributed to women almost exclusively. Witch-hunting was an ever present reality in the seventeenth-century New England. Though some men were executed as witches during the period of witch hunting, most of those who died in the name of witchcraft were women. The gender politics of witch-hunting is strikingly evident in cases that occurred in New England region. The history of the witch hunting provide the ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society, and with women themselves. The witch-hunting was the systematic violence against women.
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