Girls Bewitched By Tituba

Two of them were Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris. The girls started to exhibit strange behavior. The girls dashed about rooms, dove under furniture, talked in gibberish, and complained of pain and fever. In mid-February doctor, William Griggs went and examined the afflicted girls, and suggested that witchcraft were the causes of their symptoms ( Linder, D, an account of Salem…). There was no cure for the girls at the time,but their neighbor Mary Sibley suggested counter magic. Mary told Tituba to make a witches cake and then feed it to a dog. Dogs were seen as a witch's helper, so feeding a dog the urine of an affiliated person was believed to cure the symptoms of

The first women to be accused of witchcraft in Salem were seen as different and as social outcasts: Tituba, a slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, a sickly old woman who married her servant. These women were unpopular and it was easy to point fingers at them. Gossips and rumors were enough to accuse them. Tituba[3] was a dark skinned slave who lived in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris. She was familiar with the West Indian Voodoo and practicing magic.

Sanity is subjective. Every individual is insane to another; however it is the people who possess the greatest self-restraint that prosper in acting “normal”. This is achieved by thrusting the title of insanity onto others who may be unlike oneself, although in reality, are simply non-conforming, as opposed to insane. In Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, this fine line between sanity and insanity is explored to great lengths. Through the unveiling of Susanna’s past, the reasoning behind her commitment to McLean Hospital for the mentally ill, and varying definitions of the diagnosis that Susanna received, it is evident that social non-conformity is often confused with insanity.

Salem’s civilians were easily influenced and manipulated because in reality they had never dealt with a problem like this one before. They also trusted the religious officials. The third person they accused of witchcraft was Tituba, Reverend Parris´s slave, she had come from the islands of Barbados, in reality she was just an alien who stood out in the community because she was different (Uschan 21). These three women were the first to be targeted and on March 1, 1692 they were questioned in the Salem Village meeting house by two magistrates, Jonathan Corwin and John Hawthorne (Uschan 17). Dorcas Good, a five year old was also accused of joining her mother, Sarah Good in witchcraft; even George Burroughs a former Salem Village pastor was accused.

After being interrogated for days, the most educated and trusted woman of the trio, Tibuta, confessed that the devil turned her into a witch. This put all three women in jail and planted the seed to the next reason of why the hysteria spread so far and fast through Salem.

During the phase of witchcraft accusations, it was observed that generally women were both the accusers and the suspects of witchcraft. An Indian slave named Tituba was the first perpetrator of witchcraft, who used to work in Samuel Parris’ house (Ray, “Satan’s War against the Covenant” 82). She was severely tortured and interrogated during her capture. At one stage of interrogation, Samuel Parris brutally assaulted her, which resulted her to confess about her involvement in

Elizabeth Parris and Abagail Williams, the pastor’s daughter and niece respectively, were two of the six young ladies that Tituba watch over. In the beginning, Tituba would perform witchcraft in an attempt to lure the girls into witchcraft but the girls rejected Tituba’s actions. Eventually, the girls would begin to act out and were proclaimed to have become bewitched. After Parris discovered that his girls’ actions were not of physical nor mental disease and of spiritual doings, an aunt of one of the afflicted girls used Tituba to experiment using a urine-cake (eventually this aunt would be scorned for practicing counter magic) to determine who bewitched the young girls. When the girls cried out that it was Tituba’s doing and made several accusations of her acts of witchcraft, Tituba rejected all allegations. In theory, Tituba made herself out as a witch. In the end of her trial, Tituba would confess to practicing witchcraft. She confessed that she had signed the Devil’s book along with eight other witches including Goody Osborne and Sarah Good, as well as seeing the Devil various times in the form of a tall man, a hog, cats, a great black dog, and wolves and birds. Sarah Good and Goody Osbourne worked in command of Tituba taking the Devil’s orders to terrorize the young women of the household by pinching, harming, and performing acts of levitation. Tituba being the first to

According to Document B, 23 of the 29 accusers were under the age of 21. Due to Puritan beliefs, teenage girls had to stay home and complete chores. According to Evidence Set C, two of the girls, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, were fed up with it. They started talking to a slave by the name, “Tituba”. Tituba told the girls magical stories and played fortune-telling games with them. The girls began to feel guilty that they went against their religion, so they began accusing Tituba of being a witch. This made the girls feel less guilty, as what they were accusing Tituba of doing was much worse than what they were doing. Other girls from around the village began to join them in accusing outcasts. According to Document D, the girls enjoyed acting bewitched. Their acting certainly tricked the adults. According to Document C, the girls would act bewitched every time the person accused would make a movement such as shake their head, or move their eyes.

Tituba was a slave brought from Barbados by minister Parris. She was told to make a “witch cake.” It had particular ingredients like rye meal and the urine of the possessed girls, after words it was to be given to a dog to “uncover a witch.”

accused alongside of Tituba were Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good. Sarah Osborne was an ill elderly woman, while Sarah Good was a questionable homeless woman. The reason behind Sarah Osborne’s accusation was that she had not attended church in fourteen months, which coincidently, was also a sin for Puritans in Massachusetts. The reasoning behind Sarah Good’s accusation was that when people would look at her, she would turn the other way and mumble under her breath. These three women were the first three to be accused of witchcraft in the event of the trials.

When the girls had fits of hysteria ?seizures, trance-like states, and sacrilegious screaming ?Parris called upon his colleagues to exorcise the demons that possessed the girls. Ministers from nearby communities met in Salem Village 懀o lead a public day of fasting and prayer, and to question the afflicted girls about what had caused their disturbing behavior?(8). Occasionally, the girls went mute or blind, choked, had muscle spasms, and had visions of frightening spirits. They claimed that evil spirits 'ursued them, threatening, biting, pinching, pricking, and performing other bodily injuries?(8). After that, public concern became mass hysteria. Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne, were arrested and tried. Only Tituba confessed to signing the Devil book.

Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three women were put in jail. Soon, more children had started to experience similar episodes. People were tried and found guilty of witchcraft.

On February 25, 1692, the lives of two New England women and a household slave were turned upside down. On that day Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, along with a slave called Tituba were brought forth and accused of making a pact with the Devil and serving as his witches. Norton argues that out of those three women, it was the charges held against Tituba that were the most significant. Tituba’s race played an important part in her being alongside Good and Osborne as the first to be accused in Salem. Many historians believe Tituba to be an African slave. Norton points out that surviving records refer to her as, “…Tituba Indian,” “the Indyen woman,” “titibe the Indian Woman,” or the like, implying that Villagers viewed her ethnicity as an inseparable

The witch trials began when nine girls, known as the afflicted girls, experienced strange symptoms. In the beginning, there were only five afflicted girls: Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, and Mercy Lewis. Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Warren, and Elizabeth Booth later began experiencing the symptoms, which involved strange fits, irregular body contortions, and fevers. Although the symptoms seem phenomenal, modern theories suggest that the children were merely bored, abused, or had epilepsy, a mental illness, or a disease that was obtained from eating rye bread infected with a fungus. Reverend Samuel Parris, Betty Parris’ father, asked Dr. William Griggs to deduce the problem, and Dr. Griggs concluded that they were bewitched. The group of girls accused three women of causing their unnatural behaviors: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parris. The women were easy targets for the girls because they were outcasts (Brooks). Sarah Good was a beggar, Sarah

After the doctor’s analysis, the townspeople then gathered up all of the girls with the symptoms. The collected girls accused three women: Sarah Good, an odd homeless woman who lived the streets of Salem Village, Sarah Osborne, who had married her servant and rarely attended the church meetings, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados who was in service of Reverend Samuel Parris. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne denied the accusations, while Tituba confessed, and claimed there were multiple other witches working by her side in Salem.