Girls Bewitched In The Salem Witch Trials

These girls did not all show “symptoms” at one time. The first girl to start experiencing symptoms was Betty Parris. She was followed by Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis (History of Massachusetts). These girls were throwing tantrums, hiding under furniture and contorting to pain. Since panic and fear set in, witchcraft was the easy choice to make. In today’s medical science, these girls would have been diagnosed with boredom or epilepsy. Although at the time the cause was unknown, these symptoms were probably brought on from eating rye infected with fungus. The three victims were not the only ones accused. There were numerous cases of scapegoating running prevalent.

Salem Witch Trials was a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in the Salem Village of the 17th century New England. The trials caused executions of many people, mostly women. Salem Witch Trials exposed the different gender roles during the seventeenth century. Women were supposed to take on “wifely duties” such as, be mothers and housewives. Women were taught to follow the men. There were strict religious norms during the seventeenth century. There was rigid moral code believed that God would punish sinful behavior. Those who were under the covenant by the church of the Salem Village believed that Satan would select those to fulfill his work and those who followed Satan were considered witches. Witchcraft was considered a punishable crime. Salem Witch Trials revealed that gender played a role for the accused and accusers. The trials also revealed that one’s relationship with God will set deliverance from Satan’s attacks. Salem Witch Trials demonstrated how rumors, jealousy, and the idea of male dominance affected people of the Salem Village.

Throughout history, there have been many cases of discriminatory accusations of people, including the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials were a string of trials, hearings and prosecutions of many people accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts between the dates of February 1692 and May 1693. The trials ended up leading to the execution of twenty people, men and women, but mainly women. The Salem Witch Trials that took place about three hundred years ago affected the lives of everyday civilians during that time in ways such as politically, religiously, economically, fearfully, mentally, and sometimes in other various other ways.

Human beings always have been curious creatures. We are a species that is always searching for answers to unexplainable events. Take aliens for example. To us, aliens may or may not exist (depending on your individual belief of course). Yet we still take such an interest in them that we continuously search for answers and proof of alien. Now that we have modern day technology, we can attain “proof” of alien life-form somewhere deep in outer space. But given the date 1692 in New England, if we were to even come in contact with aliens it would have been considered some supernatural phenomena, and even cause quite a bit of hysteria. That is what happened to the puritans in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials, in Massachusetts, in the year 1962. The puritans of Salem village were extremely paranoid, and they believed that if something can’t be explained then it had the devils influence. So when a group of Salem girls spoke up about the devil and witches, the villagers of Salem went into a panicked frenzy. Truth of the matter is that there were no witches in Salem nor was the devil at war against Salem; the Salem Witch Trials were only a result of endless lies, conspiracies, and side effects of an illness.

In late winter and early spring of 1692, residents of Salem Village, Massachusetts, a thinly settled town of six hundred began to suffer from a strange physical and mental malady. Fits, hallucinations, temporary paralysis, and “distracted” rampages were suddeny occuring sporadically in the community. The livestock, too, seemed to suffer from the unexplainable illness. With the limited scientific and medical knowledge of the time, physicians who were consulted could only offer witchcraft as an explanation. Psychiatric disorder is used in a slightly different sense in the argument that the Witchcraft crisis was a consequence of two party factionalism in Salem Village in this account the girls are unimportant factors in the entire incident. Their behavior “served as the kind of Roschach test into which adults read their own concerns and expectations.” Possessed individuals exhibited learned behavior patterns and that words and actions varied only slightly among them. The affected women experienced an inner conflict which was explained by the ministers as a struggle between good and evil. As to the physical symptoms: the fits, trances, and paralyzed limbs, among others, Karlsen attributes them to the afflicted girls’ actual fear of witches as well as the idea that once they fell into an afflicted state they were free to express

Wasn’t attributable of a physical malady, the community reasoned that it must been According to Blumberg, the Salem of witch trails was a really bad part of the United State. There were people who didn’t understanding why they were getting accused. This happed during 1692 and 1693 in Massachusetts. This happened during this time. The main parts that started and fueled the trials were politics, religion, family, feuds, economics, and the imaginations and fears of people (Sutter). The seeds of the hysteria is afflicted Salem village, Massachusetts were sown on January 1692 when groups of young lady’s began to display wild behavior. The physicians called to examine the girls could find no cause of the disturbing behavior. If the source affliction the work of Satan. Witches invaded of Salem. February village began; raying and fasting in order to rid itself of the devil’s affect the girls were pressured to reveal who’s in the community controlled their behavior. March 11, 1692 there was a day of fasting and also, prayers in the Salem during the days of community’s ministers, the rev. Monday 21st on March magistrates of Salem appointed to come to examination of the goodwife Corey about twelve of the clock they went into the meeting house, which was thronged with the spectators (The Salem witch Trials). Ann Putnam Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren all charge they were, no longer friends they were not nice. “The girls complained into grotesque poses, fell

 The Salem Witch Trial consisted of heinous accusations implicated by Cotton Mather which effected society as a hole and gave reasoning to the numerous amount of witch stories we hear today. Cotton Mather was the eldest son of Increase Mather, Massachusetts most influential and well known Puritan minister, and the grandson of John Cotton, Salem’s spiritual founder. Cotton Mather was born in Boston Massachusetts and attended Harvard University, receiving an honors degree from Glasgow University. Mather was pastor of Boston 's second protestant church and began his journey into politics in 1689.

Mid-January 1642, 9-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams, with the help[ of the Parris slave Tituba, participated in an act that set off a spark that would start the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria. Wishing to know about their future, Betty and Abigail suspended a raw egg in a glass over a light.The images would act as messages and clues. Although this seems innocent enough after this “reading” they began to display unusual behavior associated with possession symptoms. This led to a full scale investigation and arrests of the slave Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne under the charges of witchcraft. Tituba was the only one to confess, this confession unknowingly saved her from the gallows that Good and Osborne would soon meet. This first event led to hundreds of other trials and hunts that put both men and women into jail or even hung.

People are getting hanged every month. I am so scared I might be hanged next month. I am in Salem, the year in 1692. I know the girls are faking it but, I am scared to death. We are all scared of them, all of us give them gifts and cookies. In the summer of 1692, Salem was in a dilemma. Girls took drugs from their slave and started to see things that weren’t actually there. They started The Salem Witch Trials of 1692. What caused 20 people to be hanged in Salem during the summer months of 1692? The Salem Witch Trials was caused by poor, young girls who acted possessed because they were jealous of the rich. The young girls didn’t wanted to be bossed around, drama queens pretend they have the devil inside them, and the poor people

After reading through the available information on the Salem witch trials, it would seem that the initial witch scare was caused by juvenile girls, capitalizing on the fears and superstition of the populace at the time. According to Professor Linder’s research, “Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the piety and sense of purpose of the founders’ generation.”(Linder) At first accusing women who they did not like and being supported by their prominent families, the juveniles found success to be easy. Additionally, the fact that the first accused were poor, not liked, and one being a slave, it stands to reason that not many in the community would have chanced besmirching their good names in the defense of the accused.

The year was 1692, when terror of witchcraft and the devil swept through the little Salem village. When the trials came about people turned on their enemies and even family turned on other family members with accusations of witchcraft. Throughout this process many people were hung or stoned to death because they were found guilty of having relations with the devil or for not admitting to witchcraft. Many books and articles have been published about the Salem witch trials but most of them were written in different ways by the approach the authors takes, how they interpret the information from that time period and the content they use. They also differ by the accounts they make towards certain individuals, along with the approach they take to tell what happened during the Salem witch trials. In the nonfiction book, The Devil In Massachusetts by Marion L. Starkey, she tells a dramatic story about what had happened before, during, and after the Salem witch trials, to make what she is saying more interesting. While compared to a nonfiction book, The Salem Wichcraft Trials: A Legal History written by a historian named Peter Charles Hoffer, where he is very straight forward because he uses factual evidence from primary and secondary source puritain writers and he gives those writers credit in his bibliographic essay.

The residents of the village of Salem have what they believe is definitive and irrefutable proof that someone is bewitching these children and perhaps even the town itself. For them the question is not if it is happening but who is doing it. This was on the tail end of the Witchcraft craze that was sweeping through Europe where thousands of women accused of witchcraft were put to death because they were believed to be agents of the Devil causing harm to others through supernatural means. The craze started in the 1300’s and ended in the late 1600’s.(Blumberg, 2007) Even though overseas this was winding down, local events caused it to flourish.

Throughout the ages, humans have proven themselves countless times to be disloyal , selfish, and underhanded. It is with a degree of smugness and superiority that we often regard events such as the cruel, corrupt governmental systems of the past, abuses of the church, and mass murders in the name of religion. We tend to believe that we have made improvements in areas such the definition and protection of personal freedoms and we have faith that our journalists will uncover and reveal the very beginnings of corrupt governmental behaviors. Our society looks at both the present and the future with optimism and their unflagging confidence in our own ability to create something superior to those governments that have come before us. This causes us to neglect to face the corruption present in our own lives. Most people can recall when they first learned about the Salem Witch trials that occurred in 1693 because they were shocked and horrified that the townspeople let these events take place and spiral. What people do not realize is that they are like the townspeople in Salem, Massachusetts and similar injustices and dangerous abuses of power in the name of government and religion are happening right around them now. Lies, deceit and corruption, have always reverberated throughout American history and people need constant reminders to stay vigilant and aware. As a writer, I am able to reach a large audience with this reminder and I saw my play The Crucible “as a vehicle for

Two young girls began to have fits. Brooks states that during winter of 1691 some of the girls were said to have been experimenting with fortune-telling techniques, specifically a technique known as the “Venus-glass” during which the girls dropped egg whites into a glass of water and interpreted whatever shapes or symbols appeared in an attempt to learn more about their future husbands. As they did the technique a coffin showed inside the glass scaring the girls. Shortly after the girls had done the fortune telling, they experienced out of the ordinary events. The girls yelled and screamed, had outbursts, and violent contortions. These girls were Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams. Elizabeth, daughter of the minister of Salem Village, and Abigail, the minister’s niece, both had their fits simultaneously. Local doctors all examined the girls with no explanations or ideas of what was happening. Doctor William Griggs determined that there was no other diagnostics besides bewitchment. The girls had been cursed or put under a spell. After the girls were diagnosed, there was no going back. Minister Samuel Parris was determined to figure out how this was possible. Townspeople began to visit and question the girls. With every visit, the girls threw fits and began to act as if an unwanted spirit was trying to possess them. In February, the girls gave names of suspected witches. Other people began to show similar signs as the girls. Was it mass hysteria? From this point the “Salem Witch Trials” had begun.

The girls in Salem were suffering from fits. They were hiding under furniture, had a fever and had pain constantly and were fatigued. The girls could not have been faking these symptoms. Since people cannot make themselves have a fever and cannot make themselves faint. They were suffering from the disorder because when the young girls heard of what was going on they started doing it as well. No one ever caught the illness unless they were stressed out about the news and believed they might have had it. They were not faking the symptoms because it caused people that they knew to be hurt as well and they still could not stop. The mass hysteria in Salem was from the puritans who thought the devil was was making people sick. The girls were very stressed out thinking they could be accused of witchcraft next that when they heard of the symptoms that some young children apparently had they seemed to get them too. All, the symptoms they had are all under the category of conversion disorder so now people can draw the conclusion that they just all thought they were sick. The girls in Salem were not faking the disorder of having conversion disorder.