Women 's View Of A Patriarchal World

Females in the 1692-1693 were one of the largest groups accused of being part of the Salem Witch Trials. According to Washington State University, “As events unfolded, 185 people were accused at Salem, 141 women and 44 men. Of that number, 52 women and 7 men were tried; 26 women and 5 men were convicted; and 14 women and 5 men were executed, the last group on September 22, 1692.”(Campbell 1) this statistic shows that women were more likely to have been accused of being a Witch. Women were thought to be much lesser than men and weren't

History generally regards the period of Salem witchcraft trials as a radical instatement of religious zeal which favored superstition over reason and targeted a large number of women over a much smaller number of men. Admittedly, the 1692 witchcraft crisis is a very complex historical episode, yet seeing as the majority of the people involved were women, it can be perceived as a gender issue, and illustrative for the definition of the role of women in New England. The present work's aim is to outline the colonial mindset concerning women and present relevant theories by means of analyzing three cases of witchcraft accusation together with delving into the accusers' perspective.

Witchcraft was defined for the masses by the publication of the Malleus Maleficarium also known simply as the Handbook. Written by two Dominican friars in 1486 it’s purpose was to be used as a handbook to identify, capture, torture, and execute suspected witches. Opinions stated as facts and written in the Malleus Maleficarium, “handbook”, were based their faith, church doctrine, and the Bible. No doubt a religious masterpiece in it’s time this handbook is a neatly woven together a group of beliefs, experiences, wisdom of ancient writers, religious ideas, and God inspired writings that justify it’s purpose. Written by and used by Catholics this handbook proved useful for Protestants as well. Based on biblical interpretation and ideas the handbook provided Protestant Church leaders biblical authority to prosecute witchcraft as well. Translated into today’s vernacular phrases such as, “everybody knows that women are feeble minded” or “everybody knows that women are more superstitious than men” and “all women have slippery tongues” are included in the handbook and presented to the reader as foregone conclusions. Specific

Furthermore, another cause for the witchcraft frenzy was religious uncertainty (Spielvogel 439). There were numerous witchcraft trials in the region where “Protestant-Catholic” arguments still fumed (Spielvogel 439). According to Spielvogel, “[a]s religious passions became inflamed, accusations of being in league with the devil became common on both sides” (Spielvogel 439). Additionally, another contributing factor to the widespread witchcraft hysteria was the escalating amount of trials and executions of alleged witches (Spielvogel 437).

Witch craze in Europe during: the period of the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of national governments from about 1480-1700

During the fifteenth century throughout the seventeenth century, the belief in god was common. The bible states of demons able to control people making them do bad things with evil magic. “As for the question, why a greater number of witches if found in the fragile feminine sex than among most men… the first is, that they are more credulous this.... The second reason is, that

In 1692 nineteen women and men were accused of witchcraft. There has to be reasons for the accusations; however, scholars disagree on what led the accusers to accuse the "witches". Some believe it was character traits that led the village to do this act; others still think it was sexist’ intolerance. Because religion is the biggest factor of being Puritan, religious persecution is the main motive for making people of Salem accuses others of witchery; because of its fundamental part in the Puritan society.

When the group of girls were acting strange and got accused of being witches, everyone started pointing fingers. There was the paranoia that any person could be a part of a conspiracy that was created by the devil caused false accusations to be spread around. This paranoia was used to make false accusations on many innocent citizens because people were trying not to take the focus away from themselves. There was research that was done on those that were accused and what it showed was that most of the accusations were against middle-age women who had few or no children and were widowed. The accused witches “were of low social position, and because of some domestic conflicts, they were accused of other crimes and were considered abrasive” (Brinkley, 86). by other people around them. Once a person was accused of being under the influence of the devil, which is a big offence, they would start to be treated differently from the rest. It wasn’t the actual presence of Satan that caused this chaos, but the anxiety and fear of him that did.

It is apparent witches needed the belief of the local community to reinforce confidence in their powers, just as much as the local community needed witches as means of a scapegoat. Scot claimed the witch would visit her neighbours when needing to procure goods, in which she would go door to door (Levack 2004:). During this visit, the attitude of the witch was often aggressive for she believed her reputation in the local community would secure submission from neighbours. However, more often than that not, her neighbour would echo such hostility, and after upsetting the witch, she would then leave.

During the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials, accusations of witchcraft were made most often with reasons beyond that of simply fear.

The change in nature of the construction of the Salem witch trials from Cotton Mather’s traditional recount of the 1692 witch crisis, The Wonders of the Invisible World: The Devil in New England, written in 1693, to postmodern writers of history, has resulted in the absence of objective truths that is merely manipulated to satisfy the historiographers’ purpose. Karlsen’s 1987 work, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, attempts to rediscover women’s history by shedding light on the “systematic violence against women” and preserving what she believes as ‘self-evident truths’. Therefore, her consultation of sources seeks to be truthful by acknowledging major reinterpretations made by John Demos and Paul Boyer

Throughout the witch hunts, women were the primary target; most victims being midwives, native healers, single women who lived alone, people against whom neighbors had a grudge or practitioners of ancient pagan rituals. Although not all were women, 75 to 90% of accused witches were in fact women (Levack,. p. 124), forcing one to question the affects of the harsh portrayal of women being placed on women.

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican professor that began teaching at the University of Paris in the year 1256, in theology. His works in the field of theology were greatly influenced by Aristotle as well as Plato. His main goal in the section of his writing, Summa Contra Gentiles, was to explain how magic was portrayed in the “natural world”. He was trying to show non-Christians, especially Muslims, how Catholic beliefs could be rationalized. All the documents of St. Aquinas’s that were paired together in the section of the book by the editors were detailed works that were seen as controversial back when they were first published. One of the works in this section, titled Commentary on the Four Books of Sentences: Sorcery and Exorcism, in

During the reign of James VI, Reginald Scot wrote a book detailing his opinions on the witch hunting craze. The book was ironically titled The Discoverie of Magic despite what the content of the book. In his book, Scot explains how unrealistic he believes witches are. His whole book explains why he did not believe in the existence of witches. One quote from his book states his key argument: “If witches could do any such miraculous things, as these and other which are imputed to them, they might do them again and again, at any time or place, or at any man's desire: for the devil is as strong at one time as at another, as busy by day as by night, and ready enough to do all mischief, and careth not whom he abuseth” (Scot). Scot found it very strange

Magic worked under a guise of uncertainty and drew its power from nature. Magic would never go wrong “unless some detail of ritual observance had been omitted or a rival magician had been practising stronger counter-magic” (Thomas 41). Similarly, “a prayer had no certainty of success and would not be granted if God chose not to concede it. The Church encouraged the use of “ecclesiastical talismans and amulets,” and magic had many rituals, spells, and relics (Thomas 30). Both worked off very similar principles and had a reason why something would not work if someone were to question the practice. Even though they were very similar in many ways, the relationship between religion and magic was constantly changing. For a long period of time magicians were not tolerated by church officials, but eventually they were more