UBC #20: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman

[truepenny]

UBC #20
(Bet y'all thought I was never going to make it to number 20, huh?)

Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1987.

---

I had a couple of UBC failures before I read this book, both foundering on the same problem: namely, if I don't enjoy reading about some critical fraction of the protagonists of a novel, I won't read the novel. Because it becomes an exercise in self-punishment, and I don't need that.

I will try both of them again at some later point and see if maybe it was a mood/stress problem.

But in the interim, I turned to nonfiction.

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is both fascinating and frustrating. Its subject matter (witchcraft accusations in New England between about 1630 and 1692, which is the date of the Salem "outbreak") is compelling in that sort of oh god I can't look trainwreck fashion; I found it frustrating because Karlsen's theoretical models for how witchcraft accusations work socially and the cultural work they do are almost naively simplistic. And she has the problem I've noticed over and over again in books about non-"rational" beliefs in previous eras, where she gives lip service to the idea that the people involved, both witches and their accusers, believed in witches and Satan and were entirely sincere in their testimony, but her analysis assumes, over and over again, that we can treat these cases as if their subjects were consciously aware that they were lying. This tendency is especially notable in her chapter on possessed people, where her analysis makes it hard to imagine the young women involved didn't know exactly what they were doing. And that makes it even more difficult than it already is to understand the human beings involved in these terrible events.

Comments

[mmarques.livejournal.com]

I recently saw an excellent performance of "The Crucible" ... dealing with those events in fiction.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

You make some good points, there. I haven't read the book, myself, but I find people of all kinds and of all views are guilty of jumping to conclusions about what's in other people's minds. So I have no trouble believing that you're right.

Interestingly, trials and executions for witchcraft were beginning to die out everywhere around then. Late 1600s, early 1700s-- I seem to recall the last witchcraft trial in England was about 1715, with the last execution having been in 1684 or so. I think it was a bit later in other countries, but it's an interesting phenomenon to note.

[edido.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind me commenting.... I don't think I've ever introduced myself, but I've been enjoying your posts for a while now, and thought you might find this interesting, as far as the question of belief goes.

The PBS show 'Secrets of the Dead' did a fascinating episode about the Salem event in which a historian speculated that ergot, a fungus that LSD is derived from, was blighting the rye that year. Ingesting bread made from it would bring on convulsions and hallucinations (and oh man, I can just imagine what Puritans are like when they are tripping) that were interpreted as possession.

The research was quite thorough, pulling in similar evidence of ergotism in Germany that led to mass executions (more witches were killed there than anywhere, IIRC), and a documented case in France from the 1950's with film footage of the victims who all ate contaminated bread from the same bakery.

It sounds wacky, but I'm sure I'm not doing the theory justice. Definitely worth renting, if you can find it somewhere.

Link to episode here (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_salem/index.html).

[whapnoggin.livejournal.com]

This theory is well-known--there's a scholarly article on the subject from at least twelve years ago (though I don't have the citation to hand).

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

...she gives lip service to the idea that the people involved, both witches and their accusers, believed in witches and Satan and were entirely sincere in their testimony, but her analysis assumes, over and over again, that we can treat these cases as if their subjects were consciously aware that they were lying.

I heard on the radio some years ago a comment that nowadays a number of people claim to have been abducted by aliens for experiments, while in the past it was demons and Satanic rites. The point, if I recall correctly, was that both these derived from vivid dreams that drew on the anxieties of the times. Thus, the witches believed what happened to them as fervently as the alien abductees do now. Assuming that 'the subjects were consciously lying' is surely both bad history and bad scholarship.

reply

[(Anonymous)]

I just finished the book and I found it pretty boring. Karlsen had great points and a good analysis. I just thought she could have had more into the stories of the accused and less on their martial and economic status. The text seemed to shed a very dim light of how the witches continued with their lives which could have been a great interpretation with the addition of her gathered data. It may have to boring in my personal opinion (but it really doesn't count) but I have to give Carol Karlsen some credit, she knows her stuff.