The problem of Salem
Oct. 25th, 2008 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI'm reading Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare (Knopf 2002), which mostly--thus far--is an excellent book, providing yet another set of contexts for the Salem witch trials of 1692 (in this case the Indian Wars of the 1670s and 80s). But it has a problem, and in rereading my posts about the other books on Salem which I've read, I find that it is a problem I've been complaining about consistently since the beginning. (The one shining honorable exception is John Demos, Entertaining Satan, and I'm trying to decide if Demos's exemption is somehow linked to the fact that he's not talking about the Salem outbreak. I.e., I'm wondering if it's something about the Salem outbreak itself that causes this difficulty.)
Here is the problem:
The people who started the outbreak of witch accusations and trials in Salem Village in 1692 were girls, ranging in age from ten to twenty. (Adult women would also become accusers, most notably Ann Carr Putman, the mother of one of the original accusers.) Unlike the magistrates and ministers and other adult (male) participants, they left no records of their motivations or of their interiority at all. We get them only second-hand, from their fathers and uncles and community leaders. And when we, rational 21st century readers and historians, read accounts of the afflicted girls' behavior at the trials, it is all but impossible for us not to conclude that they were faking, that they were in full and conscious control of their "fits" and concomitant accusations.
Something that occurs over and over again: during the examination of Goody B, Girl A cries out: "Goody B's specter is about to pinch Girl C!" Girl C shrieks and wails: "Goody B's specter is pinching me!" To us, this looks obviously like collusion between and outright lying by Girl A and Girl C. To the magistrates and audience at Salem in 1692, it looked like proof of Goody B's witchcraft. Likewise with the tendency of new accusations to be made against people who openly scoffed at witchcraft (like John Proctor) or who were openly angry about the accusations (like Rebecca Nurse's sister Sarah Cloyce). To us, it's blatant one way--the girls accuse their doubters in order to sabotage them--to the people of Salem it was blatant the other way--those who doubt the truth of the girls' afflictions can only be witches. (Once you were accused of witchcraft, it was basically all over. The magistrates operated on the assumption of guilty until proven innocent, and there was no way for you to prove your innocence. It's terrifying.)
All of the books I've read on Salem pay lip service to the idea that these people, seventeenth century Puritans, believed fully and sincerely in the Devil and in witchcraft. And they never explicitly say otherwise. But their discussions of the accusers imply, sometimes very strongly, that the girls are lying, faking--whether on their own account or at the behest of their elders.
And what's especially problematic is that this assumption is never stated and therefore never examined. No one comes to grips with the question of the inner life of these girls. Were they faking? Or did they sincerely believe that they were afflicted by the people they named? Did they control their fits or were they as helpless as the adult witnesses believed they were? We don't know, and we can't know, and that means that we need to be very careful about how we extrapolate from what we do know. Yes, the manifestations and accusations were often "convenient"--girls stricken deaf when posed a question they couldn't possibly answer, accusations made against people who opposed them, etc.--and maybe that does mean that the girls were consciously faking. But that's a argumentative position, and it needs to be addressed specifically and explicitly, instead of being obscured behind blanket statements about Puritan cosmology and a focus on the adults' motivations.
Does anyone know of a book that actually tries to deal with the afflicted girls? (And, no, fiction does not count for this purpose.)
Here is the problem:
The people who started the outbreak of witch accusations and trials in Salem Village in 1692 were girls, ranging in age from ten to twenty. (Adult women would also become accusers, most notably Ann Carr Putman, the mother of one of the original accusers.) Unlike the magistrates and ministers and other adult (male) participants, they left no records of their motivations or of their interiority at all. We get them only second-hand, from their fathers and uncles and community leaders. And when we, rational 21st century readers and historians, read accounts of the afflicted girls' behavior at the trials, it is all but impossible for us not to conclude that they were faking, that they were in full and conscious control of their "fits" and concomitant accusations.
Something that occurs over and over again: during the examination of Goody B, Girl A cries out: "Goody B's specter is about to pinch Girl C!" Girl C shrieks and wails: "Goody B's specter is pinching me!" To us, this looks obviously like collusion between and outright lying by Girl A and Girl C. To the magistrates and audience at Salem in 1692, it looked like proof of Goody B's witchcraft. Likewise with the tendency of new accusations to be made against people who openly scoffed at witchcraft (like John Proctor) or who were openly angry about the accusations (like Rebecca Nurse's sister Sarah Cloyce). To us, it's blatant one way--the girls accuse their doubters in order to sabotage them--to the people of Salem it was blatant the other way--those who doubt the truth of the girls' afflictions can only be witches. (Once you were accused of witchcraft, it was basically all over. The magistrates operated on the assumption of guilty until proven innocent, and there was no way for you to prove your innocence. It's terrifying.)
All of the books I've read on Salem pay lip service to the idea that these people, seventeenth century Puritans, believed fully and sincerely in the Devil and in witchcraft. And they never explicitly say otherwise. But their discussions of the accusers imply, sometimes very strongly, that the girls are lying, faking--whether on their own account or at the behest of their elders.
And what's especially problematic is that this assumption is never stated and therefore never examined. No one comes to grips with the question of the inner life of these girls. Were they faking? Or did they sincerely believe that they were afflicted by the people they named? Did they control their fits or were they as helpless as the adult witnesses believed they were? We don't know, and we can't know, and that means that we need to be very careful about how we extrapolate from what we do know. Yes, the manifestations and accusations were often "convenient"--girls stricken deaf when posed a question they couldn't possibly answer, accusations made against people who opposed them, etc.--and maybe that does mean that the girls were consciously faking. But that's a argumentative position, and it needs to be addressed specifically and explicitly, instead of being obscured behind blanket statements about Puritan cosmology and a focus on the adults' motivations.
Does anyone know of a book that actually tries to deal with the afflicted girls? (And, no, fiction does not count for this purpose.)
