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UBC: Witchcraft at Salem
Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem. New York: Mentor-New American Library, 1970.
This book is very dated, sometimes horrifically so*, but it has a couple of very valuable points to make. Hansen describes specifically and at length the correlations between the afflicted girls of Salem and the nineteenth century hysterics of Charcot and Janet; while his use of the diagnosis of hysteria is reductive and unsatisfactory (he treats it as if it answers questions rather than simply generating more), it is clear that the nineteenth and the seventeenth century phenomena are the same, merely provided with a different explanatory framework.
The other very useful thing in Hansen is his insistence that witchcraft was, in fact, being practiced at Salem. And by that he means, clearly and explicitly, witchcraft as it was understood by both afflicted and accused, which was chiefly ill-wishing and the use of image magic ("puppets" or "poppets," what we today call "voodoo dolls"). He examines the workings of witchcraft in this sense (as best he could in 1970) and makes the vital point: witchcraft works because the practitioner and especially the victim believe it will.
Now, unfortunately, there are very few cases in Salem where we can trace the workings of seventeenth-century witchcraft. Bridget Bishop, the first person hanged, was known to be a witch: poppets had been discovered in her cellar and she seems to have practiced ill-wishing against the child of Samuel Shattuck, the Salem dyer. But there is no evidence (at least, no surviving evidence) of any correlation between Bishop's actions and the afflictions of the girls in Salem. No poppets were claimed to represent any of the girls, Bishop was not witnessed to have ill-wished any of the girls, etc. etc. The other example is that of Mercy Short, who was cursed by Sarah Good and promptly fell into afflictions. Sarah Good cursed lots of people, but this is the only incident with any cause and effect correlation (again, she was not witnessed to have cursed any of the afflicted girls), and it is significant that Mercy Short crossed Sarah Good only after she had been jailed as a witch. Short expected the curse to work, and it did.
To sum up, Hansen has a couple of excellent observations about the nature of the problem in Salem in 1692, but neither observation has the explanatory force he tries to give it. His account is also impeded by the fact that he is plainly partisan toward the authorities. His account is interested primarily in the actions and reactions of the powerful men of Massachusetts (not, let it be noted, the comparatively small potatoes of Salem Village--Samuel Parris barely gets a mention), and although he does not condone the judges, a significant sub-theme of the book is the rehabilitation of Cotton Mather. He isn't interested in the afflicted girls--except to exculpate them of any breath of fraud--and he isn't even particularly interested in the accused witches, except through the lens of the judicial machinery that was trying to figure out what to do with them. Thus the last chapter congratulates Massachusetts for its various public acts of contrition, as if apologizing for a mistake somehow vindicated the making of the mistake in the first place.
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*And nowhere more so than in the back-cover copy, which proclaims in lurid red letters, "Witchcraft at Salem represents a bold new look at history, conventional wisdom--and above all, the uncanny extra-physical powers that human beings can wield over one another. The product of brilliant scholarship and searching intelligence, it takes you further than ever before into a hypnotically enthralling area of speculation and investigation." This is a gross misrepresentation of the book's agenda, which--although it mentions the inexplicable reports of levitation in the case of Margaret Rule (and then does nothing with them)--is mostly concerned with sociological and anthropological analysis. The "uncanny extra-physical powers" so touted are the powers of suggestion and mental illness.
This book is very dated, sometimes horrifically so*, but it has a couple of very valuable points to make. Hansen describes specifically and at length the correlations between the afflicted girls of Salem and the nineteenth century hysterics of Charcot and Janet; while his use of the diagnosis of hysteria is reductive and unsatisfactory (he treats it as if it answers questions rather than simply generating more), it is clear that the nineteenth and the seventeenth century phenomena are the same, merely provided with a different explanatory framework.
The other very useful thing in Hansen is his insistence that witchcraft was, in fact, being practiced at Salem. And by that he means, clearly and explicitly, witchcraft as it was understood by both afflicted and accused, which was chiefly ill-wishing and the use of image magic ("puppets" or "poppets," what we today call "voodoo dolls"). He examines the workings of witchcraft in this sense (as best he could in 1970) and makes the vital point: witchcraft works because the practitioner and especially the victim believe it will.
Now, unfortunately, there are very few cases in Salem where we can trace the workings of seventeenth-century witchcraft. Bridget Bishop, the first person hanged, was known to be a witch: poppets had been discovered in her cellar and she seems to have practiced ill-wishing against the child of Samuel Shattuck, the Salem dyer. But there is no evidence (at least, no surviving evidence) of any correlation between Bishop's actions and the afflictions of the girls in Salem. No poppets were claimed to represent any of the girls, Bishop was not witnessed to have ill-wished any of the girls, etc. etc. The other example is that of Mercy Short, who was cursed by Sarah Good and promptly fell into afflictions. Sarah Good cursed lots of people, but this is the only incident with any cause and effect correlation (again, she was not witnessed to have cursed any of the afflicted girls), and it is significant that Mercy Short crossed Sarah Good only after she had been jailed as a witch. Short expected the curse to work, and it did.
To sum up, Hansen has a couple of excellent observations about the nature of the problem in Salem in 1692, but neither observation has the explanatory force he tries to give it. His account is also impeded by the fact that he is plainly partisan toward the authorities. His account is interested primarily in the actions and reactions of the powerful men of Massachusetts (not, let it be noted, the comparatively small potatoes of Salem Village--Samuel Parris barely gets a mention), and although he does not condone the judges, a significant sub-theme of the book is the rehabilitation of Cotton Mather. He isn't interested in the afflicted girls--except to exculpate them of any breath of fraud--and he isn't even particularly interested in the accused witches, except through the lens of the judicial machinery that was trying to figure out what to do with them. Thus the last chapter congratulates Massachusetts for its various public acts of contrition, as if apologizing for a mistake somehow vindicated the making of the mistake in the first place.
---
*And nowhere more so than in the back-cover copy, which proclaims in lurid red letters, "Witchcraft at Salem represents a bold new look at history, conventional wisdom--and above all, the uncanny extra-physical powers that human beings can wield over one another. The product of brilliant scholarship and searching intelligence, it takes you further than ever before into a hypnotically enthralling area of speculation and investigation." This is a gross misrepresentation of the book's agenda, which--although it mentions the inexplicable reports of levitation in the case of Margaret Rule (and then does nothing with them)--is mostly concerned with sociological and anthropological analysis. The "uncanny extra-physical powers" so touted are the powers of suggestion and mental illness.