The Devil's Work

[truepenny]

So mirrorthaw and I have been joking for a while about this Ph.D. in early American history I'm apparently pursuing in my spare time*, and this morning I realized that I could submit a thesis proposal by January 1st if I needed to. Which, THANK GOODNESS, I don't. Also, ironically, I think it'd be a pretty good book--better in many ways than my actual thesis. Hypothetical title: The Devil's Work: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692.



I. Introduction

Here one says what one is going to say. In this case, talk about the ways in which American understandings of witchcraft have shifted dramatically over the last 400 years (books about Salem shelved with books about Wicca); talk about the interpretive problems posed by Salem (its uniqueness; the controversies WITHIN the trials; our lack of access to the interiority of the afflicted girls); talk about the plethora of theories, all of them privileging one aspect of the situation at the expense of others. Point out the play on words of my title because I am in love with my own cleverness like this, wherein the "devil's work" is what the magistrates thought they were prosecuting, but it turns out to have been what they were doing.

I. Witchcraft in New England

Examination of Puritan beliefs about witchcraft, drawing heavily on John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan. Particular emphasis laid on the place of witchcraft in Puritan cosmology (i.e., why Puritans believed in the specific kind of witches they believed in) and the attributes of people likely to be accused of witchcraft.

II. Witchcraft Trials in New England

How witchcraft trials normally proceeded. The books I've read about Salem don't discuss this, and the books I've read not about Salem are so anxious to be Not About Salem that they tend not to make any comparative remarks. This would be where a bunch of primary sources would have to be read and cited.

III. A Brief History of Witchcraft in Salem

Bare bones account of the witchcraft hysteria of 1692, start to finish.

IV. Theories

• at least one of the books I haven't found yet propounds the theory that the afflicted girls were deliberate frauds
  
• Hill, A Delusion of Satan, Hansen, and Norton: 19th century "hysteria" as an interpretation of the afflicted girls
  
• Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem: actual witchcraft
  
• Boyer & Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: socio-economics
  
• Norton, In the Devil's Snare: politics & xenophobia
  
• I'm sure there are other theories I haven't come across yet
  

V. Synthesis

This would be the tricky part, wherein I would try to pull together these various theories into something coherent that provided at least a tentative answer as to why things went so spectacularly wrong in Salem, drawing both on the theories discussed in IV. and comparisons with the other New England witchcraft trials discussed in II.

VI. Conclusion

This is the bit where one explains why one's readers ought to care about one's subject. I hate this part, because my answer is always, "Because it's fascinating!" and for some reason that never seems to be good enough. So talk about 19th century hysterics and the 20th century equivalent, whatever one thinks that might be (Hill says it's the Satanic abuse scares, and I wish she'd really made a case for it, because I'd love to see that dealt with rigorously); talk about Senator McCarthy's witch hunts and The Crucible. Talk about Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery." Talk about episodes of The X-Files and Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Talk about our perceptions of Salem and what we use it to mean--and why it's important to keep trying to correct that perception. Stuff like that.



So, yeah. I could write this book. I'd even kind of enjoy it. But there is NO WAY IN HELL I'm going back to school, so unless some publisher is crazy enough to want to pay me for it, it shall remain, as it is now, hypothetical vaporware. (Yes, that's a tautology. I'm kind of fond of it.)

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*Despite all the reading about Nazis, I'll never be more than a dilettante in the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, because I can't read German (or Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hebrew, etc. etc. etc.). Had I But Known, I would have taken German in high school, but I didn't know--and there would have to be some pretty radical changes in my life and my goals for me to take it up now.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I used to know a publisher that might well have gone for that, but, alas, they collapsed about 18 months ago. MY 20 years of non-fiction writing experience agrees with you about not writing it on spec.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things where if I didn't have other books to write, I might do it just for fun. But when writing books is, in fact, my job . . . no.