Witchcraft In The Witches

In Massachusetts during 1692 a horrible expiernce had swept throughout the colonies that witches were real, and some of the key concepts that had a major impact to make people think they were real were superstation, economics, politics and there early ideal of gender shaped their era. Throughout the era of witches there had been puritans who were people who had believed in god and do that they thought to be able to see god and his angels you would have to believe in evil apparitions as well. Puritans at the time were one of the main contributing societies of witchcraft in Salem, and it was the belief that Satan was among them and roaming around freely. Next was the other type of contributing factor which was the relationships within and between

The first set of witchcraft persecutions occurred during Elizabeth 1st reign, this was Around 1563. Commonly people associated witches with a woman and the beliefs were the following of that they have made a pact with the evil spirit Satan. The rush of the witch persecutions mainly happened after 1563 and by the time period of 1750 roughly 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt, or hung across the whole of Western Europe. Therefore, in this essay, I will be mainly focusing and arguing which of the hysteria surrounding witchcraft and witchcraft trials had a greater impact in Britain or the American colonies in the time period of the 17th century. And I will be arguing it following different factors which could contribute to this such as the social factors geographical factors, religious factors and also control law and order.

Instead of ignoring the female accusers in Salem Possessed, Boyer and Nissenbaum should have analyzed the events starting the witch hunt in early 1692 and the

Most of the people accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witchcraft Trials were women. While historian Carol F. Karlsen delves deeper into societal values that led so many women to be accused, in her book The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by focusing on social norms of the time, Elizabeth Reis, in her book Damned Women, focuses on the impact of gender in religion. They both discuss the importance of gender at the time, and the impact it made for the trials. There is not one clear reason why women were the main targets but each historian looks at a different aspect in 17th century American society where gender played a role. Both take a look at the way society functioned in the late 1600s and womens’ roles within the broader community.

In addition, one cause of the Salem Witch Trial hysteria was sexism. Evidence of this is from the Salem Court Records where out of 20 people executed for witchcraft 14 were women and six were men(Doc A). This evidence shows that there were more women than men being executed and accused of witchcraft. The people were sexist against women because they weren’t as many men being executed and accused. The accusers, who were mostly women, were being sexist against other women that were being accused.

Kamensky claims that women were the targets of witch hunts for being outspoken but she does not examine other parts of the hunt. Religious beliefs and people who did not want to admit their role

“As the magician molted into the witch, she also became predominately female, inherently more wicked and more susceptible to satanic overtures.” Says Schiff. They were extremely wicked, casted spells and curses on whoever crossed their paths, and used their abhorrent magic to make pregnancies last for three years. They turned others into hybrids man didn’t even think possible. Women were mainly the ones accused because they had a standard. If they acted below those standards it wasn’t necessarily worrisome but if they acted above them it was awfully suspicious.

104 out of the 141 accused and 14 out of the 20 executed during the Salem Witch Trials were females. Beliefs on witchcraft that were based primarily on writings of men portrayed women as “morally and intellectually weaker than men”. This ideology is traced all the way back to Eve, the first female God created, according to the bible. During Genesis Chapter three, Eve is tempted by the devil at the Garden of Eden and takes a bite of a fruit God forbade to eat. This story illustrated women’s inherent weakness in the face of temptation by the devil (Wilson, 79).

In Document B, Demos presents that most of the accusers of witches were single females in their younger years of age. In the late 1600s, women were extremely dependent upon men for their financial stability, overall safety, and mental/emotional well being. In an interpretation of this document, it can be assumed that these younger female women were seeking family ties and protection in a harsher time period. On the same hand, Document C, a most likely extremely biased account, recounts the “bewitched actions” of Bridget Bishop, a witch, upon the afflicted. Samuel Parris, the examiner of Bishop, seems to shed a negative light on Bishop.

Witches were viewed negatively and as followers of the Devil. According to the documents, the three major reasons for the persecution of witches were the religion, the social prejudices, and the economic hunger of the people. At the time of the witch craze, the Protestant Reformation was going on. These leaders of the religions played an important role in the development of the witch trials because

any innocent people in the colonial times who were accused of witchcraft didn't even partake in any of the activities that were associated with witchcraft, were still labeled as witches, and harshly punished or sentenced to death. The people of salem frowned upon witchcraft. the people had come to the conclusion that the devil had come to their town in 1692. Most of the cases of witchcraft were girls were acting strange and doing weird activities with women in the woods believed to be witches.the townspeople thought this was strange and took action.

Karlsen leaps to the present with two short paragraphs concerning the connection of early America belief in witchcraft influencing modern thinking and fascination with historical witchcraft. She asserts, "the continuing power of woman-as-witch in our collective imagination"; she addresses the issue of the power that continues to mold and shape the perception of witches and witchcraft in modern America. Why is this relevant to the book and her original story? Why would she throw this in? Pondering these questions led to the conclusion that the reference to current thought links the "woman-as-witch" ideology to the current emphasis on female empowerment prevalent in feminist writing today.

However, she was still accused of a witch because her outstanding reputation as “Puritan perfection” intimidated the supremacy of male in the Puritan society. Rebecca’s success and prosperity, and links to those opposed to the Putnams and Parris also provoked her opponents’ jealousy, anger and revenge, and caused her to be the victim of witch hunt (Hill 90-91). In Salem society, women were discriminated, expected to be no authority and wealth, and viewed as easier to be controlled by the devil and inferior to men (Mammone). Therefore, even though Rebecca was an innocent and respectable woman, she could not prevail over men in a male dominated society.

Women’s life was divided between family, marriage and religion. The women’s main concern and responsibility was the procreation. In those times, family was very big so the typical role of the woman was that to be a good wife and a good mother. Some of them tried emancipation but they were blamed by society for this. These were the witches,

The Song Of Witches Stella Glow employs two visually distinct art styles for its character depictions. During the visual-novelesque story sections, each character enjoys a, though sparsely animated, detailed and expressive anime-style drawing. With Hilda and Dorothy's visuals immediately endearing themselves to me. Hilda with her modernized take on the classic witch in a pointy black hat and cape and Dorothy with her personality-revealing repurposed rabbit costume betraying her psychotic sensibilities. However, during the actual tactical skirmishes themselves, Imageepoch presents proceedings with chibified versions, cutesy models with disproportionately large heads, of the aforementioned character designs.