Summary
Chapter 8: Witchcraft and Social Identity
Boyer and Nissenbaum claim that the people of the community were “shaped by the times in which they lived” (179). They were trying to deal with the changes sweeping through their world, as well as trying to fight things they were feeling in themselves. They had the “Puritan temper,” trying to “expunge the lure of a new order from their own souls by doing battle with it in the real world” (181). There was a volatile mix of things at play in Salem at the time, and below the proximate causes (young girls’ interest in the occult and fortunetelling, for example) were those deeper ones caused by the families’ factionalism and dismay or excitement over the major changes occurring.
Witchcraft and Factionalism
Networks formed after the accusations began, and there was a correlation between the Village factionalism and the divisions over the Trials. Supporters of the Trials generally belonged to the pro-Parris faction, and opponents generally belonged to the anti-Parris faction. Most supporters were less wealthy than the detractors.
But the networks are hard to pin down, and there are certainly numbers of Villagers whose opinions we do not know, or who stuck to some middle ground. There are also the accused witches themselves, who are actually impossible to associate fully with the anti-Parris side.
The accused are also a fascinating group of people. They were not the ardent anti-Parris people, and among the accusers there was a respect for status and “habits of deference” (188). The accused were connected loosely to the anti-Parris people, but ultimately what characterized them was their “lack of commitment to ‘Salem Village,’” which had an “alien and unfamiliar quality” (189).
The Village Witches: Toward a Collective Profile
There were 142 accused witches in 1692, with 25 living in Salem Village and its immediate environs. There are certain common characteristics, which the authors explore below.
Outsiders
Eighty-two percent lived outside the Village, and 17 of them were from the Town. It is strange that the girls would be so willing to put the lives of people they only hazily knew in mortal danger, but there was also a geographical element to their accusations. Most of the accused lived on or near Ipswich Road, and viewed this way, the “residential profile of the accused offer a vivid geographic metaphor for the anxieties of the ‘pro-Parris’ group: the regions beyond the Village bounds are dangerous ‘enemy territory,’ and even within the legal boundaries of the Village, the areas closest to Salem Town have already been tainted” (192). Another facet was that what actually mattered more was the strength of one’s commitment to the Village, not how close they lived to it.
Boyer and Nissenbaum look at individual accused witches in the subsequent sections, beginning with Bridget Bishop, an outsider whose presence brought drama to the community. Sarah Osborne and her second husband were threatening in terms of pushing back against established patterns of land tenure and inheritance. John Willard was an outsider to the Village and a newcomer to his wife’s family of the Wilkenses, a “large and self-contained clan” (195). He was problematic to the economically unstable family, who did not like his speculative bent.
…who were mobile
Social flux was a fact of life, and the girls’ accusations seemed to be reactions to fears their families felt, and which occupied the whole community. Many of the accused had careers “which testified to the power of unfamiliar economic forces to alter and reshape a life” (199).
John Proctor
Proctor was an Ipswich Road tavern-keeper, and he was successful building upon the economic opportunities available. He attained a good level of prosperity and was active in Boston, Salem Town, and Ipswich. He was accused and imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692 and many notable people in Ipswich circulated a petition to vouch for him.
Sarah Buckley
Sarah and her husband had a difficult time and their fortunes declined throughout their marriage. Her husband was arrested for debt and had to sell off land to avoid going into arrears. Sarah was accused, but since she had had a stable, orderly life before her recent misfortunes, she was acquitted. Overall, though, the couple’s lack of roots in Salem Village was seen as problematic.
Sarah Good
Good’s life had been “little more than a steady downward slide” (203), and she and her husband were eventually homeless and destitute. She was hanged.
…and lacking in deference
Good was known as unpleasant, sullen, ungrateful, and sharp-tongued. Clearly the lack of resources took its toll on her, and we get “an almost palpable sense of the woman’s shame, her shattered pride” (205). She stands as a reminder that “social and economic security were precarious commodities in a world where it took only the death of one parent, and the remarriage of another, to destroy the prospects of a defenseless child” (205).
Job Tookey
Tookey was a laborer and sea-hand who lived over the Village line in Beverly. His life was also a series of misfortunes and he antagonized people with his manner and his fixation on status.
There are two concluding points here: one, that there were numerous ways to indicate being unhappy with one’s current station, and “swift economic rise was just as tangible an expression of ‘discontent’ as was muttering or complaining” (208); and two, all of the accused mentioned here were on the move socially and/or economically, and for New Englanders in the 17th century, the health of the community was reliant upon people accepting their station in life and those who did not were seen as a threat to the social fabric.
The Lure of Madame Bubble
Boyer and Nissenbaum suggest that there was also an appeal in some of the things witches were accused of doing, and that the afflicted girls might have found all of the forces of social change “simultaneously frightening and alluring” (211).
Over time, the distinctions between accuser and accused and afflicted and afflicter threatened to vanish. Perhaps some of the accusers were so voracious in their pointing of fingers because they felt guilty for being intrigued by the same forces that they denounced as dangerous? The Villagers could have been lashing out so strongly because those they chose “reminded them how far they, themselves, had already been seduced from their traditional moorings” (213).
Boyer and Nissenbaum bring in “Madame Bubble,” a character from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, an alluring witch, to warn against giving in to enticements.
They conclude that there was an element woven into the Trials to deal with the community’s putative repression of their attraction to the new and the changing—public confession. At least, the historians posit, if accusers could bring these impulses into the open, they could demonstrate to those who cared that they were taking control over the frightening things and affirming their commitment to shared social values.
Epilogue: To the Eighteenth Century
Salem Village remained a little “jumpy” (217) after the Trials, but gradually settled down. Part of this was due to Joseph Green, the young new minister who came in after Samuel Parris. Green helped diffuse the tensions and prepare the Villagers to accept the changes coming their way. He kept his public and private roles apart, proposed that the church initiate steps to reconcile dissenting brethren, devised civil projects that no one could object to, and worked to bring closer to the fore two groups who had caused so much prior trouble—indigents and young people. He helped the farmers understand the world around them, and bring a measure of peace and normalcy to a situation that was never, and would never be, peaceful and normal.
Ultimately, even though the Village gained its independence, Salem Town emerged victorious over Salem Village.
Analysis
Boyer and Nissenbaum conclude their astute analysis of Salem with a look at the accused witches themselves. Patterns emerge among them, particularly that they tended to be outsiders or itinerants, non-conforming to certain social norms and decorum, and/or openly desirous of changing their station. All of these behaviors were problematic because, as detailed in earlier analyses, being conscientious of the community was important above all else; the community needed conformity and constraint from individuals in order to maintain a buttress against the vagaries of life outside of its literal and figurative walls.
The historians are forthright in their acknowledgement that they cannot claim to know everyone in Salem’s views. They write that there were a number of men and women whose views went unrecorded, that “unless an individual actually committed himself on paper, by signing a complaint, a deposition, or a petition, and unless that paper was preserved in the archives, his opinions about what happened in 1692 are lost to history” (186). Ultimately, “Other Villagers may have kept their silence throughout the episode and carried their opinions with them to the grave. Taking sides, after all, was a risky business. If a person seemed skeptical about the trials, he might find himself accused; if he joined in, on either side, he risked making some very powerful enemies” (186). No doubt 21st-century readers will feel sympathy with this, as anything and everything we commit to the digital universe never fully goes away and is also susceptible to potential excavation.
Salem Possessed is an indisputably important and well-regarded book, and even those scholars who found something within its pages to critique were enthusiastic about what it added to the body of work on Salem. To conclude this analysis, a brief look at some of those critiques is fitting. Roger Thompson, for one, calls some of Boyer and Nissenbaum’s work “conjectural peering in the shadows” and suggests that the two “cannot resist the temptation to speculate often on the flimsiest of evidence. Thus the witchcraft becomes a battleground between capitalism and old-style communitarian Puritan ideology. Or the Putnam accusations are projections of a Hansel and Gretel vendetta against a wicked stepmother and stepbrother (though neither is accused in person). Parris's sermons—a good find—are subjected to a psychopathological analysis of the crudest kind. The distracted girls become symbols of economic flux…”
Alan McFarlane praises the work as whole, but finds some fault with its elision of the European precedent of witchcraft persecution as well as its fantastical utilization of the “evil stepmother” trope: “It is fairly narrowly centered on New England witchcraft and does not consider either the European background to beliefs or the whole intellectual and moral atmosphere of the time. Yet to do so would have produced another kind of book. Secondly, the presentation is occasionally too flabby or informal for an English academic audience. It is occasionally pompous and some of the remarks seem somewhat naive. Furthermore, the occasional psychological speculations which are thrown in, particularly the somewhat irrelevant section concerning the role of stepmothers in folklore… may irritate some readers.”
Robert Middlekauff is impressed with the work on the Salem Village/Town divide, and the resulting divide between Porters and Putnams and pro-Parris and anti-Parris factions. He does conclude his review, however, by wondering if the focus on psychology instead of sociology and politics is problematic, writing “Apart from the interesting data on social groups the book depends more on speculation than on evidence. And, as I have indicated, the larger historical context, as much as the psychological gropings, is askew and insubstantial.”
Neal Salisbury does not see enough of a focus on the background of occult practices in late 17th-century New England, or social conflicts other than the Village factions. He also critiques the narrow selection of main “characters”: “The psychological portraits of Parris and the leading Putnams are not extended to the other participants. The remaining accusers, including the ‘afflicted’ girls, and the accused and their defenders are seen through the eyes of these reactionary leaders instead of on their own terms. These leaders are presented as pivotal to the entire sequence of events, yet the violence and hysteria which characterized the Village in 1692 must be viewed from all sides. In short, we are left without explanation for several dimensions of Salem's ‘possession.’”
Finally, Paul R. Lucas praises the work as an exemplar of local history, and commends the historians for their meticulous research and blending of narrative and data analysis. He does, however, take issue with the “simplistic form of determinism in which the inhabitants of Salem become pawns in a gargantuan struggle between two great historical forces—capitalism and the medieval peasant ideal.” He dislikes how the reader “is lectured about the necessity to view history through the lives of ordinary people, but Salem Possessed argues only that ordinary people act out roles determined by impersonal forces.”
Even with these critiques, Salem Possessed still remains to this day a foundational work of social history, a model of research methodology, and a compelling thesis as to why Salem devolved into chaos and tragedy.
