What did they teach you about the witches?

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           My rural education consisted of a brief summary of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. It went something like this: A long, long time ago, in a small village we now know as Salem, Massachusetts, the villagers ate fungus-infected wheat and went crazy. In their hysteria, they began accusing women of witchcraft and executing them, and that was that.

           I remember learning about The Swimming Test, where women were stripped of their clothes and bound, before being thrown into a river, the assumption being that they would float if they were witches. Women being tarred and feathered as punishment for getting caught transforming into birds. Women confessing to being seduced by the devil, burning at the stake as punishment. The stories I was taught were filled with more fantasy and speculation than fact. They focused solely on the mystery of ‘witches’ themselves, only mentioning the perpetrators of these executions to clarify that “they must have been hysterical,” because why else would they do such a thing? The stories I received were that of folklore, not history.

           Despite my meager knowledge of the witches of the past, in a surprising (or completely unsurprising, depending on whom you ask) turn of events, I became one myself. Still, it wasn’t until recently, in my quest for more understanding about witchcraft and its history, that my interest in the witch trials came to be. The past few weeks spent researching these trials--their perpetrators, their victims, and the conditions from which they arose--have been filled with what I can only describe as a complex brew of unlearning and relearning, confirmation and surprise, grief and empowerment. The truth is, what actually happened during the European and American witch-hunts of the 14th through 18th centuries was in no way folklore or myth, it was mass murder, and it served a sinister purpose.

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            In the U.S., if we are taught about The Salem Witch Trials, most of us receive a brief overview in middle school. There is an abundance of myth surrounding the trials, rumors of contaminated wheat, real witches posing as innocent civilians, and some that simply state we will never really know what happened. There may be some level of truth in all of these, but mostly, they fail to capture the reality of the situation. It was a surprise for me to find that there is a fairly rich documentary archive of the Salem Witch Trials available to the public (Ray, 2018). Through these documents—ranging from court records to diaries--we can begin to situate the trials within the broader context of history and dispel a great deal of mystery that surrounds the year-long “craze.”

            So, what really happened in Salem? The beginnings of the incident are bound up in the personal life of a man named Reverend Samuel Parris, it was his move to the small village of Salem that spurred the discord leading up to the trials. When Parris arrived in Salem Village (now Danvers, MA) to serve as the minister of its congregation it was a rural, struggling place. With him followed his wife, 9-year-old daughter, Betty, 11-year-old niece, Abigail, and two enslaved servants from West India, referred to in documentation as Tituba and John Indian. Revered Parris was a highly conservative man, and the townspeople were divided regarding his new position as their minister.

            At some point after their arrival, Betty and Abigail got sick. They started acting strange. Strange enough that Revered Parris called upon a local physician to examine the children. Dr. William Griggs had himself a look and determined that rather than any fever or ill that he knew of, the girls were “suffering under an Evil Hand” (Goss xxi). Parris’ neighbors, hearing of this, began to circulate the rumor that they had been bewitched. When questioned about their state of bewitchment, the young girls reportedly pointed to Tituba. This is where the madness began.

            Tituba was subject to public humiliation and private interrogation (of which likely involved some degree of torture, something customary of the trials in general) regarding her involvement. Meanwhile, two more adolescent girls, Ann Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard became similarly sick and made accusations against two marginalized and unliked women, both by the name of Sarah. Sarah Osborn, as well as Sarah Good, whose case we will return to later on. The three women were held in custody to await their trial.

            By the time of the pretrials, the accusations and events surrounding them had become the talk of the town. For the pretrial examinations, two magistrates from the Town of Salem had arrived at the village to serve as Justices for the trials of the three women. The initial hearings, and all that followed, were a public spectacle. During the examinations, for which almost entirely “spectral evidence” (as in, not in the least bit physical or reliably testable) from the four “afflicted,” or sick, girls was used. Both Good and Osborne maintained their innocence. Tituba, on the other hand, likely in an attempt to save herself, provided a colorful confession of guilt.

           She claimed that she had indeed met with the Devil and that he, along with Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and two other unnamed women, had a private conversation with her, urging her to harm Betty and Abigail. This confession elevated Tituba to the position of an inside informant and ultimately saved her. In her efforts to save herself, however, Tituba intensified the event, “confirming” the Devil’s presence within the community, and she ultimately accused five more women. This set forth a trend within the trials, which wound up being a flurry of personal accusations by the growing “afflicted” and other members of the community.

           By the end of the trials, in the spring of 1693, over a year since the first accusations, 127 residents were accused of witchcraft, 28 trials took place, 28 convictions occurred, 20 were executed, and five died in prison awaiting trial (Goss xlv).

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            To understand the reality of the Salem Witch Trials, beyond the order of events themselves, I have found it imperative to understand the historical and cultural context of the situation. The events in Salem Village were not a freak incident that occurred within a cultural vacuum, they were an offshoot of the far more widespread and centuries-long “witch craze” of Europe. From the early 14th century to the late 18th, thousands were executed under the pretense of witchcraft, scholars estimate anywhere from around 40,000 (Scarre, 2001) to 100,000 (Barstow, 1995) were killed, though it is hard to know for sure due to many documents either being destroyed or remaining unstudied (Federici, Caliban 208). An estimated 75-80% were women (Gendercide, 2022), and a similar gendered ratio can be found in the witch trials of Salem.

            Why target women? The answer I’ve found, to put it simply, lies almost entirely within two things: the development of capitalism and an enthusiastic embrace of misogyny driven by the Church.

            A lot was changing in Europe during the period of the witch craze. Europe’s primary economic and social system, feudalism—a system in which nobility held land from the Crown in exchange for military service and peasants lived and labored on that land in exchange for military protection (Oxford English)—was being replaced by the more individualistic system of capitalism. This change meant that many were displaced and could no longer rely on the communal forms of agriculture that existed prior.

            Women, as often is true in history, got the short end of the stick. (Though one could argue that very few of the sticks of capitalism were, or have ever been, very long.) According to Silvia Federici in her essay “Witch-Hunting and the Fear of the Power of Women” (the text I will be primarily quoting and referring to in this essay), “the restructuring of rural Europe at the dawn of capitalism destroyed their means of livelihood and the basis of their social power, leaving them with no resort but dependence on the charity of the better-off at a time when communal bonds were disintegrating and a new morality was taking hold that criminalized begging and looked down upon charity” (Federici, Witches 25).

            This brings me back to Sarah Good, one of the three women first accused of witchcraft in Salem village. Though these trials took place in the colonies, one can apply the same theory to the situation. Sarah Good is a perfect example of this. Based on the documentation we have related to the trials, the public opinion on Sarah Good was not, in fact, very good. Why? “She was impoverished, often begging for support from local residents and living among the Salem community as a homeless indigent” (Goss xxxiv). Good’s case provides us with evidence that speaks to the truth of the theory that Federici explores in her essay. She maintained her innocence until the end, because that is what she was. Sarah Good was not a witch, she was a woman who was suffering in the early capitalist regime of colonial America, forced to rely on modes of support that had been recently stigmatized.

           Federici connects these conditions to the “common characterization of the witch as a poor old woman, living alone, dependent on donations from her neighbors, bitterly resenting her marginalization and often threatening and cursing those who refused to help her, who inevitably accused her of being responsible for all their misadventures” (Federici, Witches 25-26). When I read this, I was surprised by how well Good fit most of this criteria. As was true of her begging, it is said that many of her fellow villagers testified of her “resentment and open hostility when they would, after a lengthy stay ask her to leave the household” (Goss xxxiv).

            Sarah Good did not fit the characterization completely, however. She was not old or living alone. She had a four-year-old daughter, Dorothy (who was also on trial for witchcraft, making her the youngest accused of the Salem Witch Trials), was pregnant, and had a husband, William Good—her second husband, that is. William did little to help Sarah during the trials. In fact, he ultimately condemned her.

           The witch trials in Salem Village were an echo of the trials of Europe, an indication of the spread of hurt and misogyny to early America.

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            That most of the victims of the European trials were women can also be traced back to the demonization of the female body by the Church. As Federici lays out in her essay, there are two ways of approaching this theory. First and perhaps most familiar to us, even in the 21st century, is the idea that women posed a threat to the Church “as a patriarchal, masculine clan” because of their ability to tempt and “bewitch” men with their sexuality.

            This ability, as perceived by the Church, gave women power that just couldn’t fly in the male-dominated clergies. Thus, the Catholic Church was instrumental in painting women as “an instrument of the Devil—the more pleasant to the eye, the more deadly to the soul” (Federici, Witches 29).

            This is the context out of which arose the Malleus Maleficarum, a treatise on witchcraft written by Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and released in 1486. Witchcraft was already forbidden by the church by the time Kramer’s demonology came about, but the Malleus Maleficarum took the viewpoint that women were more likely to be witches for a number of reasons. “What else is a woman but the enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable disaster, a delightful detriment, an evil of nature, painted with nice color?” (162), Kramer quotes from the book of Matthew in his introductory section highlighting reasons why women are more likely than men to be witches.

            There are so many striking examples of misogyny and fear of women in this text that it is hard to choose which to highlight. Of the most noteworthy in common analysis of the text, though, appears to be the reasoning that women are (generally, according to Kramer) of weaker faith, looser tongue, compensating through sorcery for their lack of physical strength, able to offer children more quickly to the demons, and are more carnal than men, “as is clear in connection with many filthy carnal acts” (Kramer 165).

            The rest of the Malleus Maleficarum spans topics such as which types of women are more likely witches, how to spot them, various torture methods for obtaining confession or confirmation, and ultimately, the argument that these women are better off being executed than left alive to cohort with the devil. Kramer’s mega-misogynistic contribution to the rhetoric surrounding witches fanned the flames of fear surrounding witchcraft and made common the assertion that women were not to be trusted. On top of providing us with a horrific example of how women were viewed within the prevailing Church of the time, it provided the witch-hunting instructions that many would follow in the persecution of the witches and intensified the violence of the situation so that it would become the tragedy we know today.

            Continuing this tradition, though taking it past the bounds of religion, the early bourgeoisie used the subjugation and demonization of female sexuality for their own benefit.  Rather than the repression of female sexuality for the sake of maintaining power, “the repression of female desire was placed at the service of utilitarian goals such as the satisfaction of men’s sexual needs and more importantly the procreation of an abundant workforce” (Federici, Witches 29). In establishing strong roots for capitalism, any obstacles that limited the exploitation of the human body as the “laborer” could not be spared. As such, any idea of the body, especially the female body, as something sacred and magical had to go. In this way, women became endangered by the removal and villainization of pre-capitalist ideas that protected the sanctity of women via their relationship to reproduction and nature.

           “It is in this context that the attack on women as ‘witches’ should be located,” Federici states. “Because of their unique relation to the process of reproduction, women in many pre-capitalist societies have been credited with a special understanding of the secrets of nature, presumably enabling them to procure life and death and discover the hidden properties of things” (Witches 27). It was these very things that, paired with the demonization of magic and sorcery by the Church, put women at risk of being violently tortured and killed. Rather than a bridge to the divine, or beings of sacred knowledge, women became reduced to the utilitarian use of their bodies; dehumanized so the prevailing systems could render them down as useful only for reproducing more laborers and wombs, keeping house, and satisfying men. If a woman dared to step outside of these roles, to express her desires, whether sexual or material, she was at risk of being branded a witch and killed, effectively establishing a “new model of femininity to which women had to conform to be socially accepted in the developing capitalist society: sexless, obedient, submissive, resigned to subordination to the male world, accepting as natural the confinement to a sphere of activities that in capitalism has been completely devalued” (32).

 

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            Throughout my research, it was impossible not to see the echoes of this history in our 21st-century lives. To this day, women are reduced to the reproductive capabilities of their bodies. In recent years, we have seen blatant attacks on the autonomy of women and our degree of choice over reproductive matters and the like, making the effects of events like the witch trials obvious even centuries later. 

We are villainized for our perceived beauty or hated and devalued for failing to appeal to the physical desires of men.

           We are criticized for being too emotional or not enough. Our sexuality is scrutinized over, our hobbies are devalued and mocked. Perhaps one of the reasons we are so rarely taught the truth of what happened to the ‘witches’ is that it forces us to contend with the violent reality upon which our current social and economic systems have been built upon. It forces us to contend with what was lost.

           “At the stakes not only were the bodies of the ‘witches’ destroyed, so was a whole world of social relations that had been the basis of women’s social power and a vast body of knowledge that women had transmitted from mother to daughter over the generations–knowledge of herbs, of the means of contraception or abortion, of what magic to use to obtain the love of men” (Federici, Witches 33).

           At least 40,000 were killed, most of whom were women. All of the knowledge and practices that they carried with them. An entire system of thought was wiped out via terror and destruction. A respect for nature, respect for women, community, sexuality and autonomy, magic and folk medicine. Perhaps they do not teach us because they are afraid of having to contend with what the witch trials really were, what the reality of the situation really is. A war on women. Hate and fear. Murder.

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           When I began my research, I struggled to understand how I was going to find my place within all of this, outside of being the one simply recounting these horrors. I did not want to claim the tragedy and pain of the women who were burnt at the stake as my own. Most of the victims of the witch-hunts were not witches, certainly not in the way that the Church defined them. I felt it was selfish and conceited to even ask myself that question, to put myself in comparison with them simply because I call myself a witch.

           Now, though, I understand that we must see ourselves in the ‘witches.’ Beyond practices or labels, beyond craft and magic and superstition. They were regular women. They were human. 40,000 people or more, and their deaths are being forgotten, swept under the rug. We have to see history for what it was and feel the loss of the witch-hunts.

           If you, like me, call yourself a witch, it is important to understand the weight of that term. In many cases, modern witchcraft is a restructuring of practices that were denied to many, knowledge that, in the past could and often did result in death. It is a powerful reclamation to practice witchcraft, even more so knowing the history of those who practiced it before. It is no small thing to have the privilege to proudly flaunt one’s craft in the face of this history. For me, that carries a responsibility of remembrance and awareness of the persecution that happens to this day. I cannot be the one to determine what that should mean to you.

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

Barstow, Anne Llewellyn. Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts. Harper San Francisco, 1994.

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Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Penguin UK, 2021.

Federici, Silvia. Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. PM Press, 2018.

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“Feudalism, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1133222257.

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Goss, David. “Historical Introduction.” Documents of the Salem Witch Trials. 2018. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e700xna&AN=1667791&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

 

Kramer, Heinrich. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, translated by Christopher Mackay, Cambridge University Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umichigan/detail.action?docID=442875.

 

Ray, Benjamin. Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive. University of Virginia, 2018, salem.lib.virginia.edu/home.html.

 

“Witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe (Circa 1450-1750).” Gendercide, 2022, www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html#:~:text=a%20gender%20perspective-,Female%20victims,quarters%20or%20more%20were%20women.