The Witches

by Stacy Schiff

October 27, 2015 · Little, Brown and Company

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So, unsurprisingly, it turns out being a woman in 17th century New England was not awesome. I mean, it was probably awesome for some people, but not a lot. Stacy Schiff’s 500 page analysis of the famed Salem witch trials doesn’t shy away from the gender politics that lead to the “execution of fourteen women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft,” although Schiff also never points to that as the sole reason for whole bizarre episode.

The Witches: Salem, 1692 is an incredibly detailed account of what happened during the Salem witch trials. Starting in early 1692, hysteria regarding witches and devil-worship resulted in between 144 and 185 people being accused of witchcraft and nineteen people being executed (and those two dogs — I feel really, really bad about those dogs). The Salem witch trials have become imbedded in our culture, thanks to everything from The Crucible to R.L. Stine’s The Betrayal (totally read that at summer camp, y’all). It’s so wrapped up in popular culture that the facts of the story have been confused–and it’s a confusing episode in history already. The puritans did not do an amazing job of keeping written records of the event, so names get mixed up, and Schiff does an admirable job of sorting it out. This book is heavy on detail, and even with Schiff’s expert recounting of events, I still had to frequently flip to the Cast of Characters to remember who was who.

This book is predominantly about the What of the Salem witch trials, so if you’re looking for a conclusive Why to explain the reason all this insanity happened, The Witches may prove a tad disappointing. I was hoping Schiff would wade in with analysis as to the cause of the hysteria—and to an extent she does–but she focuses more on documenting the facts of the case and letting the reader draw her own conclusions.

Schiff does hint at reasons for the hysteria that plagued this New England town, and she points out that it was a complex affair involving a lot of people with a lot of motives. The episode can’t be boiled down to a single cause and effect. For me the most fascinating parts of the book were the discussions about how the crisis upended traditional gender roles:

At twelve and eleven, Ann Putnam Jr. and Abigail Williams, Parris’s niece, were the youngest of those under Satan’s supernatural spell. Nineteen-year-old Mercy Lewis, the Putnam maid, and twenty-year-old Mary Warren, the wavering Procter maid, were among the eldest. None of the four left a diary. Nor did any other Puritan girl. Even assuming she had paper and could write, she would have had little opportunity to do so in the course of a day spent milking and spooling, churning, weeding, washing, and candle-making. Only in the devil’s presence did the girls enunciate their desires, which come to us by way of the court clerks; we get the girls’ hankerings under duress and at a remove.  […]

History is not rich in unruly young women; with the exception of Joan of Arc and a few underage sovereigns, it would be difficult to name another historical moment so dominated by teenage virgins, traditionally a vulnerable, mute, and disenfranchised cohort. From the start, the Salem girls made themselves heard. Theirs quickly proved the decisive voices. By April a core group of eight girls assumed oracular import. Twitching and thrusting, they played the role of bloodhounds, soothsayers, folk healers, moral authorities, martyrs to a cause.

Like I said, being a young woman in 17th century New England was not optimal. The Salem girls were under intense stress that would be hard for a 21st century audience to fully understand. They were under constant threat of attack by Native Americans (or at least they thought they were). Their domestic burdens were intense, and they were expected to be totally subservient to their fathers, but only until he was replaced by a husband. Some of the girls were servants, bringing them lower than a daughter in terms of power. There were rumors of sexual abuse in some households.

Not that life was easier for adult women; one woman claimed that Satan literally offered her peace and quiet in exchange for her soul.

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

“No, I wouldst the kids shut up for ten fucking minutes, ok?”

So when young women began exhibiting signs of demonic possession–said twitching and thrusting–Schiff points to

Grudges, disputes and biases no doubt came into play during the many accusations. Some of the accused pointed to others in an effort to save their own lives.

I found it fascinating that the women accusers claimed witches tortured them with physical pain–pinches and pricks. The male accusers claimed that the witches climbed into their beds at night. Perhaps that alone says something about how divided gender roles were in Salem.

In some respects turning to the supernatural made a lot of sense:

Witchcraft tied up loose ends, accounting for the arbitrary, the eerie, and the unneighborly. As Samuel Parris was discovering, it deflected divine judgement and dissolved personal responsibility. The devil not only provided a holiday from reason but expressed himself clearly; for all the perversity, his motives made sense. You did  not need to ask what you had done to deserve his disfavor, preferable to celestial rebuke–or indifference. And when diabolical machinations were what you were watching for, they quickly became what you saw. Amid glaring accountability, witchcraft broke up logical logjams. It ratified grudges, neutralized slights, relieved anxiety. It offered an airtight explanation when, literally, all hell broke loose.

It’s little snippets of explanation like this, amid the chronicling of the trials and who was accusing whom, that I liked best about The Witches. A big part of this book was breaking fact away from fiction: what really happened that year, who really was involved. It’s incredibly thorough, and also a little dense and dry. When Schiff starts examining the cause behind the hysteria (not that one single cause existed), I was really fascinated. She spends time discussing the fallout from the witch trials as well: many of the young “afflicted” women never recovered fully, and the community itself was riddled with guilt, confusion and shame.

The Witches is a engaging read. It steps away from the titillation of the Salem witch trials, rolls up its sleeves, and digs deeply into record and fact. I would have appreciated more analysis from Schiff into the cause of the crisis, and the text was occasionally dry, but the story overall is fascinating, in depth, and well told.