Belief in an invisible world of demons, angels, and spectres was essential in early colonial America for understanding the world around them. In a world where education was not readily available, it was a framework for Americans to explain natural phenomena that would be otherwise inexplicable to them. However, these supernatural beliefs were not without their negatives. During the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, widespread belief in witchcraft was used to explain colonists’ irregular behaviour as seen in A Brief and True Narrative. Lawson gives a first-person account of the alleged afflictions of witchcraft. However, by revisiting the account with a revisionist view,we see that the Puritan framework of belief directly coloured his view and led to the unjust convictions. In reality, scholars have pointed to gender expectations being the actual reason for the accusations of witchcraft against women. Claire Williams also notes that the women accused of being witches were social outcasts who did not live according to Puritanism (Williams 4).
Puritanism’s belief in supernatural phenomena causing calamities was also another contributing factor in the injustice of the Salem Witch Trials. These beliefs were a fundamental part of Puritan doctrine and were documented extensively in Cotton Matter’s document Wonders of the Invisible World. I will also posit that in the Puritan framework of belief, ideas of women being inferior due to being descended from Eve also contributed to the belief that women were more susceptible to demonic supernatural powers than men. Both documents were written from a Puritan perspective with the intention of convincing the reader of the veracity of the witch accusations. They provide us with a unique perspective about how the Puritan belief of the supernatural influenced the trials and widespread belief in witchcraft. I will argue in this essay that Puritan belief in invisible supernatural powers provided a framework of belief that early Americans could use to understand the world and was a major factor in causing the Salem witch trials, as seen in Deodat Lawson’s A Brief and True Narrative and Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World.
In Deodat Lawson’s A Brief and True Narrative, Puritan beliefs were used to explain behaviour in women that was considered irregular at the time:
“When I was there, his kinswoman, Abigail Williams (about 12 years of age), had a grievous fit; she was at first hurried with violence to and fro in the room … sometimes making as if she would fly, stretching up her arms as high as she could, and crying Whist, whist, whist! several times After that, she run to the Fire, and begun to throw Fire Brands, about the house; and run against the Back, as if she would run up Chimney, and, as they said, she had attempted to go into the Fire in other Fits.”
(Lawson 3)
Following the fits, the town physician quickly proclaimed that it was the work of the Devil. This highlights how Puritans, including Lawson, were quick to attribute occurrences to the supernatural invisible world. In a modern context, Abigail’s “making as if she would fly, stretching up her arms” seems to be harmless play at best, or a prank against the serious adults at worst, nothing that would have held any weight. Modern scholarly explanations include hysteria, ergotism and hallucinations that could have caused the fits (Williams 4). In any case, the accusers immediately jumped to the explanation of supernatural witchcraft causing the fits. Such supernatural explanations were often used to explain incomprehensible phenomena: Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather claims that “Natural Storms” were probably the work of the Devil, based on some reference to scripture (Mather 26).
Salem’s accusers accusing the women of witchcraft was also influenced by Puritan beliefs about women. Puritans believed that women were more susceptible against supernatural powers like witchcraft (Reis 294). It was no coincidence that the first three people accused of witchcraft were women. These accusations were evidently influenced by beliefs that the women were more easily manipulated by the demonic forces. Claire Williams goes on to argue that sexist attitudes towards women were a major factor for their witch accusations:
Tituba the slave from Barbados, raised in an exotic culture foreign and mysterious to the Puritans, Sarah Good; the perfect stereotype of the “witch.” She was a haggard woman known locally for her foul temper, neglecting her children and begging money from her neighbours, and lastly, Sarah Osbourne; a woman of high social standing who was recently the subject of a great deal of scandal when she moved in with a man before marriage.
(Williams 4)
Clearly, these first three women accused of witchcraft all had one thing in common: their straying from Puritan ideals. Sarah Good’s “foul temper” was unbecoming of a Puritan wife which led to her ostracisation. Puritan wives were not supposed to bemoan their circumstances as “ideal government on the part of the husband was supposed to produce a joyful submission in the wife” (Morgan 46). Meanwhile, Sarah Osbourne attracted animosity by defying Puritan ideals on cohabitation before marriage. Puritans abided by a strict set of rules and “tried to force everyone within their power to do likewise” (2). It is certainly no coincidence, then, that the accused mentioned by Williams had strayed away from Puritan ideals. In Tituba’s case, all that was needed to cause suspicion was coming from a different culture than the residents of Salem were used to.
Building on Williams’ point, a feminist reading of the witch trials is further complicated by Puritan views on traditional gender roles. Scholarly sources unanimously agree that women were considered inferior to men in mind, body and spirit. As Edmund Morgan writes in The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England:
“The proper conduct of a wife was submission to her husband’s instruction and commands. He was her superior, the head of the family, and she owed him an obedience founded on reverence. He stood before her in the place of God: he exercised the authority of God over her, and he furnished her with the fruits of the earth that God had provided.”
(Morgan 44)
In Puritan society, the man or husband were evidently considered superior to his partner. Subservience to men was a central tenet to their society. Furthermore, both accounts of the Witch Trials, A Brief and True Narrative and Wonders of the Invisible World were written by men. The accused women were denied any voice or opportunity to defend themself. Moreover, as they were considered inherently inferior, they would have no choice but to confess to their alleged crimes as Tituba eventually did. In A Brief and True Narrative, Deodat Lawson notes at the end of the pamphlet that Tituba and her husband had “made a Cake of Rye Meal” (Lawson 9). She later confessed to witchcraft. Today, we recognise it as a confession made under duress, hence it is invalid. However, in Tituba’s case, we observe that she was denied any legal representation or chance to defend herself. Not only she was a woman, but she was also an “Indian” (9), an Other. Hence, she had no choice but to play a passive role as her owner, Reverend Samuel Parris “exercised the authority of God” on her.
We agree with Williams that gender played a large role in the Salem witch trials. Evidently, Puritan beliefs that women were susceptible to supernatural and demonic powers had influenced the accusations and verdicts of the witch trials. Some women also appear to have been accused because of their straying from Puritan ideals. However, I will argue that the tendency to use supernatural beliefs as a framework of understanding played a greater role during the Salem witch trials. The accusers’ understanding of the girls’ fits as witchcraft or caused by witchcraft was due to their framework of belief. They believed that the women, being spiritually more susceptible to demonic powers, were directly afflicted by Devils, as Mather would call them.
As one of the most influential Puritan ministers, it was Mather’s duty to explain phenomena that would be otherwise incomprehensible to poorly educated early Americans. These Puritan beliefs in the supernatural provided a framework for understanding the world known to them. We see this in Cotton Mather’s pamphlet Wonders of the Invisible World, which describes a world in which Devils tempt Men into committing sin (Mather 30). He depicts Devils as an omnipresent form of temptation: “Are we in our Beds? There will be Devils to Tempt us unto Carnality; Are we in our Shops? There will be Devils to Tempt us unto Dishonesty” (26). Mathers uses repetition in “Are we in”, repeating it twice to emphasise the ability of Devils to manifest themselves in any location. Mather provides an explanation for understanding sinful human psychology. Martha Carrier and the other alleged Witches’ assault of the children, then, is a result of being tempted by the Devil into doing evil (72).Mather, on at least one occasion, also describes Devils physically manifesting as invisible Spectres, affixing humans with pins, burning them, removing their limbs, or otherwise torturing them (41). Mather is clearly referring to natural disease being caused by invisible demons here.
Mather’s writing certainly betrays a tendency of Puritanism to attribute natural phenomena to higher powers. By providing a framework of belief which presupposes the supernatural, Mather’s brand of Puritanism inherently rejects rational or scientific explanations. Mather even posited that New England was being targeted by the Devils for settling in their territory:
“The New-Englanders, are a People of God settled in those, which were once the Devils Territories, and it may easily be supposed that the Devil was Exceedingly disturbed, when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the Promise of old made unto our Blessed Jesus That He should have the Utmost parts of the Earth for His Possession The Devil thus Irritated, immediately try’d all sorts of Methods to overturn this poor Plantation”
(Mather 12)
Once again, Mather demonstrates the framework of belief through which he interprets events. He supposes that Salem and New England by extension used to belong to the Devil. Now that it had been settled by God-fearing Christians, the Devil was sending an army of witches to reclaim it. Persecuting the witches hence becomes a logical and advisable course of action. After all, the witches had come to New England to torture and afflict good Christians. In the case of Martha Carrier, the most outspoken accused woman who refused to confess under any amount of duress, Mather claims that she used her invisible powers to torment her victims. He further asserts that upon Carrier’s “binding”, the afflicted persons were immediately healed and would have died otherwise. Mather demonstrates how he used his belief in an invisible world of Spectres to justify the killing of Martha Carrier.
In conclusion, we observe that belief in an invisible world of devils and spectres provided explanations to questions Early Americans did not have answers to. As many Americans lacked formal education, this belief of supernatural elements manipulating and controlling the world provided a framework that helped them to understand natural phenomena. However, this tendency to use supernatural explanations to make sense of the world around them also caused the injustices of the Salem witch trials. In A Brief and True Narrative, Deodat Lawson describes the erratic behaviour of the afflicted children. He also depicts how the townspeople quickly assumed they were under the influence of witchcraft, instead of thinking of a rational explanation first. Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister, also corroborates that Americans would use the supernatural to explain the inexplicable. In The Wonders of the Invisible World, Mather describes supernatural reasons for various phenomena. Storms, for example, were allegedly the work of devils, and natural diseases were caused by invisible spectres which afflicted their victims. The tendency to attribute supernatural origins to events was what caused the hysteria of the Salem witch trials. While other scholars like Claire Williams are correct in arguing that gender played an important role in the trials, we believe that the Puritans’ tendency to use supernatural beliefs as a framework of understanding was a bigger factor in causing the mass hysteria of the witch trials.
Works Cited
Lawson, Deodat. A brief and true narrative of some remarkable passages relating to sundry persons afflicted by witchcraft, in Salem Village: : which happened from the nineteenth of March, to the fifth of April, 1692. / Collected by Deodat Lawson Printed for Benjamin Harris and are to be sold at his shop, over-against the Old-Meeting-House. Boston, 1692 http://opac.newsbank.com/select/evans/613
Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728. The Wonders of the Invisible World. Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New England. To Which Is Added, A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches. London :J.R. Smith, 1862.
Reis, Elizabeth. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Cornell University Press, 1999.
Williams, Claire. “Understanding the Salem Witch Trials through the Lens of Feminist Criminological Theory .” Trinity Women’s Review, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019.