Sarah Osbourne was an elderly, widowed woman who had not gone to church in about one year, which was considered a Puritan sin. Sarah Good was a poverty stricken woman who begged from door to door. Goods life brought her two prominent misfortunes. One misfortune was the death of her dad, John Solart, who committed suicide. Because he killed himself, it disgraced the family, in the eyes of Puritans. The second misfortune was two failed marriages.
Goods first husband died, and when her second husband died, he brought her to poverty through bad credit. Because Tituba was Parriss slave, and well known to the girls it is not surprising that they named her a witch (Rice Jr., 1992, pp. 32, 36).
The dissenting reputations of the first three women accused along with their low social class made them believable subjects for the crime of witchcraft, and make the fraudulent claims of the accusers therefore more believable. After the afflicted girls had named possible culprits of their so blatant torment, an investigation of the charges was the next step. As Earl Rice Jr. explains, John Hathorne directed the examination of the three women first accused, and spoke like a prosecuting attorney.
Tituba confessed to witchcraft, under the basis that anyone that confessed to witchcraft spared execution, but Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne maintained their innocence, that soon after landed them in jail (Rice Jr., 1992, pp. 87, 93).
In opposition to the theory of fraudulent claims, Historian Chadwick Hansen writes: Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination, rather than for the offenses named in the original complaintthe direct cause of these fits in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted persons fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Brigit Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it (Rice Jr., 1992, p.70).
The Term Paper on Revised Standard Version Courage Women Fear
Aristotle, Courage, War And The Bible Essay, Aristotle, Courage, War And The Bible Introduction From Desert Storm to Tail hook, prevailing attitudes about military women are being reformulated and tested in myriad ways. How smoothly or quickly a shift in attitudes occurs is chiefly a matter of leadership. Commanders must give women equal access to a level playing field on which each competitor ...
Although Hansens theory which states that fear initiated the peculiar behavior in the afflicted girls, it is questionable when taking into consideration the confession of Ann Putnam, years after the trial. Earl Rice Jr. reveals that in August, 1707, thirteen years after the trials, Ann Putnam Jr., age twenty six, gave a letter of confession to the Reverend Joseph Green to read aloud to the congregation of the Salem Village church.
It read: I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my fathers family in the year about 1692; that I then being in my childhood, should by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reasons to believe they were innocent personsbut what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan. And particularly as I was a chief instrument of accusing of goodwife Nurse an her two sister, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was the cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to then and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were taken away or accused (Rice Jr., 1992, p.100).
The above information provides specific evidence to prove how fraudulent claims could possibly prove to be a valid cause of the Salem witch trials. As to why the fraudulent claims and accusations continued after the jailing of the first three condemned witches, is still in constant debate today. However, it is possible through investigations to conclude that the afflicted girls suffered from hysteria. The second theory that explains the causes of the Salem witch trials is public and mass hysteria. Hysteria can have varying meanings pertaining to the Salem witch trials.
The Essay on Salem Witch Trials 10
Many of the American colonists brought with them from Europe a belief in witches and the devil. During the seventeenth century, people were executed for being witches and follower of Satan. Most of these executions were performed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Mostly all of the accused were women, which makes some modern historians believe that the charges of witchcraft were a way of controlling ...
In Earl Rice Jr.s terms, hysteria is unmanageable fear or emotional excess (103).
Hansen proposes the use of the word hysteria in a literal, medical sense, as being mentally ill. Hysteria is a unique and abnormal mental disease. What makes it so interesting is that it causes physical symptoms that someone would not normally experience. Mental conflicts are unconsciously converted to symptoms that appear to be physical, but for which no organic cause is found. Hansen insists that witchcraft was truly practiced in Salem Village. He states that the mental illness, hysteria, of the girls was occasioned by guilt from their practices of fortune telling at their secret meetings (Hansen, 1969, p.45).
It is possible that the people of Salem were so swamped in the superstitions of the community that they convinced themselves that evil forces had bewitched them. These mental stresses would consume their minds and convert into physical manifestations. When the emotional disturbances set in, the hysteria began. As Upham explains, the victims were able to perform the unnatural twisting motions without feeling the pain (Upham, 1978, p.396).
It cannot be said that all of the afflicted were hysterical, as some were most likely able to create affliction on queue, in order to get attention, or to justify the problems of the community. Among other reasons, historians have often attributed the Salem witch-hunts to the psychological phenomenon of widespread hysteria. Hysteria is a mental condition marked by disturbances of psychological and physical functioning. Frances Hill, in her book A Delusion of Satan, says hysteria often manifests itself in fits that the victim cannot control.
Hill writes, “What its [hysteria’s] victims have in common is powerlessness.” Some historians say it is not surprising that Elizabeth and Abigail felt powerful when they accused others of witchery. And yet there are other explanations have been offered for what happened in Salem. In 1976, a University of California graduate student, Linda Caporael, suggested that a fungus called ergot triggered the witch-hunt. Ergot produces a highly poisonous mold that thrives in certain weather conditions–particularly when a cold winter is followed by a wet, warm summer, as was the case in Salem in 1692. Rye, the main crop grown in Salem at the time, is particularly susceptible to ergot disease. If a person eats bread made from ergot-infected rye flour, the result can be hallucinations, loss of bodily control, delusions, and even death.
The Essay on Witchcraft Hysteria In Salem
Proving what happened exactly in Salem is nearly impossible. It is possible that the witchcraft hysteria could have been a result of economic and social tensions, or it could have been because of an epidemic of encephalitis that spread through the colonies. Both articles provide very good argument about the causes of the witchcraft hysteria. According to Boyer and Nissen baum, the whole problem ...
Caporael became interested in a possible physical cause of the witch madness during the 1970s after reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play about the 1692 witch trials. She suggested a possible connection between ergot poisoning and the “possessed” girls’ afflictions after looking up symptoms of ergot poisoning in a medical dictionary. In a 1998 Boston Globe story, Caporael said, “After some research, I discovered the very unusual symptoms of [the accusing girls] matched the unusual symptoms of ergot poisoning.” Caporael’s theory has not been generally accepted..
