Mary Beth Norton's Essex County Witch Trials

In my opinion I think the Salem witch trials were caused by Jealous females looking for a wealthy husband. Why you ask well let me tell you. Coming from Doc E imagine Salem divided in half, straight through the middle. Making an east and west side. Now on the east side imagine 5 witches spread around with only 30 accusers.

Pauline Johnson, is more about representing Native women and giving a realistic characterization to Native women in literature. A Red Girl’s Reasoning is a direct response and criticism of the “Winona” character that flooded literature in the nineteenth century. Christine is the complete opposite of a “Winona” character; she isn’t the mindless, over-emotional, dishonest, and deceitful woman that other portrayals of Native women were. She stayed true to her cultural beliefs while still compromising with Charlie to make their marriage work.

In 1692, the most famous trials of all time was held in Salem Virginia, they were the Salem Witchcraft Trials. According to Document A, it states that people think that since they haven’t seen a witch before, they don’t exist. But, “We never met with any robbers on the road, therefore there never was any padding there.” This means that people think that they have to see the thing, in this case is witches, to believe that they are real.

The Salem witch trials are an outstanding example of a dysfunction in a “perfect” society. Tituba as part of that society helps us understand the simpleness of a complex shaped idea. Notwithstanding that Tituba is considered irrelevant during the Salem trials, nevertheless Tituba exposes European perceptions of Native Americans as a basis for cultural superiority and oppression, since Tituba is an indisputable symbol of injustice, of an ignominious drama, slavery, racism, as well as the defamation of a culture. The decisions that Tituba made throughout her trial, contributed in a substantial magnitude to the American history that’s known nowadays.

But really the only reason the Sedition Act went through was because of Abigail Adams. She wrote many compliments like, “I wish our legislature would set the example and make a sedition act,” (Adams 1788-1801). She thought it would help the government, and protect them from harsh comments. In the long run it just made things worse and more chaotic. She also wrote, “to punish the stirrup of sedition, the writer and printer of base and unfounded calumny.

I want to explore this because this was a very important part of American history where the court systems were all ruled practically by religion and how the court systems rules were changed after the fact so that something like this would never happen again. The court systems were affected after this event because the rulings in these cases were very unfair to the accused. Some supposed witches were accused because they were seen in a dream of an accuser. I have two questions that I wish to explore in this paper; what was the cause and effect of these trials and what changes were implemented in the courts so people were given a fair

How would you react if you were accused of being involved in witchcraft? In today’s time no one is phased at the thought of being called a witch, but back in the seventeenth century that was a growing concern among the people. Within the seventeenth century individuals of the Puritan religion began to move to Colonial America with the ideas of religious freedom. However, the concept of religious freedom did not go very far. Once they were settled in Colonial America, the Puritans began to prosecute anyone else who did not follow the Puritan religion.

Ignorance of medical and scientific explanations: Puritan attitudes towards the witch trials were largely governed by the authoritative figures present at the time. Any medical explanation given was disregarded, thus showcasing how the villagers’ views could be easily manipulated. They chose to only consider two possible extremes for the cause of this outbreak; either the women were possessed or they were fabricating such behaviors. Chadwick Hansen describes the behavior of the bewitched being a 'neurotic syndrome '. It was known patients experiencing this disorder turned "their mental worries into physical symptoms such as blindness, paralysis of various parts of the body, choking, fainting, or attacks of pain"(The

The Salem Witch Trials was where women were accused of performing sorcery even though they weren't and were still convicted of the crime. This is parallel to Bradbury’s encounter because the policeman decides to consider walking a “crime” just because he feels he has the power to do so which is just a bad sense of character. The Salem witch trials are also similar to the idea of people who read books in Fahrenheit 451 being bad because they are veering away from what society deems right and society chooses to single them out just because they aren't following their rules. In Fahrenheit 451, the characters within the novel are taken to the incinerator and have their houses burned if they are found with books, anyone can be accused of this crime and without question, the fire department will go burn down their house. This is parallel to the witch trials because the vulnerable people in the society get taken advantage of by the people of power, they are punished for crimes that they never committed and aren't even given a say in

Without the belief in witchcraft who knows if Macbeth would ever of been as great as it was. “However, the witches do not control behavior in the play. They are symbolic of evil and prescient of crimes which are to come, but they neither encourage nor facilitate Macbeth’s actions. They are merely a poignant external symbol of the ambition that is already within Macbeth”. Witches played a big role in Macbeth.

The Salem witch trials of the 1690’s portrayed by Millers the Crucible parallel The Red Scare of 1920’s, both events revolve around the fear of foreign ideology causing hysteria. In the 1960’s few individuals primarily a band of girls accused innocent people of practicing witchery. These accusations were false, but the court believed them regardless of inadequate evidence. Why, because the church and state were one and whoever who stood with the devil was against the court making witchery a crime. “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there is no road between.”

If witchcraft were a problem in my town I wouldn’t do anything sketchy. I wouldn’t lie about my friends. I wouldn’t even push my friends to lie for me. Abigail should be executed due to the fact that she’s the main reason so many innocent people were executed. She started it all, she has lied and she has also had an affair.

In my own personal well thought of opinion, I believe that Abigail Williams is the one to blame for the witch trials due to multiple reasons. Firstly is that because of her self greed of trying to keep a well polished reputation and to not face the consequences, she did all that she could so that she would not get in trouble herself, which was acting or pretending to the best of her abilities, and claiming that the people she stated has either met the devil or created an agreement with him. Another would be attempting to eliminate the individuals she or the girls that follow her dislikes, which includes the upper class people, certain individuals that seems suspicious, etc. Lastly of course is the idea that she is just doing it to seize the

The 1692 events in Salem were not caused by a single person. Rather, the horrific miscarriage of injustice that was unfair persecutions under the guise of witchcraft could be blamed on natural phenomena. When young girls of the Massachusetts town developed strange symptoms, such as vivid hallucinations and strange bodily sensations, the local town doctor could not explain why they had suddenly taken ill. Confused, he diagnosed them with the one thing that made sense to the suspicious religious town: Witchcraft. Now, modern science concludes that a simple fungus was responsible for the girl’s symptoms.

4/1/2017 Testimony against Accused Witch Bridget Bishop, 1692 Bridgett Bishop, a married, middle-aged woman, was the first colonist to be tried in the Salem Witch trials, found guilty and hung for practicing witchcraft in June 1692. Bishop was widowed twice and on her third marriage during the witch trials. According to Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, in her article Bridget Bishop: Witch or Easy Target, states that Bishop’s second husband was Thomas Oliver, who had children from a previous marriage. Bishop was no stranger to the courts.