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Title: Salem Possessed; The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul S. Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum ISBN: 0-674-78526-6 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1976 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.55 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: More Than Just Simple Accusations!
Comment: Salem Possessed aimed at shedding new light on the Salem Witchcraft Trails of 1692 by providing new detail and insight into the social and political origins of the paranoia and fears felt by those in and around Salem Village. By using such detailed and effective primary sources, the authors were able to create a vivid image of the situation Salem Village was in, and how the emergent mercantile capitalism was mistaken by those as a threat of witchcraft. Introducing us to the two "rival clans", the Porters and the Putnams, as well as the key role of the minister Samuel Parris, the authors of Salem Possessed used statistical and empirical data to show how the clashing of these distinct people, and their distinctive ways of life, led to a crescendo in 1692 that allowed for the hanging of innocent people. The authors sum up the book by portraying the events of 1692 as an "obsession with outsiders", showing that the difference in proximity to Salem Town, financial standing, land holding, and taxable property was more than many "pro-Parris" Villagers could stand to sit idly aside and watch fluctuate sporadically. Overall, Salem Possessed is effective in erasing the stereotypes involved with the Salem Witch Trials by using concrete evidence, primary accounts, and statistical data that hint at a very evident pattern in the growing chasm between the pro-Parris, religious Puritans, and the capitalistic, wealthy Villagers who had stronger ties to Salem Town than the Village itself.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Example of Fine Research
Comment: Finally, someone to take the hocus pocus out of this period of history and actually try to make some sense out of a sociological phenomenon gone wildly awry. While others relied on the tabloid type accounts of events left behind in court depositions, Nissenbaum and Boyer get into the nitty gritty to show you what really happened. Accessing Parris's sermons, wills, seemingly unrelated civil conflict court records, tax records, censuses, and more, this book starts from the beginning - the founding of Salem Village and takes you step by step through the most likely scenario of what really happened in this conflict in terms of personal power struggles, family legacies, societal conflicts between agrarian and commercial lifestyles and so on. This book also changed my perspective on the Puritan way of life and stirred my interest in the Great Awakening of 1751 which had similar outbreaks as the "spectral evidence" of Salem but was interpreted in a wholly different way.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent research and insight
Comment: I was required to read this book in my college freshman expository literature class and it was recently brought to my attention again as I watched an innocent person get accused and abused for something they did not do, and I must say that this is one of the only sociological studies that has stayed with me all these years. This book is proof that we must learn from history or stand condemned to repeat it.
It is bizarre how the early settlers operated and how there was no true separation of church and State, blame abounded if someone had a seizure. Evidence shows that ergot poisioning led the the sympotmatic behavior of the poor class of females who mostly ate the rye bread, etc. and how society, with it's fearmonging idiocy was more readily willing to blame some psychotic make-believe of "being a witch" on those poor girls than of using their brains and finding a scientific explanation.
It's hard to tell who was more nuts... the people with ergot poisoning or the clergy making the ridiculous judgements!
I was blown out of the water when I read how a woman with a hemerroid was thought to have a "witches teat" that they believed she nursed secret witches and goblins at night from (talk about disgusting beliefs) and how these poor ladies were dunked, hanged, shot, be-headed because of a naturally occurring blood vessel protruding from [...]after child birth!
Good God, I'm glad they didn't have truck drivers back then because they have the most hemerroids of any sector of the population! Can you just see all these guys at the witch trial having to bend over and moon the court and then be taken out to the pond and dunked repeatedly till they fessed up to being a witch or killed??!!!
All you have to do is read this book and you can see, even today, in your own circle of society how there are still [people]like this running around rampant.
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Title: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen ISBN: 0393317595 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton ISBN: 037540709X Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill, Karen Armstrong ISBN: 0306811596 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Salem Witch Trials Reader by Frances Hill ISBN: 030680946X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England by Paul Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum ISBN: 1555531652 Publisher: Northeastern University Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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