In her book, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol Karlsen looks at the women of New England accused of being witches. Karlsen points out that the accused women were from not only poor backgrounds, but also good financial standing and socially vulnerable in a patriarchal culture.
Her main purpose for writing the book was to bring to the light why so many women in New England were accused witches. She confronts “the definition of the witch in its historical setting” by looking at the ideological and social habits of colonial New England. She writes that New Englanders during the colonial period were preoccupied with women-as-witches. She explains that still today the witches of New England intrigue people.
Her first chapter gives the reader a detailed looked at the New England witch-hunts and how they compared to the witch-hunts in England. The number one similarity was the accused were mainly women.
Karlsen follows the first chapter with the demographics of witchcraft. She uses facts from other sources and tables to display the sex of the witches, how many were accused, tried, convicted, executed, and where in New England when the accusations occurred. She broke the tables down by ages and years. By doing this, she found that women under the age of forty were unlikely to be witches, although women under forty were accused.
The economic status of the accused women did not matter, nor did it matter if they were married or single. However, Karlsen states that “Unless they were single or widowed, accused women from wealthy families – families with estates valued at more than £500 [that is $813 by today's rates] – could be fairly confident that the accusations would be ignored by the authorities or deflected by their husbands through suits for slander against their accusers.”
Karlsen refers often to primary sources from the colonial period to support her findings. For example, a reference to Cotton Mather states he expressed in his writings the intensity of the psychic tension during the witch-hunts. She mentions Mather’s lengthiest writing on womanhood, titled "Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion". In this particular writing, Mather states his purpose for writing about women were “to advocate virtue among those who can not forget their Ornaments and to promote a fear of God in the female sex.” Karlsen says that Mather was concerned with the women’s behavior and their belief in God.
Karlsen touches on the lives of the accused women and brings their stories to light. She depicts them in a real way and uses their actual words at times to prove a point. By her doing this, the reader is able to imagine the hardship the women experienced, which included discrimination.
In Karlsen’s fifth chapter, "Handmaidens of the Lord", she clearly states that the Puritans were not fond of women who disagreed with the Puritan lifestyle. Therefore, in order to keep control of the nefarious women they accused them of being witches. According to Karlsen, the Puritans feared outspoken women.
Karlsen also uses secondary sources such as books by various writers and researchers. In the back of her book, she gives an impressive list of sources.The way Karlsen views the witch-hunts of the seventeenth centuries spurs interest in the role women played in colonial New England.
This is the second publication of Carol Karlsen’s book. In the Afterward Karlsen clears up any misconceptions the first publication had and how there were areas academically flawed. She continued to state that if she were to do the book over she would make several changes involving clarifications of the term "accused witches' and more thorough research.
Overall, Karlsen’s book is informative and does cause the reader to take another view of the Salem witch trials. It can also stimulate the reader to do further research in the subject.
Source:
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998, 2nd editon).
Christine Musser - Christine is a passionate researcher and does not stop the research process until she has exhausted all possibilities. Her research has ...
