1692: A Bad Time For Women

There are several incidences in history when someone was accused of witchcraft. Maybe they didn’t have anything to do with witchcraft but if someone said it, everyone believed them. Some many people’s lives were taken because of something they didn’t do not had a part in. From June – September 1692, 19 men and women have been convicted of witchcraft. They were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village for hanging.

Salem Witch Trials Do you know about the history of Salem, Massachusetts? Have you ever heard about the 20 women that were executed there in 1692? Well if you haven’t, you are about to learn all about what happened. It all started in February during 1692, when a few little girls from a place called Salem Village in Massachusetts supposedly became possessed by the Devil. These girls were caught doing conjuring and doing other things associated with witchcraft.

Accused and Betrayed Throughout the late 1600’s women had been accused of being a part of witchcraft. In this time women went through many disgusting torture treatments and got charged with many different things. When a women had been accused she would be “treated” with many different types of torture until they had died or had admitted to doing witchcraft. Some of the tortures were called: “The Garotte”,” Dunking the Witch”, and “The Boots”.

Christianity was prevalent in the 1600’s and anyone who didn’t believe in God was seen as a heretic and put to death. In 1641 the colonists established a legal code and put witchcraft as the second one, the punishment for that, of course, was death. The Devil was highly feared and if there was word of somebody using witchcraft a big deal would be made out of it; as The Salem Witch Trials have proven. Women were mainly the ones who happened to be executed because they were also feared, if any woman had the same amount of power as a man she must’ve made a deal with the Devil. All of this made 1692 was an intricate time for the people of Salem Village, Massachusetts.

Centuries ago within the two years of 1692 and 1693, the Salem witch trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony. During this tragic event, there were over two hundred people, including male and female, who were accused of being witches. Isolating the accusations, there were only about twenty or those people who were executed for the practice of “Devil’s Magic”. Such practice of witchcraft was against many religions, like Christianity (Blumberg). The trials begin in January of 1692 because of Reverend Parris’ daughter, Elizabeth (who was only nine), and his niece, Abigail Williams (who was eleven).

The witch trials that took place around the 15 and 1600’s ruined many lives and crippled many towns. One of the most notable towns that this witch hysteria broke out was in the town of Salem. Salem was a normal puritan town during that time period in the new America with religion being the core of the town. Most of the people had good relations with others in the town before the witch trials, were people would accuse one of perfoming demonic arts in attempt to steal one's wife, land, or goods. Of the characters in The Crucible Abigail Williams who was the niece the town's reverend is the main reason that the mass witch hysteria broke out in Salem.

In January 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, innocent citizens began to be accused of witchcraft. Two young girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams hid under furniture and contorted their bodies into unusual shapes. They screamed and cried out that the spirits of innocent citizens in the town of Salem were torturing them by stabbing them and trying to convince them to sign the Devil’s book. They were thought to have been under witchcraft’s spell, causing the young girls to accuse many people of witchcraft such as their own slave Tituba. More and more people of the town became afflicted with the same symptoms as Betty and Abigail, in the end causing over 200 people to be accused of witchcraft and all found guilty.

In the spring of 1692 people all around salem were being hung for the belief of them practicing witchcraft. With a town of only around 500 people living there having 200 or more people being accused of being a witch was a very big deal. “People had begun acting weird and doing very strange things such as dancing and acting as if they were possessed by the devil himself”, no one knew how to explain these weird behaviors. Little girls accusing grown men and women of being witches and practicing the devil’s work, harming innocents in the community. Believing that they watched a group of women perform a satanic ritual.

Alana Alvarado Professor Krammer March 7, 2023 Salem Witch Trials Throughout this class, we have learned what witches are throughout history and how they have had an impact on our history, and some of the misfortunes that took place. Learning about the history of witches and witchcraft helped us understand the build-up to the witch trials in Salem Massachusetts, which began in 1692 and lasted until 1693. During these witch trials in Salem about 150 people were accused of being a witch, and about 25 people died as a result of these trials. Many things had an impact on the unfortunate event in history from warfare, gender, and economic issues, but I will be focusing on how Religion and Gender played a big part in the Salem witch trials.

The towns people lived in fear, they would nail their doors shut the first day of every month, but miraculously no matter what they did someone was still murdered. It was common in 1692 to find towns people blaming each other and arguing. It got so out of hand that people started blaming their own friends for being witches or murders and they would burn their friends, their neighbors, or even their families alive. Then one day after a little girl’s mom was murdered, the little girl claimed she saw her doll stab her mom. The town’s people laughed at her and called her psychotic.

Salem Witchcraft Trials In Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 there was an outbreak of teenage girls who were accused of practicing witchcraft. If you were accused of being a witch you had two options. One option was for the person to deny their practice of witchcraft, which resulted in their hanging, while the other option was for them to confess their practice of witchcraft and be exiled from the community. The following paragraphs will examine events and details concerning two specific Salem Witchcraft Trials; one in which the accused confessed to the practice of witchcraft and another in which the accused denied being a witch.

In general, women in the Puritan society of Salem had little autonomy and agency, which made them easy to blame. In the Journal Dissenting Voices, Maggie Rosen states that “the reinforcement of the strict gender roles (i.e., women as mothers, caretakers, and homemakers) made it easy to target the women who stepped outside of their assigned role. Powerful women and/or women who transgressed the boundaries of the gender binary were seen as an evil.” The expectations of women in Salem in 1692 were incredibly limiting. Hence, any kind of step outside the boundary is incredibly noticeable and even labeled as “evil.”

Imagine being a wealthy 45-year-old woman in 1692 being accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch trials were caused by jealousy, fear, and lying. People believed that the devil was real and that one of his tricks was to enter a normal person 's body and turn that person into a witch. This caused many deaths and became a serious problem in 1692. First of all, jealousy was one of the causes of the Salem witch trials.

The novel A Delusion of Satan written by Frances Hill describes the history of the Salem Witch Trials (“Salem”) in 1692, the causes and effects of the witch hysteria, and the biographies of major characters associated with the trials. In the novel, Hill started out explaining the Puritans’ beliefs and customs, the gender roles of men and women in Salem and why women were easily accused of being witches and practicing witchcraft in the 17th century. During that time, women were easily accused of practicing witchcraft because they were viewed as physically, politically and spiritually weaker than men. Men were perceived as the power, status, and worthy in the society, and they dominated women’s behavior and social status. In the 17th century,

Not many people know much about what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe someone would think that it was just about witchcraft and crazy people being hanged, but it is a lot more than that. The Salem Witch Trials only occurred between 1692 and 1693, but a lot of damage had been done. The idea of the Salem Witch Trials came from Europe during the “witchcraft craze” from the 1300s-1600s. In Europe, many of the accused witches were executed by hanging.