This story takes place in Salem village, several girls deicide to punish the most
Respectable people.{ including Sarah Goode, a four year old who was said to have
put pins in people}This story is very sad, but is very good History to know. ( )

NA

I took my time with this one since I found the whole thing so fascinating and also Jackson did a great job of including new information that I have not heard about before. She ends the book with a theory about the girls who started it all being afflicted by a fungus on a bread, but she doesn't seem to put much weight behind it and neither do I.

I think most Americans are familiar with the Puritans and also the witchcraft hysteria that gripped Salem Village in 1692. Jackson begins at the beginning with how the Puritans were fleeing religious persecution in England, but really were about conformity and insisting that there fellow brethren were not as religious as they were. She also touches upon the poverty in the village and how there was very few things for young girls and boys to do besides attend church meetings. Any schooling they received was only about religious texts. So Jackson sets a very nice stage for what happens next.

A group of young girls starts accusing the women around them of witchcraft after one of them starts to have fits. Is it irony that the one girl and cousin who started accusing women were the daughter and niece of the local reverend?

Betty Parris was 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams was 11. Betty's father Reverend Samuel Parris was all too ready to believe that his flock contained witches. Jackson goes on a bit that he was a fan of Cotton Mather. To me that's like being a fan of Stephen Miller.

Eventually these girls were joined by Ann Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard. The girls went around falling into fits when examined, saying that they were being pinched and or burned and would howl when coming across people. The scenes that Jackson describes boggle the mind. I would have been calling bullshit left and right. Then again, I would have totally been burned at the stake.

Eventually the girls accused Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba (Reverend Parris's housekeeper). Jackson touches upon how the first three women accused were seen as outsiders by the villagers. Jackson is slightly damning of Tituba who confessed and went on to accuse other women. Eventually other women were named such as Martha Corey and Sarah Good's young daughter (she was 5) Dorcas Good, and Rebecca Nurse.

"Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard stood up in their places. One of them swore solemnly that Goodwife Nurse had come to her at night and sat upon her chest to suffocate her. The other pointed out that a black man stood, even now, whispering in Goodwife Nurse’s ear and that yellow birds were flying about her head."

I think what got me as a reader is that the girls accusations become more and more unbelievable and no one except a few people tried to push back on it. Some people flat out fled to other colonies than deal with the cries of witchcraft that went on.

It is interesting to note that the afflicted girls in Salem Village cried out upon Robert Calef shortly after Mather’s visit. Calef’s answer, which reached them with all possible speed, was an announcement of a slander suit for a thousand pounds. The accusation against Calef was immediately withdrawn, and his name was not mentioned again in Salem Village.

There is some new information here about how the accusations spread to Andover and how the girls even eventually were brought there to identify witches. They ended up finding mostly everyone there to be witches. You think that would have caused everyone to go these girls are full of it.

In the end, things do not start to wind down until after the execution of 19 people on Gallows Hill and one person being pressed to death. Giles Corey's pressing seemed to be finally the end of the witchcraft accusations. His death shamed the community as a whole and they all finally woke up to the fact that they got played by young girls and some women who were out to cast aspersions onto their more well to do neighbors. The hysteria spread from Salem to Andover and they had jails full of people accused of witchcraft. I think Jackson mentions 150 people were jailed.

Jackson cannot find out that much about what happened to some of the accused. We find out that Parris died in poverty (good riddance) after being chased out of the village. Many blamed him and his relatives for what happened. Jackson mentions that his house no longer stands and it's barren ground now. What started cause ripples through the whole community with Salem sliding more into poverty since many people gave up farming or seeing to their homes due to watching the newest accusation or trial. Many who were accused came out of prison and found their homes and belongings lost to them forever.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts did not formally clear everyone accused of witchcraft until 1957. ( )

The editors at Landmark Books knew exactly what they were doing.

Shirley Jackson's strengths as a writer were in both the psychology of isolation and small communities, and, in another part of her life, the motivations of the young. The Salem Witch Trials is the perfect pairing for these talents.

Written in the mid-1950s for school children, 'The Witchcraft of Salem Village' is still a refreshing perspective on the trials. Accompanied by intense illustrations, the text is simple, conversational, and frankly states its opinion on what was behind the trials: poor education, and foolish, scared children. The latter is more apparent as one reads the text, but while Jackson remarks that a couple well-placed whippings would have put a stop to the whole shameful tragedy, Ann Putnum and co. were acting within the limits of the system the adults allowed and encouraged. The message of the importance of education untainted by superstition is reinforced again and again through commentary on the interrogation methods of the authorities and the consistent overruling and punishment of reason.

In the bland world of the Eisenhower-era education I can imagine what bright contrast this book offered. From start to finish, over sixty years later, this book is still an excellent overview of the Witch Trials and, unless you have some kind of objection to whipping, appropriate for all ages. ( )

The Witchcraft of Salem Village was an enjoyable text. I admit here that I am not terribly well read on those trials, or that time period - so I can't objectively judge it on historical veracity. What I can say is that Shirley Jackson gave a rather fair overview of the proceedings, and while speculation was present, it didn't seem to overpower reference to the historical facts.

Personally, my first thought upon reading this was that The Crucible suddenly made sense; please don't judge me on that, as I said above, I really didn't know much about the trials beforehand. My second thought was that the book was unduly hilarious for the simple fact that it's intended for children and is focused on rather weighty subject manner. I don't think the language was especially child appropriate, simply because the vocabulary is rather large but.. as Mitch Hedberg said, "Every book is a children's book if that child can read."

Man, I really like Shirley Jackson. Her writing about children is just priceless. ( )