The Crucible

By Arthur Miller

The hunt for witches…

• The idea of sorcery and witchcraft predates

written history

• The Spanish Inquisition was established in the 13th

century by papal bull*, at least in part a hunt for

those allegedly in league with the Devil

• By the 15th century, the Inquisition had executed

thousands of alleged witches for their heretical

beliefs and practices

• *A papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope

of the Catholic Church. It is named after the lead seal (bulla) that was

appended to the end in order to authenticate it.

A witch craze…

• Possessed Europe from 1450 to 1700

• Thousands of people, mostly women, were

executed on the basis of “proofs” or

“confessions” of diabolical witchcraft

• These confessions were obtained through

cruel tortures

Paranoia reigned…

• People were encouraged to inform against

one another

• Professional witch finders identified and

“tested” suspects for evidence of witchcraft

Background

• The Salem Witch Trials

• The Puritans

in Salem

Village

moved from

England to

be free from

the English

rules and

religions

Salem

• Salem Village was

surrounded by forest

on three sides. This

forest was said to be

the Devil house, and

the Puritans were not

allowed to go into the

forest

The Salem Witch Trials

• The Salem Witch Trials were a series of hearings

before local magistrates followed by county court

trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in

Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May

1693

The facts…

• Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five

men, were hanged

• Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned,

with even more accused who were not formally

pursued by the authorities

• The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of

the capital felony of witchcraft

“Salem” witch trials?

• Despite being generally known as the

"Salem" witch trials, the preliminary

hearings in 1692 were conducted in a

variety of towns across the province: Salem

Village, Ipswich, Andover, as well as Salem

Town, Massachusetts

Most famous…

• The best-known trials were conducted by

the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in

Salem Town

• All twenty-six who went to trial before this

court were convicted

A little later…

• The four sessions of the Superior Court of

Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Town, but

also in Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown,

produced only three convictions in the

thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted

Local context

• In 1689, Salem Village was finally allowed

by the church in Salem Town to form their

own separate covenanted church

congregation and ordain their own minister,

after many petitions to do so

A controversial figure…

• Salem Village was

torn by internal

disputes between

neighbors who

disagreed about the

choice of Samuel

Parris as their first

ordained minister

Economic context

• Increasing family size fueled disputes over land

between neighbors and within families, especially

on the frontier where the economy was based on

farming

• A farm that could support an average-sized family

could not support the many families of the next

generation, prompting farmers to push farther into

the wilderness to find land, encroaching upon the

indigenous people

Theocracy

• The church ruled in all civil matters, including that of administering capital punishment for violations of a spiritual nature

• Religious fervor added tension to the mix

• Loss of crops, livestock, and children, as well as earthquakes and bad weather, were typically attributed to the wrath of God

Puritan Worldview

• The Puritans believed in the existence of an

invisible world inhabited by God and the

angels, including the Devil (who was seen

as a fallen angel) and his fellow demons

• To Puritans, this invisible world was as real

as the visible one around them

Cotton Mather

• Influential minister of

Boston's North Church

was a prolific

publisher of pamphlets

and a firm believer in

witchcraft.

Social context: Patriarchy

• Women, they believed, should be totally

subservient to men

• By nature, a woman was more likely to

enlist in the Devil's service than was a man,

and women were considered lustful by

nature

Small town stresses

• Secrets difficult to

keep and people's

opinions about their

neighbors were

generally accepted as

fact

Children were at the bottom of the

social ladder

• Toys and games were

seen as idle and

playing was

discouraged

• Here’s an example of

pleasure reading for

children

Children worked hard…

• Boys were able to go

hunting, fishing,

exploring in the

forest, and often

became apprentices to

carpenters and smiths

Girls had it really rough…

• Girls had additional

restrictions heaped

upon them

• Girls were trained

from a tender age to

spin yarn, cook, sew,

weave, and be servants

to their husbands,

mothers, and children

The initial outbreak

• In Salem Village in 1692, Betty Parris, age

9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age 11,

the daughter and niece (respectively) of

Reverend Samuel Parris, began to have fits

described as "beyond the power of Epileptic

Fits or natural disease to effect" by John

Hale, minister in nearby Beverly

The fits…

• The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions

• They complained of being pinched and pricked with pins

• A doctor could find no physical evidence of any ailment

It spreads…

• Other young women in the village began to

exhibit similar behaviors

• When Deodat Lawson, a former minister of

the town, preached in the Salem Village

meetinghouse, he was interrupted several

times by outbursts of the afflicted

The accused

• Sarah Good was poor and known to beg for food or shelter from neighbors

• Sarah Osburne had married her indentured servant and rarely attended church meetings

• Tituba, as a slave of a different ethnicity than the Puritans, was an obvious target for accusations

All women, all powerless…

• All of these women fit

the description of the

"usual suspects" for

witchcraft accusations,

and no one stood up

for them

Spectral evidence

• The testimony of the afflicted who claimed

to see the apparition or the shape of the

person who was allegedly afflicting them

• Here’s a question: does a person have to

give permission to the Devil for his/her

"shape" to be used to afflict? Some

claimed that the Devil was able to use

anyone's "shape" to afflict people

• The Court contended that the Devil could not use a person's shape

without that person's permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed

to "see" the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as

evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil

Other evidence…

• the confessions of the accused

• the testimony of another confessed "witch"

identifying others as witches

• the discovery of "poppits"

• books of palmistry and horoscopes

• pots of ointments in the possession or home

of the accused

The story of The Crucible: It all started

with improper behavior

• The "afflicted" girls are said to have been "entertained" by Parris' slave woman, Tituba, who supposedly taught them about "voodoo" in the kitchen of the parsonage during the winter of 1692

• A a "circle" of the girls, with Tituba's help, tried their hands at fortune telling, using the white of an egg and a "glass" (a mirror) to create a primitive crystal ball to divine the professions of their future spouses

• They scared one another when one supposedly saw the shape of a coffin instead

Tituba

• Tituba's race is often

cited as Carib-Indian

or that she was of

African descent, but

contemporary sources

describe her only as an

"Indian"

• "Examination of a Witch" Thompkins H.

Matteson, 1853

• "Witch

Hill," or

"The Salem

Martyr"

Description:

Oil painting

by New

York artist

Thomas

Slatterwhite

Noble, 1869.

"Witchcraft at Salem

Village.“ 1876.

• A generalized courtroom scene showing an "afflicted" girl fallen on the floor in front of the judges bench. An accused woman stands in front of the judges holding her right hand over her heart and gesturing upwards, as if in the act of declaring her innocence before God

"Arresting a Witch.“ 1883

• A generic scene that shows a woman being arrested for witchcraft, depicted conventionally as an old hag by the famous illustrator Howard Pyle.

"Accused of

Witchcraft."

1884

• In this scene a young girl, who has been accused of witchcraft, clings to her father who gestures towards the authorities come who have to arrest her. A clergyman raises his head helplessly towards the heavens while the accuser, standing next to him and concealed under a cape, points towards the girl.

"Execution of Mrs. Ann Hibbins.” 1886

• Often used as an

illustration of the

Salem witch trails, this

illustration depicts the

execution of Ann

Hibbins on Boston

Commons in 1657.