33 pages • 1 hour read
Paul S. BoyerSalem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Afflicted Village, 1688-1697”
Salem Village had proven incapable of retaining three religious ministers. By June of 1689, Samuel Parris was brought into the community as a replacement. His arrival sparked a division between inhabitants who wanted their own ordained minister and those who didn’t, but Parris was eventually ordained. He was also given the Village parsonage and a tract of land outright, even though previous rulings had prevented this property to be deeded to an individual and his heirs. Parris’s early triumphs caused alarm among the faction resisting autonomy. “The one firm result of the year’s maneuverings was the emergence of a church which, if it went unchallenged, could become the single most powerful force for political autonomy in the Village,” write the authors (64-65).
During the years that followed, the Village Committee that supported Parris was voted out, and the anti-Parris faction came to power. They actively attempted to oust Parris by refusing to pay his salary. Members of the community who opposed this move refused to pay their taxes. This was the prevailing political climate at the time of the witch trials:
The witchcraft episode did not generate the divisions within the Village, nor did it shift them in any fundamental way, but it laid bare the intensity with which they were experienced and heightened the vindictiveness with which they were expressed (page number?)
After the trials ended, little had changed in the stances of the pro-Parris and anti-Parris factions. The minister continued to go unpaid, while suits and countersuits were filed. Eventually, Parris was pressured into calling an ecclesiastical council to arbitrate the dispute in the Village. When it convened, the council members hinted that they were willing to find Parris a more suitable position elsewhere.
Stubborn to the last, the minister refused as his own backers regained control of the Village Committee. The balance of power shifted back and forth with no clear victor until Parris finally resigned in 1697, worn out by the endless conflict. After his departure, the factions within the community settled into an uneasy peace. The authors write: “Out of sheer exhaustion, perhaps, both sides had given up the quest for total dominance and accepted the prospect of more or less chronic factional divisions” (79).
Chapter 4 Summary: “Salem Town and Salem Village: The Dynamics of Factional Conflict”
A number of factors contributed to the animosity between the pro-Parris and anti-Parris factions of Salem Village. Inhabitants who either became members of the Village church or attended services there were more likely to support the minister. In contrast, the wealthiest members of the area tended to oppose the Parris faction. Parris’s opponents owned most of the land that bordered the Town while his supporters lived at the western border farthest from the Town.
The contrast between Village and Town could be reduced to economics. Agriculturists populated the Village while the wealthy merchant class lived in the Town. The relative poverty of the Village was aggravated by its inability to expand. As long as Salem Village was annexed to Salem Town, no new farmlands could be worked or divided among the next generation, causing many villagers “to feel both exploited and neglected by the Town” (92).
The Village residents who lived closest to Town could derive certain advantages from their proximity. They could sell agricultural products more easily and could also purchase investment properties in the Town for themselves. The Ipswich Road became the main artery for transporting goods from the Village to the Town, and its taverns catered to the outsiders who traveled through the region. Most of the villagers who lived along this route aligned with the anti-Parris faction. The road itself allowed outsiders to infiltrate the Village, which alarmed the pro-Parris faction to the west. Not surprisingly, three of the tavern owners on the Ipswich Road were accused of witchcraft by the pro-Parris group.
The authors conclude that, “The fundamental issue was not who was to control the Village, but what its essential character was to be” (103). Puritan ideals called for a selfless devotion to the community. The pro-Parris supporters saw that ideal being compromised by the mercantile nature of the Town and the villagers who aligned with the Town for the sake of their own self-interest. The pro-Parris faction demonized their enemies as morally defective, leading to accusations of witchcraft.
The authors raise the question of why the paranoia of the pro-Parris faction led to the witch trials at all. They come to five conclusions. 1) The physical proximity of the Village to the Town made the larger municipality threatening to the interests of the agriculturalists in the western Village; 2) The Village’s lack of political autonomy contributed to a feeling of helplessness; 3) Concurrently, the Village’s distant location from the Town had allowed it to create an independent civic organization, thus leading to a taste for independence; 4) This nascent urge for freedom was simultaneously quashed by the lack of Village representation in Town government; Ultimately, all these issues might have been resolved if the colonial government had intervened to sort the situation out, but as matters stood, 5) there was no external mechanism to prevent these combined influences from wreaking havoc in Salem Village.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In this segment, the authors elaborate on the issue of the geographical divide between west and east Salem Village. They explain the resulting factionalism in terms of simple economics: The agricultural inhabitants of the west Village felt exploited by the Town to which they were annexed. It limited their opportunities for expansion while simultaneously draining tax money out of the Village and into the Town without providing any services to justify the economic burden.
Aside from the Town’s exploitation of the Village, the former also represented the interests of the merchant class as opposed to the agriculturalists. An increasing economic disparity developed between the threadbare landholders on the west side of the Village and the rich merchants on the east side.
While the divisions that developed between east and west could easily be explained in terms of political power and economic growth, another layer of complexity was introduced when religion became a point of contention as well. The Village wanted its own church to be separate from the institution in the Town. Both the Village and the Town realized that an autonomous parish was only the first step toward the ultimate goal of an autonomous Village. In addition, making the church and its new minister a part of the existing power struggle introduced the issue of spirituality into what should have been a simple affair of municipal control.
Because Salem was a Puritan settlement, religion factored heavily into the daily lives of its citizens, and providence—the protective care of God—was perceived to guide all commercial transactions. As a result, the wrangling between the farmers and merchants took on a moral dimension that made accusations of demonic influence somehow plausible to the inhabitants.
