The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

“This book explores some of the sources of this power by focusing on witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England. Like many of my predecessors, I am also concerned with the meaning of witchcraft for New England’s first settlers. But my more pressing concern is why most witches were women. By confronting the definition of the witch in its historical setting, by understanding the ideological and social sources of New Englanders’ preoccupation with women-as-witches, we can better understand why the witch still lives in our imagination today.”

The most important element of The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is Karlsen’s gendered analysis. As she acknowledges here, she is concerned with the overarching history of 17th-century New England just as other historians are. However, the factor that sets her apart from her peers is her decision to read this history through a gendered lens, which few had done before. Karlsen’s methodology as described in this quote set her book apart from other American witchcraft histories and subsequently changed how the topic was researched and discussed.

“The New England settlers also carried with them a dual conception of witchcraft and the menace it posed. For most colonists, the critical concern was the harm witches inflicted on neighbors and on neighbors’ property. Witches were criminals who worked in supernatural ways. This was the traditional concern in England, and there as in New England, the main stimulus to witchcraft accusations. But the clergy and some members of their congregations considered the primary threat to be the relationship between the witch and the Devil.”

Witches posed a dual threat to Puritan society. As human beings who conspired with the Devil, witches straddled both the natural and supernatural realms. Witches scared their neighbors through their violation of the natural order. It was believed that witches could curse others in the community, kill livestock and crops, and even cause infant deaths or miscarriages. The second component of the witches’ threat was in their supernaturality and proximity to the Devil. Witches clearly violated the word of God and the power of the church, thus concerning the clergy in Puritan society as well.

“The New England experience was slowly redefining the witch. Ann Hibbens may have seemed an improbable witch to John Norton and some other of her peers, as might Elizabeth Godman and even Rebecca Greensmith; in old England, these women’s wealth and position would most likely have protected them from suspicion. But in New England economic status was becoming irrelevant to the identity of the witch. Ironically, the clergy’s own insistence on the primacy of the witch’s relationship with Satan was contributing to that redefinition in ways the clergy never intended.”

A recurring theme in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is New England’s ideological relationship to English events and ideologies. In Chapter 1, Karlsen observes how New England witchcraft trials in the 17th century grew to depart those seen in England. While the colonists brought their foundational beliefs in witches over from England to America, as Puritans built their own society, their beliefs began to mutate into something of their own. This was reflected in the witchcraft accusations. Whereas in England, witches were always of the lower working classes, witches in New England could be from any class. Karlsen attributes these new witch classifications to the Puritan clergy, who encouraged new definitions of the witch that grew out of hand.

“Community dissension was rife as New England entered the final decade of the century. […] The 1688 Glorious Revolution in England added to the colonists’ economic and religious uncertainties. Just four years before, England’s Lord of Trade had succeeded in annulling the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter, and in 1688 the Stuarts and their surrogates in Massachusetts were themselves overthrown. No wonder both ministry and populace felt tossed by doubt about the continued existence and direction of their personal and collective enterprise. The tensions of the time surfaced in Salem, where in 1692 Satan returned with a vengeance.”

Using historical events as reference points, Karlsen clearly draws a line from 17th-century political and social tensions to the rise in witchcraft accusations in the late 1600s. While it is at first difficult to envision what triggered witchcraft trials, Karlsen makes it clear in Chapter 1’s historical overview that witchcraft accusations had distinct socio-political roots. When the trials are overlaid with political events of the time, such as that described in this quote, it becomes clear that Puritan anxieties over economics, government, and social relations manifested themselves through witches and accusations.

“To be sure, some people still believed that witches plagued their communities, but in the aftermath of the Salem outbreak witch trials were no longer countenanced by either ministers or magistrates, nor, it would seem, by the larger community. […] Women once suspected of using supernatural power to harm, though still objects of fear and hatred, no longer had to fear for their lives. And the many activities once attributed to Satan worship became simply sins against God, crimes against the state, or unwomanly behavior.” 

After the Salem witch trials in 1688, witchcraft accusations had reached their fever pitch and began to dwindle. The scale of the events in Salem shook New England to its core and reoriented the colonists, encouraging a rethinking of the role that witchcraft accusations played in their society. Importantly, Karlsen points out that the vanishing of witch trials saved women’s lives but did not save them from hatred. The negative feelings towards women in Puritan culture and systems were transferred into other outlets, with women’s behavior being policed through the church, state, and cultural spheres.

“More important than whether the main targets of witchcraft fears were middle-aged or old is the fact that they were almost all over forty. The women in both of these groups had reached the point in their lives when they were no longer bearing children. The older women among them, moreover, were not only beyond their childbearing years but were also no longer likely to be responsible for the care and maintenance of children.”

In her Chapter 2, Karlsen conducts a demographic analysis of the women accused of witchcraft in 17th-century New England. Karlsen finds that women over 40 were those who attracted the most accusations from their community. Notably, as she observes in this quote, these women are beyond childbearing—and even childrearing—years, thus lying outside of the main function of women in Puritan society. She subsequently argues that this data revealing a correlation between gender, age, and number of accusations proves the gendered dimension of New England’s witchcraft history. This aspect of the history reveals how patriarchal attitudes were expressed through the witchcraft trials of the 17th century.

“Looking back over the lives of these many women—most particularly those who did not have brothers or sons to inherit—we begin to understand the complexity of the economic dimension of New England witchcraft. […] No matter how deeply entrenched the principle of male inheritance, no matter how carefully written the laws that protected it, it was impossible to insure that all families had male offspring. The women who stood to benefit from these demographic ‘accidents’ account for most of New England’s female witches.”

Diving into an economic analysis of the women accused of witchcraft, Karlsen finds that many women who were in line to inherit land from family were highly likely to attract accusations from their community. These accusations could come from neighbors or even fellow family members who were bitter over the prospect of women owning land. Puritan society rested on male landowners, but as Karlsen points out, this could not always be guaranteed. Female heirs threatened the desired Puritan power structure. As a result, their wider community used witchcraft accusations to extinguish these female threats from the network of landowners.

“The social processes that transformed women into witches in New England required a convergence of belief on the part of both the townspeople and the religious and secular authorities that these women posed serious threats to society. For most people that threat lay in the subversion of the sexual order, but the clergy articulated the threat of witchcraft as the subversion of the order of Creation. […] There were two types of dangerous trespass: challenges to the supremacy of God and challenges to prescribed gender arrangements.”

The figure of the witch was articulated through two realms: the social realm and the religious realm. The witch was a threat to Puritan society in her subversion of the expected roles of women. Religiously, the witch was a threat due to her activity with the Devil and blasphemous beliefs. Karlsen uses Chapter 4 to explore how the social and religious dimensions of the witch were often interrelated, because the church dictated the role that women had in Puritan society.

“The harm attributed to witches appears to have been real—in the sense that people who believe in the efficacy of witchcraft and think themselves the objects of a witch’s malice can suffer and even die as a result of their fears. Anthropologists studying witchcraft in other societies have many times noted that in this particular sense, witchcraft exists. There seems little reason to doubt that in colonial New England, where witchcraft beliefs constituted one of several explanatory systems for natural and social misfortunes, people could be genuinely afflicted.”

Rather than approach the topic of witchcraft through a distanced, judgmental lens, Karlsen studies the topic by trying to understand the mindset of 17th-century colonists. She uses anthropological sources to acknowledge that even if contemporary scholars study the witch as a fictional figure, for the colonists of 17th-century New England, the witch still caused tangible harm to their communities. Any misfortune that struck Puritan communities were laid at the witch’s feet. Therefore, because of this widespread, systemic belief in the witch, she still had the power to enact harm even if she were not real.

“Confessions, however, seem generally to have emerged from a real, if momentary, belief on the part of the accused that they were, or probably were, witches. […] In a culture where female dissatisfaction and anger were linked with witchcraft, and where women were pressured to search their consciences for evidence of their own evil, not surprisingly some women were persuaded—albeit temporarily—that the Devil was in them.”

The Puritan belief in witches were so embedded in the colonists’ society that even the accused themselves believed, momentarily or not, that they could be witches. Because female discontent was conflated with Devilishness, women became afraid of their own feelings and could become convinced that simply by feeling frustrated, tired, or angry, they were conspiring against God and were indeed witches. This would result in confessions by the accused, which would only fuel the fires of Puritan belief that witches were real.

“In colonial New England, the many connections between ‘women’ and ‘witchcraft’ were implicitly understood. In Europe, several generations before, the connections had still been explicit. […] For the Puritans who emigrated to New England in the early seventeenth century, once-explicit assumptions about why witches were women were already self-evident.”

Karlsen traces the roots of New England witch trials overseas to Europe, the homeland of the 17th-century colonists. In England, the link between witchcraft and women was regularly preached. For the colonists who grew up in Europe, the gendered aspect of witchcraft was thus a given. By the time they arrived on American shores, women’s propensity for sin went unsaid in the Puritan culture because of how prevalent and “obvious” this belief was. Karlsen attributes this history to why mentions of gender and witchcraft are rarely explained in sources from colonial New England.

“Godly men needed helpmeets, not hindrances; companions, not competitors; alter egos, not autonomous mates. They needed wives who were faithful and loyal; who assisted them in their piety, in their vocations, and in the government of their families; who revered them and acknowledged them as ‘Lord’. There was no place in this vision for the belief that women were incapable of fulfilling such a role. Nor was there a place in the ideal Puritan society for women who refused to fill it.”

Interestingly, one of the aspects in which Puritans broke from English religious beliefs is regarding gender. Whereas Europe preached the innate sinfulness of women, Puritans believed that women had a Godly role to play in the household. This was to be subservient to the husband, who was believed to be the Lord of his own house. The Puritan belief system was thus a complex one with a paradoxical understanding of gender. While women were to play an active role in the home, it could not be too active. Women were forced to adhere to the strict rules of acceptable behavior in Puritan society. If they did not, they were met with harsh consequence.

“For Puritans, hierarchy and order were the most cherished values. People who did not accept their place in the social order were the very embodiments of evil. Disorderly women posed a greater threat than disorderly men because the male/female relation provided the very model of and for all hierarchal relations, and because Puritans hoped that the subordination of women to men would ensure men’s stake in maintaining those relations.”

Puritan society was ruled by belief in hierarchy. There were both social and religious hierarchies, and they were often intertwined. While God existed above all of mankind, the man of the household existed above the rest of his family in power. As disagreeable, blasphemous women, witches embodied threats to both types of Puritan hierarchy.

“Moreover, to acknowledge only those people who named names as accusers overlooks the ministers, magistrates, juries, and other members of the community who validated some accusations and invalidated others. Considering the complicated social meanings of witchcraft in New England, and the consistency with which certain kinds of people were bought into court, we must recognize that the community was as much an accuser as any individual within it.”

In Chapter 6, Karlsen begins to shift her book’s focus away from the witches themselves onto those individuals in the community who caused the trials in the first place. Here, she insists that too much emphasis is placed on accusers as the most significant factor for witch trials. Karlsen instead frames the events of 17th-century New England because of a deeply embedded systemic ideology that manifested itself in various avenues other than the accusers themselves.

“As women’s religious commitment became more obvious over the second half of the seventeenth century, the contradictions in Puritan beliefs about women intensified, encouraging those who lived with those contradictions to associate some women with the evil of Satan. The new religious submission of women might have quieted fears about certain kinds of female independence but aroused fears about other kinds.”

As the Puritan colonists moved into the latter half of the 17th century, women flocked to the church to prove their religiosity, fearful of witchcraft accusations. This caused tensions within the already contradictory beliefs that Puritans had towards women and religion. While it was believed that women had Godly roles to play in society, if a woman was too religiously active, it was thought that she was acting outside of her station. The second half of the 17th century was thus characterized by new fears of the overly active religious woman, as opposed to the fears of overt blasphemy in the first half of the century.

“These resentments came out, but they were not directed at the men who were their principal sources. Rather they were expressed as witchcraft accusations, primarily aimed at older women, who like accusers’ own mothers vied with men for land and other scarce material resources. Whether as actual or potential inheritors of property, as healers or tavern-keepers or merchants, most accused witches were women who symbolized the obstacles to property and prosperity.”

A major difficulty in Puritan life was the dwindling amount of land available for the colonists as the 17th century advanced. Land availability and ownership became a major source of strain in New England, causing communities—and even families—to turn against each other. A recurring feud throughout the colonies was when women from families without male heirs inherited land, which ruptured the ideal order of the Puritans’ patriarchal society. Karlsen studies that male resentments towards female inheritors often manifested themselves as witchcraft accusations.

“To explain New England possession, then, we must consider it first as a cultural performance, a symbolic religious ritual through which a series of shared meanings were communicated—by the possessed women themselves, by the ministers who interpreted their words and behavior, and the community audience for the dramatic events.”

From the outsider’s perspective, possession in 17thth century New England is a difficult phenomenon to understand. In Chapter 7, Karlsen meticulously analyzes possessed witchcraft accusers’ behaviors and demographic details to help readers gain an understanding of why possessed behaviors occurred. She ultimately argues that possession was a religious ritual with significant cultural weight in Puritan society. Karlsen posits that these accusers used possession as a form of communication with their larger community to express their frustrations that could not be explicitly stated.

“This is not to say that the possessed were ‘mentally ill’. To consider possession a sign of individual psychopathology implies the existence of a mass psychopathology. As some anthropologists and medical historians have long maintained, if a culture’s belief system incorporates the concept of demonic possession, it is rational for people within that culture to become possessed, to experience the torments their spiritual leaders say they will, and in much the same way their spiritual leaders say they will experience them.”

In her analysis of possessed accusers, Karlsen reorients our understanding of possession from an individual occurrence to a systemic, cultural event that acts as a form of communication. Karlsen turns to a field outside of history—anthropology—to explain the phenomenon of possession. According to anthropological studies, possession is bound to occur in societies that believe in the idea of demonic possession. In this sense, possession was a “real” event in Puritan society because of the pervasive messages of the influence of the Devil, particularly on women.

“If possession is most easily understood as a ritual expression of Puritan belief and New England’s gender arrangements, it was also an oblique challenge to both religious and social norms. However difficult it was for the possessed to speak of their plight without employing the language available to them, they shaped the possession ritual to voice feelings that were proscribed by their faith.”

A prominent theme in Karlsen’s book is the varied expressions of female agency and rebellion in Puritan society. In addition to the witches themselves, Karlsen draws possessed accusers into the conversation of Puritan women’s rebellion. In this quote, Karlsen reads possession as a challenge to religious and social norms in its capacity to express female discontent, which was one of the major sins of Puritan society.

“Witchcraft possession in early New England, then, was an interpretation placed upon a physical and emotional response to a set of social conditions that had no intrinsic relationship to witches or the Devil. These conditions were in some respect specific to Puritan New England, but they were also evident in other societies. Like women in other times and places, the New England possessed were rebelling against pressures to internalize stifling gender and class hierarchies.”

In the conclusion of Chapter 7, Karlsen situates witchcraft possession in 17th-century New England in a broader global scope of women’s history. Linking the possessed accusers in New England to possessed women of different nations and times, Karlsen argues that the conditions that led to possession in the colonies were not specific to Puritan society. Rather, the possessed accusers’ similarities to other women across history emphasizes the global, systemic scope of patriarchal and class oppression.

“Like women in other societies, the New England possessed were able, through this culturally sanctioned physical and emotional response, to affect some of these hierarchical arrangements, if only temporarily. They were also able to focus the community’s concern on their difficulties. For once, they were the main actors in the social drama.”

Here, Karlsen summarizes the rebellious implications of possessed behavior in Puritan New England. For these young girls, possession allowed them to (temporarily) take control of their lives and focus their entire community’s attention onto them, lending a unique strength to their voice. Further, they were able to express taboo feelings (e.g., exhaustion, discontent) through the ritualistic behavior of possession that could not be said otherwise.

“By the end of the seventeenth century, the power of the Puritan ministry—and indeed Puritanism itself—was in question. The Great Awakening of the 1730s and early 1740s led to a brief if intense revival of religious fervor among New England’s population, but Puritans never fully regained hegemony in the region. Because witchcraft’s power in New England was tied to that of Puritanism, their simultaneous demise is understandable.”

In her epilogue, Karlsen provides several reasons as to why witchcraft trials dwindled as the 17th century ended. The Puritans’ ideological control over New England began to weaken significantly with the dawn of the 18th century. Even when religious activity spiked during the mid-18th century, Puritans never regained the ideological control they had in the 1600s. Because Puritan values were foundational in constructing the witch, it follows that witchcraft trials died just as Puritan power itself died.

“The old fear of female sexual power had not disappeared. Indeed, the increasing emphasis on women’s lack of sexual power was simply a new way of diminishing it, part of a larger eighteenth-century reconstruction of womanhood. […] The elaboration of a more diffident, self-sacrificing, innately spiritual but more secularly based female ideal would have greater success.”

Karlsen’s epilogue serves to expand the scope of her book’s research and apply her conclusive findings on Puritan witchcraft to events that occurred after the early American era. Turning towards the 18th century, Karlsen traces the patriarchal attitudes that existed in Puritan society into the 1700s. While the religious veneer of sexual control of women was weakened, Karlsen points out that a new, secular sexual repression of American women emerged that would characterize the American ideology in the nation’s new era.