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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1987

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-5

Chapter 6-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

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Themes

Colonial New England’s Ideological Relationship with England

Karlsen establishes how the ideology that informed the society, religion, and politics of 17th-century New England shared a complicated relationship with the attitudes found in England. This ideological relationship, comprised of foundational similarities and evolutionary differences, is reflected in the two lands’ understandings of witchcraft. Colonial New England’s understanding of witchcraft was intrinsically tied to English witchcraft and yet it was also markedly different. The relationship between how witches were defined in England and the colonies suggested an ideological shift embodying why the Puritans fled England in the first place. Karlsen’s comparative study of witchcraft in Europe and the colonies show that the religious and social politics concerning women were a significant factor in the English-Puritan ideological divide. Karlsen incorporates this historical trajectory of the Puritans’ ideological evolution out of European attitudes to emphasize the role that gender played in both societies and illustrate the global scope of the patriarchal systems that produced witch trials.

Colonial New England’s ideological relationship with England is one of the earliest themes developed in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman. Early on in Chapter 1, Karlsen links the 1656 execution of Ann Hibbens to English witchcraft cases. Explaining that Hibbens was one of the many trials and executions that had occurred in New England from 1646-56, Karlsen contextualizes the prevalence of witchcraft trials in the colonies by drawing in England. She points out that, “witchcraft trials and executions had been regular features of the social landscape since 1542, when Parliament first made witchcraft a capital crime” (2). By linking the events of New England to those that occurred across the Atlantic, Karlsen establishes how witchcraft trials–an event that was unprecedented in America before the colonists arrived–had been going on for a century in the colonists’ homeland. This situates the legitimacy of witchcraft trials as an unsaid truth for the colonists; as Karlsen explores in Chapter 5, the belief in witches was so prevalent in England that it carried over into the Puritan colonies as an obvious fact. Further, by drawing in this history as early as page 2 in her book, Karlsen makes it clear from the start that the colonies’ connections to events and ideas back in England is an essential part of the history of American witchcraft.

Karlsen draws attention to the fact that “[m]ore than 90 percent of these English witches were women” (2). This suggests that not only did colonists internalize the belief in the pervasive danger of witches, but they also internalized the patriarchal systems that informed the European definition of the witch. However, Karlsen’s book takes great care to parse out the ideological complexities regarding gender and the belief systems of the English versus Puritan colonists. In Chapter 5, Karlsen traces the historical progression of Western witchcraft beliefs, beginning with two key European texts—the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum and the 1529 Tratado de las Supersticiones y Hechicherias—and maps their influence on English Protestant belief, which dictated that women were more evil than men and prone to Devilish activity.

She then delves into the rise of Puritanism in the late 16th century, which responded to and departed from English Protestantism. These differences caused the Puritans to flee England and start anew in the American colonies. One of the key differences was regarding gender and the woman’s place in society. Karlsen points out that while the Puritans were not concerned with advocating for women’s advancement in society, they nevertheless fought against the interpretation that women were a “Godless” gender. She observes that, “it was the Puritan divines—in both old and New England—who mounted the most cogent, most sustained, and most enduring attack on the contemporary wisdom concerning women’s inherent evil” (161). Curiously, while the systemic belief in witches was maintained between England and Puritan New England, the foundational idea that led to the rise of witchcraft beliefs in Europe—that women were evil—did not travel overseas to America. This establishes gender as a key component in the conversation of the ideological relationship between old and New England. Subsequently, this history also bolster’s Karlsen’s thesis argument that reading the history of witchcraft through a gendered lens is paramount.

Puritans saw women as having essential roles in the household. They were to be subservient to the “Lord” of each family—their husband. This transformed women from a necessary evil in England to a necessary good in New England. However, this ideological shift did not end the systemic hostility towards women overnight. Women who deviated from the strict role set out for them by Puritan society were dangers to the colonies’ order. In 17th-century New England, witchcraft accusations were used as a tool to enforce the Puritans’ new ideology concerning women that evolved out of old European attitudes. In addressing the key differences and sustained similarities in their belief systems, Karlsen’s theme of the ideological relationship between England and New England colonists illuminates how difficult it was—and still is—to shed deeply embedded ideological systems, even when a society’s goal is to start anew overseas. This theme also serves the important purpose of emphasizing the global reach of the patriarchal system that resulted in witch trials, the remnants of which endure even today.

Expressions of Female Agency and Rebellion

One of the most significant themes in Karlsen’s book is the expression of female agency and rebellion by women in 17th-century New England. Indeed, there could not be witchcraft in Puritan society without female rebellion. Behaviors and beliefs that Puritans understood as “witchcraft” can simply be interpreted as expressions of female rebellion. Karlsen’s meticulous demographic and social analyses throughout The Devil in the Shape of Women make it clear that women who were too active in their communities and who stepped outside of the bounds of an acceptable woman were labeled “witch” by community leaders and neighbors. Those who were too religiously outspoken (e.g., Quaker women), too economically strong (e.g., business owners or estate inheritors), or too frustrated with domestic life (e.g., women who complained over their burden of wifely duties) were witches. They were considered dangerous to the Puritan community precisely because of their displays of agency. Accusers were also part of this group of active women; as Karlsen illuminates in Chapter 7, possessed accusers engaged with possession to take control of their lives and to express feelings that could not be said otherwise. This theme’s inclusion of the various modes of female agency positions Karlsen’s research as a body of work interested in the full range of female rebellion in Puritan society—not just the witch herself.

Even though many witches were not bastions of feminist rebellion or interested in collective efforts to destroy Puritan values, they were seen as dangerous rebels simply for daring to express—to even think about—any shade of difference. As Karlsen summarizes at the end of Chapter 5, “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” (181). The Puritans left England to build a new society around their ideology. Subsequently, their ideology was an especially crucial part of their identity. Threats were taken very seriously. Women who rebelled against this ordered ideology were punished through witchcraft accusations, trials, and even executions. However, as is seen throughout Karlsen’s book, women could not be fully silenced or controlled. Women in families without male heirs took up the helm of land ownership, sometimes even refusing to marry; other women engaged in sexual activity outside of marriage, overtly challenging the strict sexual politics of Puritanism. They continued to engage in such acts even despite the risk of witchcraft accusations, showcasing that while Puritans used these accusations to frighten women into submission and maintain “order,” women continued to champion their own individual agency.

Perhaps even more crucial to the picture of how women continued to rebel despite the strict hand of Puritan ideology is not just through the witches themselves, but in the possessed accusers as well. While the witches show one side of the picture to female agency and rebellion in Puritan society—a side that we can consider “overt” rebellion—the possessed accusers show another side entirely. Karlsen reads possession as a cultural and religious ritual that “expressed an underlying power struggle between the possessed and the authorities who were culturally sanctioned to interpret their experience” (244). This power struggle can be seen in the case study found in that same chapter, where Karlsen details the story of Elizabeth Knapp. Knapp clung to possession as an act that could express feelings that language could not for a woman in Puritan society. Possession offered girls like Knapp an outlet for feelings that they themselves were afraid of. Further, it was a way for them to legitimize their voice in the eyes of the larger community. Whereas women’s voices did not carry much weight alone in Puritan society, once possessed, these young women won over a level of attention and care that they could not have had otherwise. Clergymen like Willard, who worked with Knapp, hung to the possessed girls’ words and treated them with great care. This placed the power in the hands of the possessed, however momentarily. In this sense, possession was very much a reclamation of one’s agency. Possessed accusations themselves, while placing other women in danger, were thus another expression of female rebellion and challenges to the Puritan status quo.

In order to understand expressions of female agency and rebellion in 17th-century New England, one cannot limit research to the witch alone. The ideological relationship between witch and accuser, in both their similar rebellions and different reasons for rebelling, reveals much about the patriarchal politics at work in Puritan society. By expanding her historical investigations outside the witches themselves, Karlsen paints a full, nuanced picture of female agency and rebellion in 17th-century New England. Further, she establishes the women of Puritan society as active, engaged, and rebellious, even in the face of systemic oppression, contrasting the typical understanding of early colonial women as fully submissive and demure to their social order. This theme is thus a crucial component to Karlsen’s book as an important addition to American women’s history.

Witchcraft Accusations as a Tool of Social Control

If women’s rebellion tells one side of the story to the role that witchcraft played in 17th-century New England, the other side of the story is how witchcraft accusations were sued as a tool of social control by those in power to suppress the different expressions of female rebellion found in the previous theme. Women who dared to be dissatisfied with their place in Puritan society were labeled as witch to marginalize and “other” them, posing them as examples of how not to act to the larger community. Rebellious women were rendered as villains so that the patriarchal power structure of Puritan society could be maintained. This theme is key to Karlsen’s thesis on the importance of a gendered understanding of New England witchcraft, as there are no witches without female rage—and the villainizing of it.

A fruitful example of how witchcraft accusations were used as a tool of social control by the Puritan community can be seen in Chapter 3. In Karlsen’s explorations of the economic dynamics that laid behind witchcraft accusations, one illustrative story she includes is that of Elinor Hollingworth and her daughter, Mary English. Hollingworth was a widow who inherited a valuable estate in Salem, Massachusetts that included a wharf, warehouse, and tavern. With a reputation for being “aggressive and outspoken”, Hollingworth attracted witchcraft accusations quickly after inheriting the estate, though she never went to trial (107). She passed on the estate to her daughter, Mary English, who followed in her mother’s footsteps and was accused of witchcraft shortly after inheriting. This one case study is rife with examples of “unacceptable” womanhood: the unbecoming attitude of Hollingworth, her widowhood, her inheritance of her husband’s large estate, and her daughter’s subsequent inheritance are all things that Puritan society rendered untenable for women. Significantly, it was only after the women inherited the estate and had economic agency that they garnered witchcraft accusations from their larger community. In the eyes of their neighbors, both women needed to be punished and controlled for stepping outside of the bounds of submissive, Godly women.

The story of Hollingworth and English connects nicely to Karlsen’s analysis of Puritan gender ideology in Chapter 5. In her close reads of clergyman John Cotton’s writings, Karlsen analyzes Cotton’s theories on how women can properly serve their husbands economically. Karlsen points out that marriage was considered an economic relationship by the Puritans. It was one in which proper wives “served economic ends but was not an economic creature” (171). For Puritan clergy such as Cotton, it was inappropriate for women to work. Any woman who had economic agency was Devilish because they operated outside of the proper roles that God had laid out for them. Ideologies built by men in power, such as Cotton Mather, were internalized by the larger Puritan communities. Such ideologies were then put to work, through the outlet of witchcraft accusations launched by neighbors, whenever “blasphemous”, rebellious women arose in said communities. In reading the religious theory explored in Chapter 5 next to the real-life case studies of Chapter 3, one can see how the Puritan gender ideology was expressed through witchcraft accusations. This theme ultimately illuminates precisely how important gender is in understanding the overall history of witchcraft in 17th-century New England.