Kawinthip

THE MISOGYNY OF
CHRISTIAN WITCH HUNTS

MOST WITCHES TOO RICH, TOO POOR,
ARE WOMEN TOO FEMALE




Powerless people Stay in line, woman

Most witches are women

Most witches are women, because
witch hunts were all about
persecuting the powerless

“Witch hunt” – it’s a refrain used to deride
everything from impeachment inquiries and sexual
assault investigations to allegations of corruption.

When powerful men cry witch, they’re generally
not talking about green-faced women wearing

pointy hats. They are, presumably, referring to the
Salem witch trials, when 19 people in 17th-century

Massachusetts were executed on charges of
witchcraft.

Using “witch hunt” to decry purportedly baseless
allegations, however, reflects a misunderstanding of

American history. Witch trials didn’t target the
powerful. They persecuted society’s most marginal

members – particularly women.

Too rich, too poor, too female

In my scholarship on the darker aspects of U.S. culture, I’ve
researched and written about numerous witch trials. I teach a

college course here in Massachusetts that explores this
perennially popular but frequently misinterpreted period in

New England history.
Perhaps the most salient point about witch trials, students
quickly come to see, is gender. In Salem, 14 of the 19 people

found guilty of and executed for witchcraft during that
cataclysmic year of 1692 were women.

Across New England, where witch trials occurred somewhat
regularly from 1638 until 1725, women vastly outnumbered
men in the ranks of the accused and executed. According to
author Carol F. Karlsen’s “The Devil in the Shape of a Woman,”

78% of 344 alleged witches in New England were female.
And even when men faced allegations of witchcraft, it was
typically because they were somehow associated with accused
women. As historian John Demos has established, the few
Puritan men tried for witchcraft were mostly the husbands or

brothers of alleged female witches.
Women held a precarious, mostly powerless position within the

deeply religious Puritan community.
The Puritans thought women should have babies, raise
children, manage household life and model Christian
subservience to their husbands. Recalling Eve and her sinful
apple, Puritans also believed that women were more likely to be

tempted by the Devil.

Powerless people

As magistrates, judges and clergy, men enforced the rules
of this early American society.
When women stepped outside their prescribed roles, they
became targets. Too much wealth might reflect sinful
gains. Too little money demonstrated bad character. Too
many children could indicate a deal with a devil. Having
too few children was suspicious, too.
Mary Webster of Hadley, Massachusetts, was married
without children and relied on neighborly charity to
survive. Apparently, Webster was not meek and grateful
enough for the alms she received: She developed a
reputation for being unpleasant.
Webster’s neighbors accused her of witchcraft in 1683,
when she was around 60 years old, claiming she worked
with the devil to bewitch local livestock. Boston’s Court of
Assistants, which presided over cases of witchcraft,
declared her not guilty.

Stay in line, woman



Prior to Salem, most witchcraft trials in New
England resulted in acquittal. According to
Demos, of the 93 documented witch trials that
happened before Salem, 16 “witches” were

executed.
But the accused rarely went unpunished.
In his 2005 book “Escaping Salem,” Richard
Godbeer examines the case of two Connecticut
women – Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and
Mercy Disborough of Fairfield – accused of
bewitching a servant girl named Kate Branch.
Both women were “confident and determined,
ready to express their opinions and to stand their
ground when crossed.” Clawson was found not
guilty after spending five months in jail.
Disborough remained imprisoned for almost a

year until she was acquitted.
Both had to pay the fines and fees related to their

imprisonment.