Book Nook Cafe discussion
Group Read
>
The Salem Witch Hunts ~ May 2011
deb, the curious
Good idea, deb. Lets list the book we plan to read.
I own two books on the topic and will probably read both.
I am going to read The Crucible. I am pretty sure I read it in high school but I don't remember it.
I am going to read The Crucible. I am pretty sure I read it in high school but I don't remember it."
--------------
I read Delusions many years ago and enjoyed it a lot. It is so funny that you mention The Crucible. I followed up Delusions with that book. I think I also read a Joe McCarthy book along with these two. I like to give myself little theme reads. Geeky I know. :) I might own the Crucible. If I do I'll see if I can fit it in my schedule.
deb
The Heretic's Daughter
and
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
I found both to be very interesting. I'll contribute as the posts come along.
I might be a bit (or a lot) behind the rest of you -- I'm a little backed up on my reading list. (Normal state of affairs for me.)
I've already read The Heretic's Daughter and The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Of the two, I much preferred The Heretic's Daughter
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/33...
and here is the link to Listopia's Witch Hunts, not necessarily related to Salem:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/31...
The Lady's Not For Burning
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In Europe, during the 16 & 17th centuries, 50,000 – 80,000 people were accused and killed for being witches. 80% of them were women. Why? How did religion play a part in the “witch hunts”?
2. Explain how the “witch hunts” began in Salem, Massachusetts. How were they different than the “witch hunts” in Europe?
3. Describe a person who fit the description of a “typical” witch?
4. In Salem, the accused were to be tried by a jury of their peers. Did it work out that way?
5. Explain the comment by one of the accused, “I didn’t know I was a witch, but I must be because these important people say I am”. Can you think of an example of this from your own life?
6. For the accused the options were to confess to witchcraft and live, or deny it and likely be publicly executed. Why didn’t more of these people confess and save
their own lives? What were the religious implications? What did it mean for your salvation if you confessed?
7. How did the Salem witch hunts finally come to an end?
8. Many years after the trials, the accusers regretted what they did. One comments, “The devil made me do it”. Is this an acceptable excuse? Have you ever heard someone use an excuse like this? Should it excuse people from their actions?
9. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible during the McCarthy trials involving Americans accused of communist activities in the 1950s. What point was he trying to make?
And yes, thank you Alias. You do a great job of keeping us on track and asking the interesting questions.
It's a YA book, but it looks informative.
To help clarify I looked up Mather.
Richard Mather-1596-1669 - English Puritan, clergyman
His son is:
Increase Mather- 1639-1723 Pastor and President of Harvard
His son is:
Cotton Mather- 1663-1728 Succeeded his father as pastor. His works help stir up hysteria during Salem witch trials of 1692.
Puritanism- 16th & 17th Century A movement to reform the Church of England. The movement opposed the ecclesiastical establishment and aimed at purifying the church - hence the name Puritan.
----------------
That's exactly what I was wondering, if it was Disneyfied. I figured it would be a tourist type situation.
I've read two other books by this author and I don't really care for his writing style. But as I already owned this book I decided to read it for our group read.
ANYway, I'm about 1/4 into the book. I came across this interesting tidbit.
"The first town established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Salem took its name from shalom, the Hebrew word for "peace". Its founders wanted Salem to be a place where a settler could prosper while living well with his neighbors, obeying the rules of the Lord."
Do any of the books you are reading give a opinion on why the witch hysteria occurred?
Some possible explanations I've read are:
- grievances with a neighbor, so accuse them of being a witch to get back at them.
- greed over land. Accuse someone of being a witch so you could take their land.
- The girls were just being kids and thought it would be fun to play a joke and get attention and then got in too deep to say they were lying.
- Hysteria. They talked themselves into believing they were possessed.
- Maybe the girls had some illness such as epilepsy.
- General ignorance. In 1692, things that we know accept scientific reasons for, back then were attributed to witchcraft.
"The invisible world": disease, natural catastrophes, and bad fortune attributed to work of the devil "
- This was a belief that they carried to America.
"Prior witchcraft cases in New England (and Europe before)"
- They were possessed by witches !
It also has a Jeopardy game you can play to test your knowledge of the Salem Witch hunts.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects...
The Wonders of the Invisible World [Paperback]
Cotton Mather (Author), Increase Mather (Author)
Wonders of the Invisible World was a book published in 1693 by Cotton Mather, defending Mather's role in the witchhunt conducted in Salem, Massachusetts, and espousing the belief that witchcraft was an evil magical power. Mather saw witches as tools of the devil in Satan's battle to "overturn this poor plantation, the Puritan colony", and prosecution of witches as a way to secure God's blessings for the colony.
Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Wonders-Invisib...
---HUAC/McCarthy "Communist hunts" of early 1950s (events that inspired The Crucible)
---Day care abuse trials of 1980s (child witnesses, accusations multiply, people afraid to support accused, unbelievable charges, hysteria).
---To read about a modern-day trial with many parallels to the Salem Trials, see The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial (the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history).
Source: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects...
-----------------------------------------------
Do you think these are valid comparisons ?
Can you think of any modern day hysteria instances or do you think this can't happen today?
Modern-Day Witch Hunt In Remote India
Attackers Murder Five Villagers Accused Of Practicing Witchcraft In Northeastern India
~~By Scott Conroy
AP) Unidentified attackers hacked to death five villagers accused of practicing witchcraft in northeastern India, officials said Tuesday.
The deaths take the toll of people believed to have been killed over sorcery allegations to at least nine in the past two weeks in a remote part of Assam state, where many indigenous tribes believe in witchcraft.
The latest five killings took place Sunday in the district of Kokrajhar, around 156 miles west of Gauhati, the state capital, said Mrinal Talukdar, a senior police official.
In the village of Nandipur, "six men armed with machetes stormed a house ... and hacked three members of a family to death late Sunday accusing them of practicing sorcery," he said.
Another middle-aged couple also suspected of practicing sorcery was killed Sunday after unidentified men attacked them with sharp weapons in the nearby village of Bijoynagar.
The witchcraft suspicions stem from the recent deaths of two people in Nandipur from an unknown ailment.
The killings came a week after four decomposed bodies were recovered from a rice field in nearby Baska district. Authorities believe the people were killed because they were suspected of practicing witchcraft.
"I am planning to tackle the menace by imposing a collective fine on an entire area where people accused of practicing witchcraft are hunted and killed," said the Baska district magistrate, Anwaruddin Choudhury.
More than 150 people have been killed in the northeast in the past five years after being accused of practicing witchcraft or sorcery.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/0...
I think there are a combination of things going on & the list you shared covers about all the ones i know. The only addition i can think of right now is that Salem was still a fairly remote place. Native Americans were in the neighborhood, which helped to frighten towns.
You asked if anyone has been to Salem. We went while we lived in Maryland. Do NOT go there anytime near Hallowe'en. And certainly not on any October weekend. It was jam-packed and the lines were long, particularly for the house of 7 gables.
Disneyland is not an unfair comparison. Even when we were there in the '90s in June, there were people dressed as "witches" on the street, advertising their entertainment about the trials. We ended up at an historical building where the trials took place. There were no actors in person but a taped reenactment of the transcript of the event played. Quite dramatic but at least we could walk out easily. :-)
deborah
---HUAC/McCarthy "Communist hunts" of early 1950s (events that inspired The Crucible)
---Day care abuse trials of 1980s (child witnesses, accusations m..."
Like after 9/11......
Linda & Alias, i read the Aronson book, too. For a YA it probably was fine but just the tip of the iceberg. I know i was somewhat disappointed in the text but liked the photos which, iirc, were of many items i hadn't previously seen.
deb
------------------
Deb, I finished the Aronson book last night. I was disappointed in it. I read quite a few non fiction YA books, and I found this one not up to par. For such an interesting subject it was quite dry. Also, the author, trying to be objective, never seems to take a stand. The result is he is all over the place. He states something, than quickly dismisses it etc. I've read a few other Aronson books and found them to be quite dry, too.
I much preferred
This is not a YA book. It is well written and I found it engaging.
If anyone hasn't selected a book yet for this months group read, I would absolutely recommend this one over Aronson's book.
Alias, I just put this one on hold at the library.
----------------
Barbara, in the book I read it notes, "Only one building still stands in Salem that has a direct relationship to the trials."
===================
Yes. When Hathorne questioned Osborne, she said she was "haunted by fears of Indians."
Her testimony:
"She was frightened one time in her sleep and either saw or dreamed that she saw a thing like an Indian all black which did pinch her in the neck and pulled her by the back part of her head to the door of the house."
In
A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
it notes:
"Nathaniel Hawthorne, 19th century descendant of a leading magistrate in the witch trials and lifelong resident of Salem, describes in his novel The Scarlet Letter 17th century children 'disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nature would permit; playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft.' This may be fiction but it is well-informed fiction."
The Scarlet Letter~Nathaniel Hawthorne
This is one of the books on my challenge list this year.
"When our comfort, safety, fear of being accused, and even justified anger at an enemy allows us to suppress doubt, and silence the voice of humanity that lets us identify with prisoners, suspects, and accused-evil-doers, then we are in real danger of doing evil ourselves."
"We see ourselves through the past, and the past through ourselves."
"History is a mirror, fiction a portrait."
Witchcraft Mentions in The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Much of the witchcraft in this book takes place as mentions of ghosts.
Summary:
An evil house, cursed through the centuries by a man who was hanged for witchcraft, is haunted by the ghosts of its sinful dead, wracked by the fear of its frightened living. Written as a follow-up to The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables is truly a masterful blending of the actual and the imaginary.
Ghosts occupying the House over the years.
p. 52 Phoebe's bedchamber : “She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had vanished only just inhseason to escape discovery.”
p. 53 Phoebe's bedchamber: “No longer ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber.”
p. 54 Phoebe's bedchamber: “ a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in its stead.”
p. 62. Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the place where she had lived, as a dried rosebud scents the drawer where it has withered and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world. But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times, --especially when one of the Pyncheons was to die,--she had been heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know the still profounder sweetness of it.”
p. 63 Mr. Holgrave: “Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome chamber.”
p. 70 Phoebe's cogitations regarding Mr. Holgrave: “Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Phoebe accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself still more with cogitations respecting this young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to familiarity. She did not altogether like him. His character perplexed the little country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for, while the tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified it, almost sternness. She rebelled, as it were, against a certain magnetic element in the artist's nature, which he exercised towards her, possibly without being conscious of it.”
p. 70 Maule's well: “"Be careful not to drink at Maule's well!" said he. "Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!" "Maule's well!" answered Phoebe. "Is that it with the rim of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking there,--but why not?"
"Oh," rejoined the daguerreotypist, "because, like an old lady's cup of tea, it is water bewitched!"
p. 71-71 Phoebe hears murmurs of a voice—possibly someone else in the room..a ghost visitor? “What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully responsive to every emotion of the human soul! In Hepzibah's tone, at that moment, there was a certain rich depth and moisture, as if the words, commonplace as they were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart. Again, while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phoebe fancied that her cousin spoke to her.
"In a moment, cousin!" answered the girl. "These matches just glimmer, and go out."
But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to hear the murmur of an unknown voice. It was strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulate words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the intellect. So vague was it, that its impression or echo in Phoebe's mind was that of unreality. She concluded that she must have mistaken some other sound for that of the human voice; or else that it was altogether in her fancy.
She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered the parlor. Hepzibah's form, though its sable outline mingled with the dusk, was now less imperfectly visible. In the remoter parts of the room, however, its walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there was nearly the same obscurity as before.
"Cousin," said Phoebe, "did you speak to me just now?"
"No, child!" replied Hepzibah.
Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the tone seemed to gush up out of the deep well of Hepzibah's heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion. There was a tremor in it, too, that --as all strong feeling is electric--partly communicated itself to Phoebe. The girl sat silently for a moment. But soon, her senses being very acute, she became conscious of an irregular respiration in an obscure corner of the room. Her physical organization, moreover, being at once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception, operating with almost the effect of a spiritual medium, that somebody was near at hand.
"My dear cousin," asked she, overcoming an indefinable reluctance, "is there not some one in the room with us?"
"Phoebe, my dear little girl," said Hepzibah, after a moment's pause,"you were up betimes, and have been busy all day. Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must need rest. I will sit in the parlor awhile, and collect my thoughts. It has been my custom for more years, child, than you have lived!"
While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stepped forward, kissed Phoebe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat against the girl's bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous swell. How came there to be so much love in this desolate old heart, that it could afford to well over thus abundantly?
"Goodnight, cousin," said Phoebe, strangely affected by Hepzibah's manner. "If you begin to love me, I am glad!"
She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep, nor then very profoundly. At some uncertain period in the depths of night, and, as it were, through the thin veil of a dream, she was conscious of a footstep mounting the stairs heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice of Hepzibah, with a hush through it, was going up along with the footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin's voice, Phoebe heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance.”
p. 73 Chapter 7: Cliifford appears mysteriously out of nowhere at night and joins them for breakfast—old and withered and feeble.
p. 92-93 blood causing gurgles in throat: “Yet there was a circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,--that God would give them blood to drink,--and likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats. The latter scandal --as became a person of sense, and, more especially, a member of the Pyncheon family--Phoebe had set down for the absurdity which it unquestionably was. But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition, through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and through. By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look like them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their influence is usually greater than we suspect. Thus it happened, that when Phoebe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon's throat, --rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,--when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear, and therefore cannot describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her hands.”
p. 116-117 Clifford sees faces in Maule's Well, caused by witchcraft which Phoebe could not see: “He had a singular propensity, for example, to hang over Maule's well, and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures produced by the agitation of the water over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom. He said that faces looked upward to him there, --beautiful faces, arrayed in bewitching smiles,--each momentary face so fair and rosy, and every smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure, until the same flitting witchcraft made a new one. But sometimes he would suddenly cry out, "The dark face gazes at me!" and be miserable the whole day afterwards. Phoebe, when she hung over the fountain by Clifford's side, could see nothing of all this,--neither the beauty nor the ugliness,--but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the gush of the waters shook and disarranged them. And the dark face, that so troubled Clifford, was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees, and breaking the inner light of Maule's well. The truth was, however, that his fancy--reviving faster than his will and judgment, and always stronger than they--created shapes of loveliness that were symbolic of his native character, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that typified his fate.”
"Yes, indeed!" said Phoebe; "I heard it long ago, from my father, and two or three times from my cousin Hepzibah, in the month that I have been here. She seems to think that all the calamities of the Pyncheons began from that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him.”
p. 144-145 Matthew Maule, the wizard's grandson's special inherited powers: “Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited some of his ancestor's questionable traits. It is wonderful how many absurdities were promulgated in reference to the young man. He was fabled, for example, to have a strange power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating matters there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the stage-manager of a theatre. There was a great deal of talk among the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about what they called the witchcraft of Maule's eye. Some said that he could look into people's minds; others, that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he could draw people into his own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do errands to his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others, again, that it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty of blighting corn, and drying children into mummies with the heartburn. But, after all, what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and polity.”
Note: Mathew Maule was said to have put a spell on the house and its inhabitants because he felt he owned the land it was built on..a family dispute.
Note: Holgrove may also have witchcraft powers. He wrote a scary story of Maule and his powers over Alice re: land transitions .
p. 167 Holgrove predict the end is near for Cofford and Mrs. Hepzibah:
"And then," continued Phoebe, "what can you mean by your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is drawing near? Do you know of any new trouble hanging over my poor relatives? If so, tell me at once, and I will not leave them!"
"Forgive me, Phoebe!" said the daguerreotypist, holding out his hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her own." I am somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed. The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft. Believe me, if I were really aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would benefit your friends,--who are my own friends, likewise,--you should learn it before we part. But I have no such knowledge."
I finally located my notes from this book. (As an aside, my books list & notes are a mess due to a microsoft error which reports i read over 1000 books in 2009!) Upthread i mentioned the Indian invasions but i forgot that the most significant ones, according to Aronson, occurred in Maine. Survivor (as well as those fleeing the potential for more) reports have been gone through and through modern day detective work Mary Beth Norton in
In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692showed that 10 of those accusing "others of being witches--including Mary Walcott and, most significantly, Mercy Lewis--experienced traumas in those conflicts, such as the murder of close relatives of the loss of property and standing." Norton also "linked 23 of the accused to Maine, as well as 13 of the most important judges, jurors, clergymen, and officials in the Salem trials. In the minds of the accusers, accused, and judges, the external attacks that were imperiling New England settlements and ravaging families were immediately and definitely linked to manifestations of devilish activity in and around Salem."
This is fascinating to me. While i found the most recent remake of The Crucible (Daniel Day Lewis) unfortunate, i clearly recall the cameras lingering on stands of trees, illustrating the idea of menace nearby, yet left unstated. This book helped me figure part of that out.
In the epilogue to Aronson's book he quoted
Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England by Keith Thomas. Frankly, i'm not sure i agree with this but thought i'd throw it into the mix here. "...as communities much like Salem shifted from a view in which everyone was expected to look out for everyone else to a focus on each individual and family being out for itself, people felt guilty for not taking care of outsiders. In order not to have to feel badly, they then called those people witches."
In the Appendix there was a quote i liked (in addition to the one Alias mentioned about history as mirror). "When our comfort, safety, fear of being accused, and even justified anger at an enemy allows us to suppress doubt, and silence the voice of humanity that lets us identify with prisoners, suspects and accused-evil-doers, then we are in real danger of doing evil ourselves."
I found it interesting that in my notes i see Aronson made a comparison to the 9/11 experience today and the Indian War. What intrigued me is something mentioned upthread about Muslims and the way they've been treated in some communities. Sadly seems to be a bit of human history there.
deborah
deborah
Ornery cuss that I am, I read a play that I thought had to do with witch trials. It turned out that it was only sort-of about witches, but was really more about the importance of love. No matter; I adored The Lady's Not For Burning: A Comedy in Verse in Three Acts, by Christopher Fry. This is my review:
I had been meaning to read The Lady's Not For Burning: Comedy in Verse in Three Acts pretty much forever. But when events conspired - a book group decided to read about witch trials, and our local library demoted the script to the "Friends Shop" for sale, I decided I had to have it. What the heck took me so long? I think the idea of a comedy in verse might scare lots of people off, but Shakespeare wrote comedies in verse and they're still really popular. This play should still be popular, not discarded. The story is set in England, when people were sure there were witches and occasionally burned them at the stake. There is a disillusioned man who claims (falsely) he murdered two people, and demands that authorities hang him forthwith. There is a lovely young woman who villagers think used witchcraft to make a missing man turn into a dog - but of course she didn't. There are other characters, a viol-playing cleric, am idiotic judge and his long-suffering wife, a couple of brothers, another sweet young woman looking for love and a hoard of angry villagers lusting for blood. But the only two characters that count are the pseudo-murderer and the falsely accused witch. It is their relationship, their wit, their sparring and sparkling dialog that carry the play to its conclusion. This is a comedy not because of the subject matter, which is grim indeed, but because the characters' language and insights into the nature of life make us smile, and because, as in Shakespeare's plays, it all works out in the end. I suspect that seeing this play would be better than reading it gave me an hour or so of real pleasure.
Thanks so much for your write-up. It encourages me to pick up the play.
------------------
Good choice, Babs, as one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's relatives was one of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials !
Thanks for sharing about the book. I read it a few years ago with one of my f2f book groups.
I finally located my notes from this book. (As an aside, my books list & notes are a mess due to a microsoft error whic..."
---------------
I'm glad you found your notes, Deb. Sorry to hear they are a jumble on the computer. Makes me glad that I keep my notes in a spiral notebook. Even if my penmanship give them a the look of hieroglyphics!
One of the items in the book that I didn't know about was the animosity between the Puritans against the Quakers.
It seems the Puritans came to America for religious freedom, but were not inclined to give that same freedom to others.
I was thinking about the underlying theme that ran through this and other like periods in history. I think Fear and Intolerance dominate. Anyone else see any common themes that often give rise to these episodes where we seem to lose our collective minds?
Book Nook Cafe
Books mentioned in this topic
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (other topics)Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience (other topics)
The Crucible (other topics)
Witches & Historians: Interpretations of Salem (other topics)
A Delusion Of Satan (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Margaret Atwood (other topics)Maryse Condé (other topics)
Frances Hill (other topics)
Mary Norton (other topics)
Keith Thomas (other topics)
More...
We will then compare and contrast the various books.