WOODSTOCK — This time of year, people flock to Salem, Mass., which leans into its history as the location of the 1690s Salem Witch Trials.
Witches are also a popular Halloween costume for children and adults alike. In the 17th Century, however, witches were far from celebrated: They were persecuted and killed.
Leslie Lindenauer, a history professor at Western Connecticut State University, will discuss witch trials in a virtual program titled “Giving Entertainment to Satan: Witchcraft and Witch Persecution in Early New England” from 2 to 3 p.m. Wednesday. The free program, hosted by the Woodstock History Center, can be streamed via woodstockhistorycenter.org/calendar.
Lindenauer spoke about her upcoming talk in an email Q&A which has been lightly edited for style and clarity.
Question: How did you become interested in researching witch trials?
Answer: I grew up in the Northeast, and I have had an interest in early American history since I was a child. I focused on gender and religious culture as a PhD candidate writing a dissertation, so the witch trials loomed large in scholarship and in popular culture.
Most recently, I’ve been interested as much in the way we remember the witch trials (and) in the way the trials are represented in popular culture, especially in New England.
Q: While the Salem Witch Trials are the most well-known in the United States, what are other witch trials that have taken place throughout history, and perhaps influenced the Salem trials?
A: If you’re talking about other trials in the American colonies before Salem, it’s not entirely clear that any of them had an impact on what happened in Salem, which in magnitude far outweighed other instances (the Hartford Witch Trials came closest). But it is important to note that there were almost 100 other fully documented court trials of accused witches in New England before Salem between 1647 and 1687, almost evenly divided between Massachusetts and Connecticut. The courts ordered the execution of at least 16 alleged witches, including 14 women and two men.
Q: The description of your talk mentions that you will discuss how gender played a role in the Salem Witch Trials. In the centuries since they took place, has gender always been at the forefront of the discussion? What other reasons have historians used to explain the trials?
A: There are many, varied interpretations of the causes and meaning of the witch trials in New England. Though today it’s difficult to exclude gender from any discussion of the events, interpretations have included economic and social conflicts; personal disagreements; fear of natural (and unnatural) occurrences like epidemics, droughts; fear of the “other,” including Indigenous people, social and political stress in the wake of a successful attempt to revoke Massachusetts’ colonial charters under the Dominion of New England … the list goes on.
But if you look at the statistics (both in New England, and in England and Europe) that indicate that three out of every four accusations, prosecutions, and executions were against women, interpretations move from “what caused …” to “why women in particular?”
Q: What was it about Puritan culture and life in 1692 Massachusetts that created an environment for the Salem Witch Trials to take place?
A: Some of the conditions I included in the answer to the last question apply to Salem. The conflict between Salem Town and Salem Village emerged in early scholarly interpretations of the events in 1692. The appointment of Samuel Parris as the minister in the Village may have exacerbated tensions and fears in the face of omnipresent insecurities around the prevalence of illness, threats to agriculture, deep-seated memories of the devastation of King Philip’s War. The trials quickly devolved in Salem as the courts accepted spectral evidence as proof of witchcraft, accusations levied in part by girls.
Q: Centuries later, why is it important that people continue to learn about the Salem Witch Trials?
A: I suppose there’s a case to be made that some of the same questions we ask about why women were particularly targeted in the 17th Century still apply today. Even as we push back at the idea of a binary notion of gender, we still have to confront prevalent expectations with regard to “female” behavior.
Also, the horrifying extent and speed of the trials and judgments in Salem stand as a testament to the importance of careful due process. I’m as enamored with Halloween as anyone can be, but it’s also important to remember that in a brief period of time the court in Massachusetts took the lives of 20 people without due process.
Equally important, it does seem that the phrase “witch hunt” is bandied about today without much attention to its historic context.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
