Overall The Witches is a well-written slice of history that perfectly captures the atmosphere and tenor of that particular time and place. It’s fascinating to see how many of the characters from the play were drawn from history, including John Proctor, Abigail Williams, Giles Corey and Rebecca Nurse and both are convincing in their convictions about the dangers of false accusations. The Witches is also an interesting read as a companion and comparison to Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible. When the girls contradicted themselves, when they fumbled with an inconsistency, he turned a blind eye, discarding facts that failed to fit his extraordinary case…All signs indicate a prosecutor single-mindedly pursuing a pre-ordained end.

The methods used by the courts were lax in the extreme and completely prejudiced against anyone who had been accused. William Stoughton, chief justice of the court, was particularly at fault and seemingly determined to prosecute as many people as possible. Schiff is particularly clear-eyed in her depiction of the lawyers and figures of power who should have put an end to these snowballing accusations before they could start. What else, shrugged one husband, could have caused the black and blue marks on his wife’s arms? It made sense of the unfortunate and the eerie, the sick child and the rancid butter along with the killer cat. The aggravating, the confounding, the humiliating all dissolved in its cauldron. If you point the finger elsewhere, it is unlikely to be pointed at you.įaith aside, witchcraft served an eminently useful purpose. As with all witch-hunts, the most obvious cause is the fear of being accused.

The mistrust of women, jealousies, grievances and power struggles would also have played a part, with people seeing an opportunity to take revenge on past slights, or get their hands on much needed land. The strict puritanical lifestyle is one reason for the initial claims, with the original girls who started the rumours suffering from a kind of mass hysteria which resulted in shaking, fits and violent outbursts. It’s not hard to understand why a disgruntled servant might accuse their mistress of being a witch out of anger and jealousy, but Schiff recounts stories of children as young as six implicating themselves as witches, or worse, accusing their own mothers and then having to watch them put to death.Īs with all types of witch-hunts, Schiff is careful to explain where motivations may have come from that led to a town turning on itself. Some of these accusations make for difficult reading.

The witches salem 1692 review