Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft

Although the witch trials of 1692 stemmed from the political factions of Salem Village, the political leaders of the anti-Parris faction were never accused because for “all the depths of factional passion, habits of deference still ran deep in Salem Village—deep enough, at any rate, to save anyone who was by blood a Porter” (188). The people accused of witchcraft were generally not taken from the highest rungs of society. Rather they tended to be outsiders in one way or another.

Some resided outside the Village proper and didn’t interact with it at all. Some had married into local families but maintained an active trade network beyond its borders. Some came from among the poorest residents but held a defiant attitude toward the locals. If they didn’t show proper respect in their dealings with the villagers, they soon found themselves targeted as witches. These outsiders all represented a threat to the established order of an agricultural society:

The accused were, in many cases, people who had not been born to their 1692 standing, high or low, but who had reached it through force of circumstance, in the course of lives characterized by economic as well as geographic flux (199).

The change that these outsiders represented was particularly threatening to a village trying to hold onto its traditional integrity in the face of great temptation. Villagers found themselves attracted to the wealth and opportunity represented by commerce. Several of the afflicted girls claimed that witches tried to tempt them to sell their souls in exchange for riches. Inwardly, they may have felt guilt at their own desires:

Villagers lashed out with accusations not only against those who seemed in one way or another to represent the new order, but also against those who reminded them how far they, themselves, had already been seduced from their traditional moorings (212-13).

The pro-Parris villagers used witches as scapegoats for their own moral temptations. Although Puritans had established the practice of public confession as a means of absolving guilt, this outlet was rarely used during the trials. It wasn’t until the religious revival of the eighteenth century that this method of catharsis became a common practice. The Salem villagers failed to take this route, and the authors speculate that if “they had, indeed, confessed and taken upon themselves the collective guilt of the community, it is just possible that the outbreak would have come to a stop right there, fulfilled in its purpose” (215).  

After the departure of Parris, Salem Village went back to life as normal. By 1697, it had hired a new minister named Joseph Green. As a twenty-two-year-old graduate of Harvard, Green was the antithesis of his predecessor. “Unlike Samuel Parris, for whom disputation and controversy were meat and drink, Green hated a quarrel and knew how to sidestep one” (218). He tactfully managed the two Village factions by proposing civic projects that both groups could back. By instituting a school and a local charity, he was able to control both the adolescents and indigent poor who had played such a major role during the witch craze. Green even succeeded in reversing Martha Cory’s ex-communication—after her execution.

In subsequent years, two new parishes were established, which further diminished the role of the church as a flashpoint for future tension between the Town and Village. With Green’s help, Salem Village grudgingly came to accept the commercial world beginning to emerge in 18th-century America. Eventually, the Village won its battle for independence from the Town but lost the war against a changing way of life.