Gender Roles In The Salem Witch Hunt

The Salem Witch Hunt was a series of execution that took place in 1692 after a group of young women began having fits and accused several people of bewitching them. The accusers were named based on conflicts and other factors that they had with the afflicted girls and others. The Puritan’s fear of the Devil made their society more susceptible to the hysteria. Puritan religious beliefs, Puritan attitudes toward women and also their interaction between the natural and the supernatural phenomena played vital roles in the contribution of the Salem Witch Hunt hysteria.
The Puritans didn’t believe in coincidence in fact they believed that every occurrence was due to God’s interference in the natural world. They believed that if individuals practice diligence then they would be rewarded for such work and they would be punished if they divert from that virtue. Puritans didn’t believe in predestination due to the original sin which is why they stressed the importance of attempting to live a righteous life because God will accept their effort to try to improve themselves. Also, the lower a person was in the society made them less trustworthy so they would be suspected of witchcraft.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” helped to add more flame to the …show more content…
Women were considered weaker than men so they were most likely to surrender to the Devil’s desire which explains why majority of the accusers were women. They believed that women were inferior to men which they used the story of Adam and Eve to explain this since Eve was created from Adam’s ribs. Infertile and menopausal women were also most likely to be accused of witchcraft since according to the Puritan values, they didn’t serve a purpose in society since they couldn’t give birth. Sarah Good was named one of the supposedly accusers. There were some evidence even from her own husband, William