Gender Roles In The Salem Witch Trials

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The Salem Witch Trials began in 1692 and were known as one of the worst outbreaks to happen in New England, due to the fact that Salem magistrates jailed and executed more people compared to any other witchcraft trial in New England. Religion and gender both played a huge role during the Salem Witch Trials in the seventeenth century, as religion was one of the major driving forces behind the trials as Samuel Parris’ sermons about the devil made people paranoid and helped spreading the accusations. The majority of the accusers were females. This showed that they had some sort of power in the community, and that they were not completely dominated by males. The conflict between Samuel Parris and the village is shown to be the starting point of the trials as in 1689, Samuel Parris was …show more content…
Originally three girls were accused of being witches, and this is considered to be sexist as it implied that only females would fall for the devil’s tricks which was parallel to the Adam and Eve story about how Eve gets convinced by the devil to eat the fruit and then she tempts the Adam who was a male. But on the other side, majority of these accusers were females who mostly targeted other females. For instance, Ray says, “Lawson announced that Abigail Williams had witnessed a gathering of witches near Parris’s house, where they celebrated the devil’s sacrament with ‘Red Bread and Red Drink’” (Ray [Satan’s War] 17). And then within the next day Mercy Lewis, also a female, states how she saw the devil and how it tried to tempt her to take his sacrament. Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse who were two covenanted members who were also accused of witchcraft. Only was it based on all the girl’s accusation and reports did the Reverend Deodat Lawson come to the conclusion that not was the church being attacked, but instead it was a full fledged assault on the Puritans in the village by

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