Salem Witch Trials Feminist Analysis

When you look at the twenty-first century studies on the Salem Witch Trials, some other psychological and gender issues appear. Mary Beth Norton, an American historian, looks at these issues as a cause of the fits that the girls had. The girls may have had fits as a guilty response towards the participation in fortune telling. Norton also attributes the cause to the post-traumatic experiences that the Indian War caused on the population. Norton is unclear of the roots cause of the Salem Witch Hysteria as she says it may be because of the generational tensions between younger and older women or the fear of their future prospects that made them have mental breakdowns.21 So many lives were affected during the Salem Witch Trials. This is inspected in Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through …show more content…
There are so many different interpretations on this topic, as Rich Latner says,”In recent years, scholars have variously emphasized intra-community group conflict, gender concerns, psychological relationships, and frontier Indian clashes as central to the Salem outbreak. But the pursuit of Salem’s elusive meaning continues.”26 Therefore, since there are so many different interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials, it is interesting to look at it like Gail Collins, an American journalist and author, did, as a “Rorschach test.”27 The reflections of previous historians, authors and theorists reveal a lot about the interpreter of the past as much as the actual event of the Salem Witch Trials itself. For all people, Salem will continue to enchant and make all historians from every school of thought to ponder for a long time to