The Role Of Women In The Salem Witch Trials

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Instead of looking at the history of witchcraft as Kittredge did, Boyer and Nissenbaum focused on the social and economical factors at play within seventeenth-century Salem among the male population. Boyer and Nissenbaum state that the more we have come to know these men for something like what they really were, the more we have also come to realize how profoundly they were shaped by the times in which they lived. For if they were unlike any other men, so was their world unlike any other world before or since; and they shared that world with other people living in other places. Parris and Putnam and the rest were, after all, not only Salem Villagers: they were also men of the seventeenth century; they were New Englanders; and, finally …show more content…
Karlsen wrote The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England in 1987, a book examining the role of women in the Salem Witch Trials. Karlsen was “concerned with the meaning of witchcraft for New England’s first settlers… and why most witches in early American society were women.” Karlsen obviously felt that there was a disparity of the females in the previous Salem interpretations. She focused on the social and economic roles women held in Salem and how these roles resulted in specific women being targeted as …show more content…
Hoffer is a History Professor at the University of Georgia focusing on early American, political, and legal history. Hoffer published his book during at time of historical unrest. The History Wars in America began in the 1990s as history institutions were scrutinized by the public and the government. Though Hoffer’s book is not part of a public exhibition or history institution, it is interesting to note that much of what he examines relates to the legal battles happening at the same time. Perhaps the History Wars influenced how he approached the Salem Witch Trials as history museum were undergoing a similar witch trial of

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