The witch-hunt that happened in Salem is one of the best-known acts of violence against women under the assumption that they have supernatural powers. In the “Was the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria a Product of Women’s Search for Power?” Kyle Koehler and Laurie Winn Carlson present the “pro” and “cons” arguments for this claim. This paper will summarise Koehler’s and Winn Carlson’s opinions and give a personal reflection on the topic of Salem Witchcraft.
Kyle Koehler provides arguments supporting this idea and points out the problems of the Patriarchal society. At that time, the Salem citizens lived in a Puritan society with strict regulations and gender roles (Madaras & SoRelle, 2013). Koehler’s idea is that females who accused other women of being witches were unconsciously trying to escape their subordinate position. Therefore, this author points to the implicit societal problems and gender roles, affected by the religious tradition of the Puritans, as the leading cause of the witch-hunt.
On the other hand, Laurie Winn Carlson presents the “cons” arguments. The author argues that the events in Salem were caused by encephalitis epidemics, which were unrecognized at that time (Madaras & SoRelle, 2013). As a result, the issue is not merely the gender roles and the fight for power but the fear of the Salem’s inhabitants and their desire to find an explanation for the symptoms. Thus, Winn Carlson argues that the people in Salem merely responded to an outbreak of a disease they did not recognize.
For me, the argument by both authors seems to be valid and add supplement each other. According to Madaras and SoRelle (2013), the witch-hunt in Salem began after several young girls began “to display the hysterical symptoms of the possessed” (p. 73). These symptoms were either faked by these girls or caused by a disease, and Salem’s case may be an example of an encephalitis outbreak. However, the strong negative attitudes towards women and accusations of them practicing witchcraft cannot solely assume that they somehow caused the symptoms. The idea expressed by Koehler about the strong negative attitudes towards women and the subconscious fight for power can explain why the disease symptoms were perceived as witchcraft.
The issues of gender, class and social or religious tensions are the root causes of the witch-hunt and murders that happened in Salem, following Koehler’s theory. Koehler supports this by arguing that the majority of the accused were either women or men related to the indicted females. The women were advocating against the established gender roles in the Puritan society, which can be perceived as a motive for accusing them. They disrupted the usual life course of this religious, social group (cited in Madaras & SoRelle, 2013). Therefore, Koehler’s theory supplements the idea that events in Salem were a response to a disease outbreak due to implicit biases of the religious society. Koehler’s argument is more convincing because it accounts for the unexplained desire of women to accuse other females of witchcraft, which could lead to the death of the latter. Overall, this paper examines the two opposing views that supplement one another in explaining the events that happened in Salem, which are either a result of a fight for power or an unrecognized outbreak of a disease. Koehler’s idea helps understand why women in a subordinate position accused others of being witches.
Reference
Madaras, L. & SoRelle, S. M. (Eds.). (2013). Taking sides (15th ed.). McGraw-Hill.