- Sep 2013
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etext.lib.virginia.edu etext.lib.virginia.edu
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Viceregents
I think that this passage is accusing witches as trying to be their own God and not adhering to His laws. By not participating in all church activities and rituals, a person might be accused of interacting with the devil and attempting to run their own lives instead of accepting the place that God had for them.
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To John Richards
John Richards was a colonial judge in the Salem Witch Trials who many would write letters to in order to make their case.
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Our deare neighbours are most really tormented, Really murdered, & really acquainted with hidden things, which are afterwards proved plainly to have been Realityes. I say then, as that man is justly Executed for an Assassinate, who in the sight of man shall with a sword in his -394- hand stabb his neighbour into the heart, so suppose a long traine layd unto a barrel of Gunpowder under the floor where a neighbour is, & suppose a man with a match perhaps in his mouth, out of sight, set fire unto the further end of the traine, tho' never so farr off, this man also is to be treated as equally a malefactor. Our neighbours at Salem Village, are blowne up after a sort, with an infernall gunpowder, the traine is layd in the lawes of the Kingdome of Darknes limitted by God himselfe, now the question is, Who gives fire to this traine? & by what acts is the match applyed? finde out the persons that have done this thing, & be their acts in doing it, either mentall, or orall, or manuall, or what the Divel will, I say abeant quo digni sunt.
This piece talks a lot about the torment that occurs to neighbors through use of witchcraft. I find it interesting that some cases were brought to court because those accused were being aggressive and hostile towards members of the community, while other cases accused men and women who seemed to be upstanding citizens. It seems as though, while there were numerous connecting factors, many of those accused were accused largely at random.
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When you are satisfyed or have good plaine legall Evidence that the Daemons which molest our poore neighbours, do indeed represent such & such people to the sufferers, tho' this be a prsumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so reprsented are witches to be immediately exterminated
This request to exterminate all witches from the town is very telling of the ways in which the Salem Witch Trials became more of a legal matter than a personal/medical problem. Paul Boyer's book, "Salem Possessed," talks about how this was the case for most witch trials in New England at the time. Instead of providing proper care to those who were exuding the signs of witchcraft, the town would likely dismiss them and argue for the cases to be brought directly to court.
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www.emule.com www.emule.com
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Epitaphs
In comparing this piece to a love letter that Anne Bradstreet wrote to her husband, I am reinforced that romantic love was still apparent in these marital relationships. In reading these two epitaphs, they both explicitly state the roles that both her mother and father played in their lives, (which seemed pretty standard for the time period). However, marriages often seemed like a mutually beneficial institution. The wives would stay at home, raise children, and do all of the domestic work while husbands would go to work and provide the money and overall power. I always am left wondering whether or not this still leaves room for romance that we idolize within modern marriages. Anne's love letter to her husband, however, reinforces that genuine romance still played a role in the pairing of couples in seventeenth-century New England.
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Within this tomb a patriot lies That was both pious, just and wise, To truth a shield, to right a wall, To sectaries a whip and maul, A magazine of history, A prizer of good company In manners pleasant and severe The good him loved, the bad did fear, And when his time with years was spent In some rejoiced, more did lament.
The way that Anne Bradstreet describes her father in comparison to her mother clearly reinforces the gender roles of that time. In other poems to her father, Anne talks a lot about the power that he held onto. Whether that power was held over those he worked with or his own family, she found herself greatly in debt to the service that he has paid for her family. The man is obviously the one in charge.
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1653, age 77
For Anne Bradstreet's father to have lived 77 years in the mid-17th century, that meant he certainly beat the age of life-expectancy that is known to be average for that period of time. However, being an influential man in a well-off area of New England, it is not completely surprising that he managed to do so.
http://www.plimoth.org/media/pdf/edmaterials_demographics.pdf
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A worthy matron of unspotted life, A loving mother and obedient wife, A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor, Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store; To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
As I was doing research on Anne Bradstreet, I found a book entitled "Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England" by Laurel Ulrich, and it started describing a woman who had passed away in detail that was almost identical to this poem. It wasn't long until I realized that Ulrich was, in fact, quoting this exact epitaph. One of the parts that I found to be most interesting in her book is when she says, "When we read on a gravestone that a woman was [enter the words used in highlighted section here] we smile, wondering what she was really like" (3). It seems unlikely that all Northern, Puritan women adhered to these exact standards and upheld fantastic social standing. Was it possible for a woman to create a name for herself that was both well-received and different from the same criteria as listed above?
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Preparing still for death, till end of days: Of all her children, children lived to see, Then dying, left a blessed memory.
This line of the poem does not explicitly state anything about Anne Bradstreet's critique of the Puritan faith; however, it does not mention anything about her mother's afterlife. This could be a result of Bradstreet's skepticism of this type of religious thought. Though she was never willing to drastically put herself out on the line for these doubts, they are often hinted at through her poems.
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