The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

by Carol F. Karlsen

Overview

"A pioneer work in…the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft." —Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University

Confessing to "familiarity with the devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was "taken with very strange Fits," fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem.

More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393317596
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/1998
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	215,850
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1570L (what's this?)

About the Author

Carol F. Karlsen is professor emerita of history at the University of Michigan.

Editorial Reviews

"A remarkable achievement. The 'witches' come alive in this book, not as stereotypes, but as real women living in a society that suspected and feared their independence and combativeness."

Mary Beth Norton

Karlsen has written an intriguing social history of witchcraft in Puritan New England (1620-1725). She unearths detailed evidence which demonstrates that prosecuted and accused witches generally were older, married women who had violated the religious and/or economic Puritan social hierarchy. Beyond their childbearing years and sometimes the recipients of inheritances, these women threatened the male-dominated social order and drew the ire of middle-aged men who accused them of witchcraft. A well-written, provocative addition to the recent scholarship on New England witchcraft.David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington Extension, Seattle

Library Journal