Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Escaping Salem, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Women, Witchcraft, and the Subversion of Gender Norms
Fear, Law, and Control
Practical Threats vs. Spiritual Betrayals
Scapegoating and Blame
Summary
Analysis
Richard Godbeer returns the narrative to April of 1692 in order to describe what daily life looked like for Katherine Branch and her fellow Stamford residents. The houses that lined the streets of Stamford were small, humble, and cramped. As spring arrived, families would have looked forward to the chance to spend more time outside of their small homes and enjoy some recreation—and some privacy. The Wescots were a well-to-do family with several children, so their home would have been larger than most. Their eldest, Joanna, was fully recovered from the strange fits that had seized her years ago. Abigail and Daniel were prominent members of society whom others addressed as “Mister” and “Mistress” rather than the humble prefixes Goodman and Goodwife (or Goody).
By further contextualizing how Puritan society—and specifically Stamford society—was organized, Godbeer gives more insight into how intensely communal life was in this society. Families lived in close quarters with their servants, and there was a deep intimacy to life there in spite of the hierarchical social structure. This illustrates how profoundly destabilizing it would have been to discover that a witch was living within such a community—not just to the people immediately threatened by the witch, but for everyone in town.
Themes
That month, while everything seemed to be going well for the Wescots, their 17-year-old servant, Kate, began suffering fits of convulsions and contortions. When Kate returned from the fields one evening, she cried and screamed as invisible forces seemed to seize her body for the first time. Daniel Wescot was immediately reminded of the spells that plagued Joanna many years ago. For several weeks, Joanna had claimed that something was creeping into her room to torment her in the night. Though the fits and fears lasted only a few months, they left a lasting impression on the Wescots.
Katherine’s inexplicable and painful fits were worrisome to the Wescots—even though they were not foreign or unprecedented. The cause of Joanna’s night terrors and Kate’s fits of pains and convulsions may have had a root in the physical or psychological—but Godbeer also illustrates how the supernatural was seen as a legitimate source of information and explanation for such ailments.
Themes
The day after Kate’s first fit, the Wescots called Sarah Bates, a local midwife, to examine her. Kate lay rigid in her bed, alternating between convulsive fits of screaming and spells of paralysis and catatonia (immobility). Kate’s mother had also suffered from fits. While medical knowledge at the time allowed for the possibility that Kate was suffering from an inherited malady, the Wescots also suspected that she and her mother were both victims of possession or witchcraft. The midwife tried many natural remedies—but when she tried to led blood from the catatonic Kate’s feet, Kate leapt to attention and begged not to be blooded before lapsing into laughter. The midwife had no idea whether to declare Kate’s manic laughter an uncontrollable symptom of her fits, a side effect of demonic possession, or evidence of Kate leading her masters and healers on.
For Puritans, threats from the spiritual realm were just was real as practical threats from the physical realm. This passage thus illustrates how difficult it was for Puritans to figure out what the cause of strange behaviors or afflictions might have been. The dichotomy between the possibility of a spiritual affliction and the possibility of a physical one was further complicated by the fact that women—especially young women—were often seen as wily and untrustworthy. Physical, spiritual, and personal concerns were all at war with one another.
Themes
As Kate’s fits continued to worsen, she also began to experience visions in the night of women transforming into cats and threatening to kill her. Kate claimed she could feel hands reaching out to her in the dark of night, pinching and prodding her and offering her “fine things” such as clothes and jewels. Confused and frightened, Daniel Wescot sought the help of Stamford’s minister, the reputable Oxford graduate Reverend John Bishop. Bishop and one of his fellow pastors, Thomas Hanford, evaluated Kate and then explained to her that she was being visited in her dreams by witches who wanted her to join them in devotion to Satan. The ministers promised to pray for Kate—and they warned Daniel to keep an intensely watchful eye upon Kate and provide her with both the practical and spiritual care she needed.
Again, Godbeer illustrates how the tension between the possibility of a physical affliction and the dark threat of a spiritual affliction. Kate’s visions in the night could have simply been nightmares or terrors—but because the spiritual world was as real as the physical one to Stamford residents, they could just as easily have interpreted her visions as messages from emissaries of Satan.
Themes
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The amount of physical and emotional energy the Wescots put into keeping close tabs on Kate soon exhausted them. Daniel and Abigail reached out to their neighbors for help, as members of the Stamford community often did in times of crisis. Daniel also hoped that his neighbors’ presence in his home—and their ability to witness Kate’s fits and nightmares—might help him figure out who, exactly, was responsible for Kate’s afflictions before the fits spread to Wescots’ own children.
This passage illustrates how profoundly the residents of Stamford relied upon each other in times of bounty and hardship alike. The intensely intimate and communal nature of Stamford society, Godbeer suggests, was a blessing in good times—but it was also a risk in times of trouble. In such a tight-knit environment, a threat against one member of the community could be seen as a threat against the entire town and thus create widespread panic.
Themes
Two of the Wescots’ neighbors, David Selleck and Abraham Finch, took turns keeping watch over Kate as she slept. Both men reported experiencing strange things in Kate’s room, such as seeing a “ball of fire” and feeling pinching in their sides. Ebenezer Bishop spent a night looking over Kate as well. He watched bruises and lesions appear on her skin in real time—yet he saw no presence apart from himself enter the room. As more and more neighbors offered up their time to keep watch over Kate, curiosity and intrigue bloomed throughout the community. Rumors of Kate’s incredible physical contortions, swelling breasts, and levitations spread like wildfire.
Again, this passage illustrates how Puritan communities came together in times of trouble—even when the threat of a spiritual attack seemed imminent. The Wescots’ neighbors’ reports from their nights spent watching over Kate seemed to confirm that there was a spiritual offensive being launched—if not against the entire town, than at least against the Wescots. Worse still, it seemed to begin with the most isolated and vulnerable member of their household.
Themes
Neighbors who took shifts watching Kate experimented upon her by holding weapons over her to see how she’d respond. Even though Kate emerged from stupors and calmed herself from fits each time her life was threatened—which true victims of witchcraft were said to be unable to do—Kate claimed that the Devil himself had appeared to her in the form of a black calf, a white dog, and three witches, ordering her to become his servant. As Kate’s apparitions became more and more frequent, interrupting not just her nighttime slumber but her daytime tasks, the Wescots and their neighbors became more determined than ever to find out who was tormenting Kate—and how they could be stopped.
Even though the experiments the Wescots’ neighbors performed on Kate seemed to indicate that she was faking her fits and spells, her allegations of witchcraft being performed on her outweighed any evidence to the contrary. This speaks to the gravity of the spiritual world within the Puritan imagination—a threat from the Devil, even one that seemed manufactured, could not be overlooked or explained away hastily. Justice, and elimination of the spiritual threat, had to be pursued—no matter the cost.
Themes
