“Devil’s marks” were physical abnormalities found on the bodies of women, often believed to be extra breasts meant for feeding demonic animal familiars. These “marks” symbolize how rigid Puritan gender norms caused these communities to turn against any women who looked or acted differently than they were supposed to.
Witches were believed to have Devil’s marks bestowed unto them after they entered into a compact with Satan. They mark meant that they had accepted supernatural powers in exchange for doing Satan’s bidding on Earth and encouraging or enticing other men and women into similar covenants. These marks were loosely defined, but they were most often represented in the Puritan imagination as an extra breast from which possessed animals fed on blood. This grotesque imagery was used to cast grave suspicion upon any woman with a bodily anomaly of any sort. Extra skin, strange rashes, or birth defects were seen as evidence of evil and witchcraft. Puritan women’s behavior was patrolled and punished with shunning or accusations of witchcraft if it was seen to be loud, offensive, or anything other than pious and submissive—and so too were Puritan women’s bodies subject to intense scrutiny.
Having a Devil’s mark was one of the few modes of positive evidence which could be used in witchcraft trials. Because so many witch trials centered around proving invisible crimes, any scraps of evidence identifying a person as a witch were vital—and so, Godbeer suggests, an extreme amount of faith was placed in the Devil’s mark as the sure identifier of an ally of Satan. The symbol of the Devil’s mark, then, externalizes and metaphorizes the how women were—and in many ways still are—held to impossible physical and behavioral standards. Any deviation from the norm was, in Puritan society, punishable by ostracization—and even, in some extreme cases, death. Devil’s marks thus represent how women have historically been demonized (sometimes literally) for any deviations from social norms.
The Devil’s Mark Quotes in Escaping Salem
"Goody Miller, hold up your arm higher that the black dog may suck you better. Now I'm sure you are a witch for you've got a long teat under your arm." Both David and Abraham had heard that witches fed demonic spirits in the form of animals—just as mothers fed their infant children, except that witches used a third nipple hidden somewhere on their bodies and nourished the familiars with blood, not milk.
Several women […] who had cared for Elizabeth Clawson during childbirth came forward […] to testify that she had a physical abnormality, perhaps a Devil's mark. […] The court of inquiry had appointed a group of women, "faithfully sworn, narrowly and truly to inspect and search her body.” […] These women reported "with one voice" that "they found nothing save a wart on one of her arms." They also searched Mercy Disborough's body that same day and did find "a teat or something like one in her privy parts, at least an inch long, which is not common in other women, and for which they could give no natural reason."
The ministers did not reject the possibility that Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough were witches, but they did repudiate the evidence before the court as a sound basis for conviction. Their advice would provide an important reinforcement as Mister Jones and his fellow magistrates urged caution upon the jury.
The Devil’s Mark Symbol Timeline in Escaping Salem
