WEBVTT - S1 – INTERVIEW 5: Jane Kamensky 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:05.000 Our guest today is Jane Kamensky, Professor of history at 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.360 Harvard University. She's also the director of the slushing Er 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:10.960 Library on the History of Women in America at the 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:15.000 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. She's a historian of the 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.480 Atlantic World and the United States, with a particular interest 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.119 in the histories of family, culture and everyday life, you know, 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.760 the stuff that makes history feel more real. I had 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.160 a chance to sit down with Professor Kaminski this past 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.040 summer and we had a wonderful conversation. So, without further delay, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.360 let's get on with the show. This is the Unobscured 0:00:36.400 --> 0:01:12.560 Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey. Hi, I'm 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.960 Jane Kamensky. I teach history at Harvard University, and I'm 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:19.080 also the director of the Lessinger Library on the History 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.800 of Women in the United States. I'm gonna start us 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.959 off with a really well, deceptively simple question, but it's 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.520 pretty complex. I'm sure what was a witch in um? 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:36.480 Which was somebody who made unexpected things happen? Puritans lived 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:40.360 in a world of portents and wonders and almonds. They're 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.559 always watching the sky, They're watching their earth Um there 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.520 you know, Uh, God speaks to them. And I think 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:54.760 a which was somebody who made almonds and portents and 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:59.840 signs happen in ways that um seemed to reside in 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:05.240 a appropriately in a human form, which is in purit. 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.400 New England were not thought to wear black pointy hats, 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.240 although they sometimes did ride around on brooms. Um. And 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.680 they acted in a whole manner of inappropriate ways or 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:23.000 were present at times when inexplicable things happened. Um. Small 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:28.079 harms you know, milk curdling sour side or going sour. Um. 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.120 Big harms. Uh you know, somebody saying, oh, what a 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:36.840 pretty child that is, and the child soon sickens and dies. Um. 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.399 Women who spoke out of turn, uh you know who 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:44.840 whose tongues went on like fishwives in ways that um 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.360 really seemed to sort of stick out of the fabric 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:52.200 of conversation at the time. Um. People who said things 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:58.160 that later seemed to be ominous. Um. It's a world 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:03.600 in which, you know, science is quite primitive, and a 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:09.840 great deal of what unfolds in any given season is inexplicable. Right. 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:15.240 Crops fail, animals die, um, And sometimes in the search 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:21.160 for supernatural explanations UM, which included God and the devil Um, 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.160 which is as the handmaidens of the devil um were 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:31.359 were faulted. It's hard to see looking backwards whether there 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:38.800 were individuals who cultivated that reputation UM, who had sort 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:44.240 of family businesses in curative arts that flirted with the 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.480 edge of of the supernatural. You know, there there are 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:53.280 some instances in Salem where UM women are found with 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.520 poppets that seemed to be a little little cloth dolls 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.200 that seemed to be used in UM in some kind 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:04.080 of ritual. One thing that's quite different in UH in 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:08.800 the early New England witchcraft cases than in a lot 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.600 of more ancient witchcraft cases is that Puritans are very 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.360 concerned with the idea that some which is consort with 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.040 the devil um. You know, there's a there's a black 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:24.520 mass that surfaces in accounts of Salem that's not typical 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:29.240 in run of the mill witchcraft cases UM, where it's 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:34.720 where it's really more about livestock or about what we 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.200 would now think of as a nightmare. I woke up 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.760 with a sensation of somebody pressing on my chest, and 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:41.479 I thought of my neighbor, and it must have been 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:46.560 her um bewitching me um so, a whole range of 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:52.919 unexpected happenings that didn't have an easy narrative cause that 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:58.320 could fasten on somebody who, for whatever reason um stuck 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.560 out in a fabric of society that was supposed to 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:07.080 be smooth, very which brings us to the idea of gender, 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:11.280 because when you talk about smooth society, there's orders and rules. 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:14.760 There's a quote from George Webb who said the tongue 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.400 is a witch. What did he reveal about women's voices, 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.240 how they were understood in in the seventeenth century society 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:24.400 when he says that the tongue as a witch? Like, 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:26.840 what does that mean? Um? So? George Webb is an 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:32.159 Anglican cleric uh and um. He's one of a host 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.680 of people at that time, Reformed Protestants of one kind 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.760 or another um writing about the power of speech, um 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.920 and uh, and often about the power of women's speech 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:47.479 in particular. This is what my first book, Governing the 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.760 Tongue was about. Um. Puritans are famously people of the 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.560 word uh. They are, you know, devotees of the Bible 0:05:55.640 --> 0:06:01.479 and vernacular language. They take utterances very very seriously. They're 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:05.280 over a hundred kinds of speech crime policing the boundaries 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:09.039 of proper speech. In Puritan New England, everything from a 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:13.239 child cursing a parent was technically a capital crime because 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.520 it was a violation of the Fifth Commandment UM. Speaking 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:21.479 against authority in various ways slander, defamation, UM, scolding, railing, 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:28.839 and UH, and a significant number of speech in fractions UM. 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:33.320 Ways of speaking out of turn hung on women. In particular, 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.720 the idea of of the scold as a female figure 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:41.560 UM the railer as a female figure UM was was 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:46.440 old in England and was highly salient in early New England. 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.560 So UM when I was when I was doing my 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:54.520 research on speech in New England society, UM, I focused 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:57.400 on cases not just in Salem, but in the long 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:01.360 run of New England witchcraft from the sixteen parties forward, 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:06.640 where UM some of what neighbors said about people accused 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.040 of witchcraft was UM ways in which they had spoken 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.080 out of turn. UM. Women who were women who were 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.680 saying things that they shouldn't have or in places they 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.160 shouldn't have, in tones that they shouldn't have. UM. A 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:25.280 woman's role in Puritan society was a vitally important role UM. 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.760 But it was a vitally important role in a in 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:33.240 a marital partner, in a marital partnership, um as a 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:37.680 help meet. UM. You know a uh, it's what what 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:43.160 would now in evangelical rhetoric be called a complimentarian philosophy. UM. 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.640 Uh you know, the sort of uh yen to the 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:53.160 husband's yang. Women who weren't married were anomalous. UM. You know, 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.120 there's a there's a significant number of women accused in 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:02.160 Salem who are either um postmarried or unmarried in uh 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:06.160 in some way, so helpmate who was a crucial partner 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.520 in a marriage and in a household, but also the 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.360 junior partner, the non speaking partner, the partner who didn't 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:18.200 serve on juries or vote. Um. Because male house headship 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:22.680 was thought to cover everybody in the house um, and 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.840 that interest was assumed to be indivisible. Um. There are 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:34.439 definitely suspects in Salem who rise to community notoriety because 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.920 the husband and wife are fractious against each other. UM. 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:44.400 So uh there were I guess the channel for the 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:49.480 virtuous woman um was a pretty narrow channel. UM. At 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.920 the same time, and this is something other scholars have 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:57.680 dealt with as well. UM. Women had enormous generative power 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.160 in society. Right that if you're if or a uh, 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.720 if you're a society that's unraveling mysteries, the mystery of 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:09.120 birth is is profound right um, and is the the 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:14.720 sort of root stock of society. UM. So one thing 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:19.040 that which is are often accused of is processes that 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.600 UM that interrupt generation in one way or another UM, 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:28.000 things that are supposed to come to fruition that misfire UM. 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:33.600 Another scholar, Carol Carlson out at University of Michigan, found 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.439 UM that a significant number of suspects in New England 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:44.719 witchcraft cases were women who had unusually direct lines to 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.719 property holding, either because they didn't have living husbands, or 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.800 they didn't have sons, or they didn't have brothers. Some 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:58.199 unusually direct relationship to property in Land. UM. John de 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.560 Moss and his great work enter Attaining Satan tracked the 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:09.360 number of female witchcraft sub suspects who were post menopausal, 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.040 who were through their childbearing years, so who had completed 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:19.360 their great function in Puritan society UM, but nevertheless persisted 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:25.200 in ways that were UM uncomfortable or could get uncomfortable 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:30.520 for UM for their fellow townsfolk. About four out of 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:35.160 five witchcraft suspects in New England was female, so way 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.880 outscale for the proportion of the population. And when we 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:45.360 look at the percentage tried and the percentage executed, um, 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:49.600 the predominance holds. I'm thinking of the story of Mary 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.319 Webster and Hadley in the I think the sixteen eighties. 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.400 She was accused of witchcraft, taken to Boston. It was 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.000 a quit and brought back. But you know, the complaints 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.240 were what you'd expect. She was, she was cranky, she 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.800 spoke out for herself, she wasn't religious. Um. And And 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.000 there's a one of the themes that's popped up in 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:06.680 all of the interviews we've been doing is that there's 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:12.040 this what seems to be the tight normal focus on suspects. 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.920 At the start, you know, the the typical other Sarah Good, 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.800 Sarah Osburne um and obviously a slave Titsuba Um. You know, 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.000 Sarah Good was as you said, she was a mumbler. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.800 She was she would she would mutter things under her breath, 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.800 corn cob pipe exactly right. She didn't fit those norms, 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.800 and that bothered people. But but then that circle starts 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.439 to get wider, and you you start to get people 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:40.440 like Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey, And do you have 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.920 your own view on why that circle started to move 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.199 outside of the normal others and move on to people 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:50.120 you wouldn't expect. I mean some of these were covenant 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.720 members of the church, um, and it starts to spread 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.079 in a way that you wouldn't expect. Does that seem 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.640 to still follow these rules of women should be behaving 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.160 one way but now they're not? Or I you know, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:04.600 I think one of the reasons we keep going back 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:09.960 and back and back to Salem um which um, I 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:11.840 don't have the numbers at the tips of my fingers, 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.080 but I think it's it's under ten percent of the 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.240 people who are accused of witchcraft in the in the 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.000 seventeenth century in New England. Right, it's a it's a 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.600 spasmodic incident. It's not the only uh, it's not the 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.680 only spasm there's uh, there's one in hard for their 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.440 other you know, there are other clusters. But the reason 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.559 we keep going back and back and back to Salem 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:35.679 is because of the ways that it jumps the tracks. Um, 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:42.480 it goes outside of the normal abnormal witchcraft suspects. UM. 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.360 There are a higher proportion of men suspected and UH 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:50.600 and tried and even executed in Salem than there are 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.000 elsewhere at other times in the colonies. And it goes 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.360 up and up and up the social spectrum, touching eventually 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:03.160 even the governor's wife herself. UM. And that's one of 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.040 the reasons that people have looked so intensively at the 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:11.920 structure of that community. UM. The instability in church headship 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.120 that we see both in Salem Town and Salem Village, 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.400 where that covenant community is fervent in the way that 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.480 many New England towns are, but is also repeatedly rocked 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.920 by ministers coming and going. UM. Some of the military 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:31.280 upheaval and economic upheaval that we see in the sixteen eighties, 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:38.280 the political upheaval UM around Massachusetts's response to UH England's 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.360 overreaching the dominion of New England that results in the 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:46.240 revocation of the first Charter. So UM, it's an it's 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:51.680 a a volatile place at an unstable moment um. We 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.199 know from Marybeth Norton's work that there are also particular 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:01.840 UH familial connections between the traumas that are inflicted by 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:06.760 the Indian Wars, the the sort of backcountry frontiers of 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:12.480 Britain's Imperial Wars. UM in the northeast. It's it's overdetermined 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.760 the reasons why, um, that community would be at risk 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:23.400 in various ways. UM. And yet still uh, there's enough, 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:25.600 there's enough mystery in it, right, you could do a 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.320 control Well what are all the what are all the 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:33.560 places that have similar instability? And um? And why does 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.200 you know? Why aren't you know why isn't there a 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.760 massive witch hunt in New Haven at the same time? 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:45.880 Or um? Uh, it's certainly not that people in Salem 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:51.560 are less learned than they are other places. Um. Their 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:56.320 leadership is um is lacking right that that they have 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.640 hindsight is always um. You know, looking back, if you 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:08.880 had had a minister unlike Samuel Paris who had chosen 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:13.280 to preach on peace and love and quiet the flames 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:18.440 rather than to um poor, it wouldn't have been gasoline 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.040 for them. But you know, pine tar on a on 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.880 a smoldering set of embers. Um you could have had 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.200 you could have had a different outcome. You can think 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:32.680 of people who could have intervened all along the way 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.440 to say, but wait, isn't this God telling us to 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:41.120 love one another or UM. You know, isn't this a 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:46.680 call for um? The greatest of these is love or charity? UM? 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:51.200 Should we look to this scripture instead of that scripture 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.840 to guide us? UM. I don't think even Samuel Paris 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.640 thought from week to week. Oh, if I do this 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:04.000 this week, in two weeks, it's really gonna get going. UM. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:09.680 It's a It's an interesting instance of how UM, without 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:16.920 I think, without any concerted malign action, UM, good people 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:22.440 failing to um to to step up can result in 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:28.640 a kind of conflagration UM. A conflagration only related to 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.720 its time and place. Right, It's it's hundreds of people, 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.800 not thousands of people who are drawn into its web. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:42.080 Although UM, that conflagration is large enough and is late 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.520 enough in the history the long history of European and 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.720 Anglophone witchcraft that it sticks out almost immediately right that 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:57.320 by three UM, you have people knowing that Salem is 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:01.800 a is a black eye UM. For for the whole 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.560 New World experiment, that New England is going to be 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.399 called New witch Land is one of the first things 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.879 that's UM that's said ex post facto about it, and 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.679 UM people continuing to write about it in the you know, 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.760 in the seventeen forties, in the era of the American Revolution. 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:26.679 It very quickly enters the domain of metaphor. Why was 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:31.639 why was the slave woman Titsuba's testimony so powerful to 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.960 this community? I would have, I mean, my my, looking back, 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:38.679 you know, twenty one century attitude is was she She 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.240 seems to be so far of an outsider that she 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.439 shouldn't have voiced at all, and yet here she is, 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:45.280 and it seems to matter so much. Why do you 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.520 think that was? I think, um, I will answer your question, 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:54.720 particularly about Tichiba. I think what you've just said hangs 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.040 over the whole of Salem in general, right, like, why 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:00.840 are the most powerful men in the West tern hemisphere 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.800 listening to these girls in their teen years, in their 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.240 early twenties. There's a whole flipping of whose word counts 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:15.240 and who's doesn't. I think Tichubus speech, at least as 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.040 we have it come down to us, you know, through 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:24.879 a court clerk's hand, whose um probably uh to some 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:31.600 degree over exoticizing her dialogue, her dialect um. It's just 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:38.399 incredibly vivid, right, you know that she uh, she decides um. 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.360 You know, possibly tactically in some way. Oh you want 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:45.600 a witch. You know, here's you. You've told me to 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.600 sing like a canary. I Am going to sing in 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.640 the Song of the Tropics. It's gonna have it had 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:54.800 just if you just look through Tichubus speech for the 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:59.200 color um. You know, the the birds, the tawny man, 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:05.960 the uh. It's a scholars have studied UM. Here seems 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.359 to be some fusion of what she must have picked 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:15.880 up of um New England lore, which in Paris's household 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.440 she would have had abundant access to. UM. She must 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.040 be hearing him walk around practicing his preaching even before 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:26.000 he's doing it UM, and what she's brought with her, 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:31.080 we think from Barbados. UM. So you know, you could 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:35.359 have called central casting for somebody to make the riveting 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.520 intervention in a drama and not have conjured up somebody 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:43.560 who could do so with more alan than she winds 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:50.720 up doing UM. At other points in New England jurisprudence, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.600 I think it would have been quickly relegated to the 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:58.600 side like just just uh, it doesn't follow, it doesn't 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:03.040 follow conventions, right, um. Uh, there's a lot of leading 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.000 the witness, um is there this. Yes, there's that, and 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.160 let me give you a little more. Um. She plays 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:15.399 her role very well. And UM, it's it's interesting, I 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:20.120 think unknowable ultimately. UM. One of the things that happens 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:26.960 in Salem is the conventions of witchcraft trials and jurisprudence 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:32.960 flip to some degree. So UM, in sixteen sixty in Boston, 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:37.320 if you had made a heartfelt confession of your involvement, 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:43.639 uh in witchcraft, that would have perhaps yielded you absolution 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.000 in the world beyond. But what it would have yielded 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:50.280 you in this world is death. UM. In Salem, confession 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:55.840 liberates people from the news. And UM, she can't know 0:20:56.000 --> 0:21:00.439 that yet when she's testifying, she's testifying too early. UM. 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.280 You know, maybe that what she says is so narratively 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.920 compelling that she begins to set that pattern in motion. UM. 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:11.400 But that's one of the many things that goes topsy 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.400 turvy in Salem. We're listening to people were not supposed 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:18.320 to listen to. Um, And kinds of utterances that would 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:23.760 get you killed ten years before. UM make you a 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:28.240 sort of star of the confessional circuit in well, and 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.640 you mentioned the girls, the you know, the afflicted accusers 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:34.280 who are there at the front of the meeting house 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.359 and they're you know, going into convulsions, and and that 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.239 it's odd that they too are being listened to, you know, 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.600 as opposed to the grown adults in the room. Right. 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.359 Is there a nuance to that or is is it 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:49.200 just more of the same. It's just more of the 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.520 conventions being flipped on its head, you know. I think 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.760 that is to me the great mystery of the Salem 0:21:55.880 --> 0:22:01.880 proceedings is how in a world that devalues women's utterances 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.439 and that tends to keep um, maybe especially young women 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:14.960 within their channels. Uh, this group of UM adolescent that's 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:20.040 anachronistic term, but UM, women in their teens and early twenties, 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:24.199 UM come to be this this sort of star witness 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:30.439 coterie UM is completely ineffable. UM. I think there is 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:35.359 pretty convincing evidence that they are to a certain extent, 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:40.200 coordinating with each other and engaging in deliberate fraud. UM. 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:46.040 This is what the scholar Bernard Rosenthal believes that UM. Uh, 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:52.000 you know, you can't A pin doesn't come out of nowhere, right, UM, 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:56.840 it's a there's a kind of stagecraft to what they're doing. 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:03.280 UM that in the normal run of Puritan punishment and 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:08.200 social sanction, UH should land them in the stocks UH 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.320 in either private or public shaming right UM, either chastening 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:16.639 in their families or by their congregations UM, or punishment 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:20.359 for scolding and raillery and speaking against their betters, right 0:23:20.440 --> 0:23:24.280 the speaking out of fifth commandment order the younger against 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:28.600 the older, UM, women against men, women against ministers in 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:34.800 some cases UM with George Burrows. So how that happens? 0:23:35.040 --> 0:23:40.199 You know, it seems like a moment where UM, the 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:47.600 normal sources of authority holds so poorly, and the need 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:54.000 for answers to questions that seem profound UM feels so 0:23:54.160 --> 0:24:00.560 urgent that UM people begin listening. Two unexpectedness is who 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:03.239 say they have answers. It's so out of it's so 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.399 out of the ordinary. When you have magistrates, you know, 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:11.879 the judicial rulers who are also the business rulers, and 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:17.119 they're from families that have been cultural and social patriarchs. 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:20.000 But they're the leader in every aspect of life. And 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:23.479 yet they're deferring to these children in a sense, you know, 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:25.399 tell me, tell me the truth, right, I mean, they 0:24:25.680 --> 0:24:29.159 wouldn't have seen themselves as deferring right, they would have 0:24:29.240 --> 0:24:35.480 seen themselves as using these female youths as the conduit 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:41.240 to UM, you know, scouring into the marrow of God's justice. UM. 0:24:41.320 --> 0:24:46.840 But if you look even a handful of years before UM, 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:50.960 there's a possession case in Massachusetts, the case of Elizabeth Knapp, 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:55.960 which John de Moss writes about at length. She's a 0:24:56.040 --> 0:25:01.600 young female servant in a minister's house, and UM undergoes 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:08.680 many of the same kinds of UM traumatic manifest manifestations 0:25:08.760 --> 0:25:13.959 that the afflicted accusers do in Salem, including UM, you know, 0:25:14.040 --> 0:25:17.280 saying vile things to the to the minister, maybe even 0:25:17.320 --> 0:25:21.240 speaking in a voice that sounds like UM, a voice 0:25:21.359 --> 0:25:26.199 not her own. And you know, the the seal is 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:29.239 put on the box really fast. You know she is. 0:25:30.080 --> 0:25:36.479 She's possessed, UM, not afflicted, not a witch herself. And UH, 0:25:36.920 --> 0:25:40.080 we're gonna we're gonna get her cured, and nobody's gonna 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:42.600 listen to her. For Heaven's sake, you know, nobody is 0:25:42.640 --> 0:25:44.320 going to listen to her. We're going to get her 0:25:44.320 --> 0:25:48.359 the help that she needs, UM, which in our time 0:25:48.800 --> 0:25:53.000 would be some kind of psychiatric intervention, and in their 0:25:53.080 --> 0:25:58.760 time is a religious one. UM. That's that's a moment 0:25:59.000 --> 0:26:03.240 and a happening that extremely close in both time and place. Right, 0:26:03.280 --> 0:26:07.040 it's not I think it's not a full ten years before. 0:26:07.600 --> 0:26:10.119 I think it's the sixteen seventies. I think it's actually 0:26:10.200 --> 0:26:13.800 sixteen seventy two. It's Willard, right, we're talking. I think 0:26:13.800 --> 0:26:17.720 it's twenty years before. But Willard has his own connections 0:26:17.720 --> 0:26:20.920 to Salem as well. Yeah, but Willard is a skeptic. 0:26:21.040 --> 0:26:25.320 I mean Willard is a thorough going skeptic. UM. I 0:26:25.359 --> 0:26:30.080 think Willard is one of the people who represent a 0:26:30.320 --> 0:26:37.320 kind of um secularizing is too strong, but who represent 0:26:37.400 --> 0:26:42.840 a kind of cosmopolitan urbanity UM that is nibbling at 0:26:42.880 --> 0:26:45.239 the edges of Salem. I I did a piece of 0:26:45.240 --> 0:26:49.720 work at one point that I never published, UM about 0:26:50.080 --> 0:26:53.520 the image of the Devil's Book in the Salem, which trials, 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:55.560 you know, what does it look like? Oh, it's it's 0:26:55.600 --> 0:26:57.720 you know, it's small and they hide and it's red. 0:26:57.760 --> 0:27:01.800 It's not read. Um and looking at the book trades 0:27:01.920 --> 0:27:05.399 in New England at the time where um, you know, 0:27:05.480 --> 0:27:08.080 this is a moment in the late sixteen eighties and 0:27:08.160 --> 0:27:16.840 early sixteen nineties where small secular print materials, um, you know, histories, geographies, satires, 0:27:16.960 --> 0:27:22.840 joke books, playing cards, UM are coming into the bookstores 0:27:22.880 --> 0:27:27.760 in the ports cities, and UM are undermining the kind 0:27:27.800 --> 0:27:34.200 of unitary authority that ministers who had less of the 0:27:34.359 --> 0:27:40.280 urbanity that Willard uh happened to have UM had experienced before. 0:27:40.840 --> 0:27:47.280 UM at the same time increasing Cotton Mather, UM, who 0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:51.080 were fundamental to Salem unfolding the way it did. We're 0:27:51.119 --> 0:27:54.680 also part of that urban world. You know. Cotton Mather 0:27:54.840 --> 0:27:59.560 was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UM. You 0:27:59.600 --> 0:28:03.320 know was it was a fancied himself, a scientist of 0:28:03.440 --> 0:28:12.840 international connection. UM. So it's not education or intellect that 0:28:13.040 --> 0:28:16.879 explains where people came down and and how because Cotton 0:28:16.920 --> 0:28:20.840 Mather at the same time would publish works collecting supernatural 0:28:20.880 --> 0:28:24.439 occurrences and treat them in that sort of scientific and 0:28:26.000 --> 0:28:28.600 historian minded view of well, here's this thing that happened. 0:28:28.720 --> 0:28:32.600 Let's let's not do that, right. Well, I mean this 0:28:32.720 --> 0:28:38.560 is a world in which UM, science and religion and 0:28:39.280 --> 0:28:46.240 UM ghost stories all are are very much of a piece. UM. 0:28:46.800 --> 0:28:50.800 I've been reading in the last week or so the 0:28:51.000 --> 0:28:55.960 first volume of Deborah Harkness is All Souls Trilogy, which 0:28:56.000 --> 0:29:00.520 is called a discovery of which is Um. I started 0:29:00.520 --> 0:29:03.160 reading it, you know, I thought, I had thought, these 0:29:03.160 --> 0:29:05.040 are books about which is in vampires? This is not 0:29:05.080 --> 0:29:07.680 something I'm going to read. And I did a panel 0:29:07.720 --> 0:29:09.800 with her a couple of weeks ago. She's an early 0:29:09.840 --> 0:29:13.120 modern historian of science, and she said that the conceit 0:29:13.200 --> 0:29:16.320 of the books was what if the world actually works 0:29:16.400 --> 0:29:19.360 the way that people thought it did in the fifteen 0:29:19.560 --> 0:29:23.240 and six and much of the seventeenth century. And I thought, 0:29:23.560 --> 0:29:27.360 that's a great conceit. Um. You know, they had they 0:29:27.360 --> 0:29:30.760