![]() ![]() Puritan communities blamed livestock deaths, miscarriages, and general illnesses on the presence of a witch. In their alignment with the supernatural and deals with the Devil, witches were believed to upset the natural order. Many in Puritan colonies feared witches’ power of maleficium, which allowed witches to exact harm on others because of greed, jealousy, and other dark emotions. Insisting that historians have neglected the essential gendered component of New England witch trials, Karlsen frames her research as a response to this gap in historical scholarship.Ĭhapter 1 gives a comprehensive overview of the figure of the witch, detailing her feared supernatural abilities and hated position in the community. For Karlsen, America’s witchcraft history is intrinsically linked to American women’s history. In The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol Karlsen argues that the history of New England’s witchcraft trials in the 17th century is specifically gendered. ![]()
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