Elizabeth G. Speare was born in 1908 and died in 1994. She was an American writer of historical novels for children. Moreover, she was awarded the Newbery Medal by the American Library Association for her great work with The Witch of Blackbird Pond novel in 1959 (Cushman ix). Mrs. Speare’s last book, The Sign of the Beaver, written in 1983 also won the Newbery Medal as well as the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Her novels continue to be reading in classrooms. Speare not only wrote novels, but also a number of magazine articles and one-act plays. Finally, she is also cited as one of the Educational Paperback Association’s top 100 authors (Sullivan).
The Witch of Blackbird Pond is characterized as fiction and it is written in a very
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straightforward third person, narrative style. Kit, the protagonist, is present in all scenes and readers are restricted to Kit’s point of view. Also, the title of the novel, at first sight suggests that the book is about a witch from “Blackbird Pond”. However, in the novel there is no witch and it only refers to the Quaker Hannah who lives there and is innocent of witchcraft. Although, the book does not contain any witches, the title indirectly portrays the fear that the Puritan society has toward witches and how this is going to be a conflict in the novel. Furthermore, the author doesn’t give any revealing information about the text in the preface. On the other hand, Karen Cushman in the introduction describes Speare as someone who was against bigotry and intolerance and in favor of acceptance, justice, and respect based on how she writes and describes in detail the characters and the settings of the novel. In addition, the novel is arranged in chapters and its main setting is in the Puritan settlement of Wethersfield in the Connecticut Colony in 1687-1688. Speare makes the novel good by the very detailed description of the living conditions in the colonial New England and the characters’ attitudes and behaviors. The settings such as the meetings, the house, the meadows are essential to the story’s religious and political reality of the time. People in the novel struggle and suffer for freedom but one of the main arguments is how people would persecute someone perceived as different; hence, this shows the lack of tolerance, understanding, which fall in the concept of bigotry. The author also gives historical facts of the religious and political debates of the 17th century America as well as the religious persecutions of Quakers and the witch trials, which in many cases women were unjustly put to death. Summary Having her Aunt Rachel Wood as the only remaining family, Katherine “Kit” Tyler, a 16 year-old girl, leaves her home in Barbados to find her aunt after his grandfather, who raised her, passed away. Kit traveled in the Dolphin, a ship in which by a series of incidents, Kit is marked by suspicion and disapproval especially to the eyes of the nosy Goodwife Cruff. After arriving to Connecticut, Kit is introduced to the Puritan’s work ethic, obedience, and organization of the church. Having had her own “negra,” a slave, and different values and behaviors, Kit has a hard time accommodating and struggle to survive in Matthew Wood’s home in which he along with his wife Rachel and daughters Judith and Mercy are a hard working and devoutly religious family. Mathew is a Puritan patriarch who demands respect and obedience. He is also a political man who does not agree with the King of England’s politics and he is willing to defend his rights and his land. After an incident in the school that Mercy and Kit were teaching, Kit goes devastated and heartbroken to the meadows where she meets an elderly woman named Hannah Tupper who has been mistaken for a witch for only being a Quaker and not attending to the Puritans meetings. Despite of what people says about Hannah and the Blackbird Pond, it is the only place where Kit feels like home; thus, she doesn’t stop going even though her aunt had forbidden her. In the climax, a fever strikes the children and this deadly illness sweeps through Wethersfield. As a result, the Puritan colony accuses Hannah of bringing the plague upon the town and Kit of being an accomplice. Evaluation Most of us, if not everyone, have felt like one does not quite fit in or is different from everybody else.
Society has discriminated people for several different reasons such as religious differences, culture, appearance, color, race, and etcetera. Well, The Witch of Blackbird Pond novel is an example of segregation for being different. Hannah and her husband Thomas were excluded from the Puritan society because they did not meet the Puritans’ social requirements. This elderly woman was mistreated and seen as a witch not even as a human being for only having a different faith. At that time and even in the novel is stated that people were afraid of things they don’t understand or are different. Hence, Puritans believe that witches should be punished for the pacts they made with the Devil and against the church. It took only lies or small evidences to sentence someone and it is amazing how even at the time of the Salem Witch trials, the spectral evidences were used against innocent women. In the novel in Kit’s witch trial, there were accusations that were only lies such as the one from the man who swore he had seen Kit and Hannah dance around a fire in the meadow and a great tall black man appeared from nowhere and joined the dance. In addition, how they saw Hannah turned into a rat. This is just ridiculous how the judges would trust people’s accusations without real evidences. This demonstrates how intolerant the Puritan society was and how outsiders and people who were …show more content…
different had difficulties combating prejudice and bigotry. In addition, the novel gives a sense of how independent women in the 17th century New England were a threat to society and were indeed charged of witchcraft to suppress them since women were supposed to be submissive.
Even women were thought to be inferior to men and hence, had limitations on their rights. An example is Kit, the protagonist, which was raised by her grandfather in Barbados differently than anybody else in the Wethersfield town. She is more independent and does not have that much affiliation to the church. Also, she is not used to do chores or dress with dull colors nor read mainly the Bible. On the contrary, she is used to read Shakespeare, wear colorful dresses, not used to attend meetings every week, have a negra to serve her, and she was even able to swim in the river, which no women could at that time. Her behavior in Wethersfield causes problems since the first day in which she was seen swimming when traveling in the Dolphin and even Goodwife Cruff said, “No respectable woman could keep afloat in the water like that” (36). Since the beginning Kit was put in suspicion and as a consequence of her actions she is then accused of being a witch, arrested, and sent to
trial. In conclusion, the most important role for a Puritan woman was that of the mother. Likely, married women such as aunt Rachel were expected to follow the edicts of their husbands. Puritans were afraid of change and things that are different. This is how a Puritan society was structured based of their religious doctrine and viewed the male head of the household as the one Biblically responsible for commanding and instructing the family in the way of the Lord.
The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts can be considered a horrendous period in American history, yet is also viewed as the turning point in what was considered acceptable in a contemporary society. In a documentation of a trial against a woman named Sarah Good, the reader is able to see the way in which such an accusation was treated and how society as a whole reacted to such a claim. Sarah Good fell victim to the witchcraft hysteria because she was different, and that fear of her divergence from the Puritan lifestyle led to her eventual demise.
The Salem Witch Trials occurred from 1692 to 1693. When two girls, aged 9 and 11, started having strange and peculiar fits, the Puritans believed that the cause of these actions was the work of the devil. The children accused three women of afflicting them: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three wo...
In Exodus 22:18, it says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It was chaos In Salem, Massachusetts, during 1692, 19 people were accused and hanged and one brutally pressed. this is because the puritans believed almost everything the bible said. One subject that the bible covers, is that the Devil is real and really clever, and is able to enter a normal person's body and turn them into a witch. There are three interconnected causes that might have caused the drama, and panic that was the Salem witch trial hysteria, which are: age, gender, and marital status, lying girls and they’re folk tales they made up, and a divided town.
When one evokes The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the image that comes to most peoples minds are that of witches with pointed hats riding broomsticks. This is not helped by the current town of Salem, Massachusetts, which profits from the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year by mythologizing the trials and those who were participants. While there have been countless books, papers, essays, and dissertations done on this subject, there never seems to be a shortage in curiosity from historians on these events. Thus, we have Bernard Rosenthal's book, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692, another entry in the historiographical landscape of the Salem Witch Trials. This book, however, is different from most that precede it in that it does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event; rather Rosenthal tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information principally from primary documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing so, the audience sees that there is much more to the individual stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has pervaded the subject since its happening. Instead of a typical thesis, Rosenthal writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the primary documents, so the book becomes more of an account of what happened according to primary sources in 1692 rather than a retelling under a new light.
Analysis and Comparison of the Witch Trials In modern times, the most infamous witch trials are the one that occurred in Salem. These specific witch trials are known for the unjust killings of several accused women and men. The Salem witch trials of 1692, is a big portion of what people refer to, when they want to analyze how Puritan life was during the colonial period. According to ‘Salem Witch Trials’, “The witch trials are often taken as a lens to view the whole Puritan period in New England and to serve as an example of religious prejudice…”
In addition, Britain’s societal transformation augmented women’s role in society, and according to Braybon in “Women Workers in The First World War,” “A completely different pattern of life was established. for women” and that society had “prevailing attitudes towards women as workers” (Braybon 16). The newfangled life given to women gave most women an enormous surge in recognition throughout society, as people valued women a lot more after they became the backbone of the production of nearly all British goods. Concurrently, King underscores this point in her novel, as throughout the novel, Mary is never discriminated against simply for being a woman. In preceding years and throughout history, society typically perceived women as naturally inferior to men, and women’s occupations were limited to taking care of the family and domestic occupations.
...ion. The Salem tragedy, which occurred in 1692, makes us feel sympathetic towards the innocent people that died. It almost brings tears to our eyes because these people gave in to death in order to maintain humanity on this Earth. Although the deaths of these people were very tragic, it clearly demonstrates that good deed will always over power evil. The people, who reinforced this statement, were people like John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse. These people uprooted the seeds for evil from the ground, to lay the seeds for goodness. Throughout history citizens have branded people as witches, and warlocks. Maybe, a person act's different than us, or they have strange habits, does this make them a witch? In the Massachusetts Bay Colony in January of 1692, you would be branded a witch for these odd doing's. Being accused of witchcraft had serious consequences (spark notes).
As the story of Tituba unfolds, it reveals a strong and kind hearted young woman, very different from the Tituba we meet in The Crucible. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem unveils for the reader, Tituba's life, loves, and losses. Her long and arduous journey through life is inspired by her many female counterparts, yet also hindered by her insatiable weakness for men, who also press upon her the realities of life.
Being isolated from any other group of people with different beliefs created a church led Puritan society that was not able to accept a lot of change. The church was against the devil, at the same time it was against such things as dancing and other premature acts. The reputation of the family was very important to the members of the community. When the girls were caught dancing in the woods, they lied to protect not just themselves but the reputation of their families. They claimed that the devil took them over and influenced them to dance. The girls also said that they saw members of the town standing with the devil. A community living in a puritan society like Salem could easily go into a chaotic state and have a difficult time dealing with what they consider to be the largest form of evil.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died an innocent death. All of those innocent people were accused of one thing, witchcraft. During 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts many terrible events happened. A group of Puritans lived in Salem during this time. They had come from England, where they were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs. They chose to come live in America and choose their own way to live. They were very strict people, who did not like to act different from others. They were also very simple people who devoted most of their lives to God. Men hunted for food and were ministers. Women worked at home doing chores like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. The Puritans were also very superstitious. They believed that the devil would cause people to do bad things on earth by using the people who worshiped him. Witches sent out their specters and harmed others. Puritans believed by putting heavy chains on a witch, that it would hold down their specter. Puritans also believed that by hanging a witch, all the people the witch cast a spell on would be healed. Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe. As one can see, the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
Puritans believed in the devil and his role as strong as they believed in God and his role. For many centuries, Puritans had the idea that the weakest individuals in society often committed diabolical acts and sins. Furthermore, Satan selected the most vulnerable individuals to do his bidding, among these individuals, women were often held responsible for many sins, including witchcraft. (Godbeer 12). According to Richard Godbeer, in his book, The Salem Witch Hunt, “it was Eve who first gave away to Satan and seduced Adam.” (Godbeer 12). In 1692, witchcraft became a panic among Puritan society. Even though both men and women were accused of witchcraft, women were seventy-six percent more likely to be accused in Salem than men. (Godbeer 12). Puritan society was a male dominate society and men looked down upon women. There were two particular reasons to why women were often accused of being witches. The first reason, was in due to the Puritan belief that women were the source of evil. The second reason was because of certain events that associated with accusations. These events were being of relatively low social status and income, being rich or financially independent and being a midwife or nurse.
...ty men and women had been accused of being witches. Of those, nineteen of them plead innocent and were hung. One man refused to acknowledge the accusation and refused to enter a plea. He was legally crushed to death. Of the ones who plead guilty and were sent to jail, many contracted illnesses and later died. The outbreak of hysteria caused many to suffer and die, families to break apart, and a society to succumb to the whims of children. In the Puritans quest to create a perfect society based on pure beliefs only created a society ripped apart by tension, anxiety and fear.
In 1692, the occurrence of “witchcraft” began after the Massachusetts Bay Charter revolution and the outbreak of small pox. The rebellion caused hysteria and a sad injustice. Friends were pinned against friends; upstanding citizens were forced to flee for their lives and men and women were put to death (Jurist Legal News and Research Services 2008).The fear of the devil influenced the cruelty that took place. Most of the settlers that established their homes in the colony were puritans, a member of a group of English Protestants who revolted against the Church of England. The belief that God punished sinful behavior with misfortune did not help circumstances. The puritans targeted outcasts, people who never really fit it in; they wanted to rid the towns of these suspected sinners.
The book The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, tells the rough, adventurous story of a fictitious character named Katherine (Kit) Tyler. Kit from Barbados, lived with her grandpa her whole life. But, after her grandfather died, everything in her life changed. A 50 year old man tried to propose to her and everyone pressured her to accept. She couldn’t handle the stress, so she had to leave. She went on a ship called the Dolphin to settle in Wethersfield with her aunt Rachel whom she had never met before. Along the way she meets Nathaniel (Nat) Eaton, who is the captain’s son. She also meets John Holbrook. Once she arrives to Wethersfield, she finds it very different from her home in Barbados. Everything is much more smaller
In conclusion, most of the female character are often isolated, victimized and ultimately killed by the male characters. Furthermore, it is rather ironic how Mary Shelly, the daughter Mary Wollestonecraft who wrote the Vindication of the Right of Women chooses to portray women. In this novel, the female characters are the exact opposite of the male characters; they are passive, weak and extremely limited. Mary Shelly repeatedly shows women in a victimized position exhibiting to the audience how things should not be. In conclusion, Mary Shelly’s novel is a reflection of how women were treated in the 1800’s.