Salem Possessed Summary

Were the primary actors and accusers of the Salem witch trials a truly afflicted group of innocent Puritan villagers, or was there something more sinister to their accusations? Throughout the book, “Salem Possessed” by P. Boyer and S. Nissenbaum, a case is made to the legitimacy of the afflicted’s accusations of the witches. That they were perhaps victims of their own subconscious or of their own conflicted feelings towards the parties who had wronged them. Therefore, in being unable to confront said parties, such as Thomas Putnam’s step-mother, Mary Veren; the Putnams and the families tied to them instead projected their spite on other outside members of their community.

While this theory itself is easily dreadful enough, there is another more common and even more malicious theory. In “The devil discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692” author E. Robinson argues that the work of the parties in league with the Putnam’s were a coalition of conspirators working to take out any one in the community who they disliked and might have benefited by their demise. That the accusations by the likes of Ann Putnam and her daughter, Ann Putnam Jr., were simply a rouse and they conspired and manipulated others to follow a very obvious agenda in their accusations in a bid to gain land and influence in the Salem Village.

Boyer and S. Nissenbaum reason that many of the accusations that were made by Ann Putnam, especially the earliest accusations toward Rebecca Nurse and Martha Cory, may have been her simply projecting her ill will of her mother-in-law, Mary Veren. They go on to say, “The source of that drive lay in the fact that Ann Putnam was unable or unwilling publicly to vent her terrible rage on its living source ... Of this redirected rage, Rebecca Nurse, like Martha Cory before her, was the innocent victim.” (Boyer & Nissenbaum,