The Devil In The Shape Of A Woman Summary

New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. Kindle Edition.

In her book titled, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, historian Carol F. Karlsen looked to portray the relationship between gender and the witch craze that encompassed much of New England during the Early Modern era. First published in 1987, Karlsen work proved to be groundbreaking as it focused solely on the female and their position in colonial America’s Puritan society. Her research, spanning the course of 80 plus years, suggests that those prosecuted and accused of witchcraft were generally older, independent women. These women, Karlsen claims, were branded witches because, in some form or another, they disturbed the social hierarchy put in place by Puritan religious and economic principles. Presenting such a strong argument on the foundation of a wide variety of evidence, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman proves to be an enlightening look into colonial New England’s witch hunt.

Carol Karlsen, being a renowned historian whose focus lies in American social and cultural history, proves well qualified to write on topics

It is in this second section of Karlsen’s work that she can be seen using a plethora of primary sources in order to determine the demography of the female witch. Throughout this section of her work, Karlsen can be seen portraying her finding in the form of demographic tables, as she groups the female witches of New England by age, marital status, and inheritance patterns (Locations 889, 903, 920, 1128, 1205, 1225). This use of supplemental material allows the reader to better understand the mixed statistics that Karlsen is trying to portray. Eventually, Karlsen concludes that independent, older women, who had, or eventually would, acquire economic authority through the form of property, were most likely to be accused of witchcraft (Locations 1273,