The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692 and \
In \admired and critically discussed stories, he probes the psychology of Puritan Salem's witchcraft frenzy to offer insights into the moral complexity of human nature. A dark, penetrating tale, as \Herman Melville, \ Hawthorne at his best--skillful writer of symbolic allegory and astute interpreter of Puritan history.
[Hawthorne] did not write out of ignorant fantasies about
The Black Man of the Forest with the Puritans. \His Familiar the issue of the Salem witch trials, but a number of its characters have the names of Salem residents charged with witchcraft, and its major action takes place in the noisy pasture of the period designated as a witches' gathering place.
Hawthorne does not simply provide a record of the time, he uses history to examine issues of community and individualism explaining both the madness in Salem and much subsequent madness
It's not surprising that Hawthorne was drawn to the witchcraft episode. His family history gave him a personal connection to the tragic events of 1692.
As for Hawthorne's ties with the persecution of the witches, they too [like his ties with the persecution of Quakers] are based partly on his paternal ancestors, in particular on John Hathorne. John Hathorne was also the famous \as Charles Upham, for playing a major role in the witchcraft trials in Salem and Salem Village in 1692. According to his descendant [Nathaniel], John Hathorne \persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.
His ancestors' zealous attacks against Quakers, Indians, and accused \source of interest and of conflict for Hawthorne, who so often explored this history and his
connection to it in his writings. In \into the plot and theme of his story and is perfectly clear-cut on witchcraft, as perhaps he had to be to purge himself in his own mind of the sins of his ancestors. In his stories the Salem outburst was a `terrible delusion,' a `universal madness,' in which `innocent persons' `died wrongfully' \
In \
protagonist its unwitting yet not quite unwilling victim. . . . [Hawthorne] recognizes the finality of the problem [presented] there: the difficulty of detecting a witch is
distressingly similar to the radically Puritan problem of discovering a saint. They stand or fall together. . . .\world. Its logic of evidence could not stand the Devil's own test of faith (286, 312). (fromThe Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales, 1984, courtesy of Dr. Michael J. Colacurcio)
Hawthorne and Witchcraft: The Historical Context
In seventeenth-century New England, most people shared a strong belief in witchcraft, and in the \the Devil against the Puritan experiment.
The origins of the belief in witchcraft and \estimates, five hundred thousand people were executed for witchcraft between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Prior to the Salem outbreak of 1692, almost three hundred people had been accused of witchcraft in New England; more than thirty had been hanged (\not burned in England or the American colonies).
The flair up of accusations in 1692, beginning at Salem Village (now Danvers) , spread to many other communities in Massachusetts and was the worst and most dramatic episode of witch hunting in colonial America. When it was over, twenty people had been executed-nineteen
hanged and one, Giles Corey, pressed to death. More than a hundred people had been jailed, and several died during their imprisonment.
Both men and women were accused, imprisoned, and executed for witchcraft prior to and during the Salem hysteria. In colonial New England, however, almost all accused \women, who tended to be independent and nonconfomist.
Generally, historians have seen the Salem witchcraft hysteria as significant because it was the last time in American history that accusations of witchcraft would lead to execution. The episode and its aftermath also marked the end of Puritan authority in New England and, with dawning rationalism, the belief in devils striking out from some \
