Book Review

Elizabeth Reis wants to know why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why more women than men confessed to witchcraft, and why women accused other women of witchcraft. A number of recent studies have profitably explored these questions. Can another study of women and witchcraft offer any new insights? Reis's careful rereading of the evidence allows her to carve out a niche in the ever-expanding field of Puritan woman and witchcraft. She offers a fresh and imaginative approach to the topic through an examination of the relationship between Puritanism, women, and Satan.	1
The witchcraft episodes were intimately related to the religious culture of Puritan New England. Arguing that historians have underestimated the religious context of the witchcraft trials, she investigates how Puritan theology functioned as a lived religion. Her analysis concentrates on "the darker side" of Puritan religious teaching that she believes was a source of high anxiety for the laity. Men and women both lived with the doctrine of original sin. Puritan children "absorbed a conviction of their sinfulness" that continued into adulthood (33). For some, it created a tension that was unbearable. Assurance of salvation vied with the certainty of depravity. This profoundly affected how some women responded to witchcraft.	2
Reis's walk on the darker side leads her to challenge historians who have discounted the intensity of the colonists' beliefs about the devil's power. She examines Puritan belief about the devil by analyzing what ministers preached to their congregations about their great nemesis Satan. Puritans accorded great power to Satan who "was a real presence on the supernatural landscape" (72). On this landscape, God and Satan competed for their souls. Laity and clergy, women and men, believed the devil intruded in their lives. Satan's potential to possess Puritan souls was central to the witchcraft dramas. Most Puritans were as familiar with the ubiquitous Satan's wily ways as they were with Christ's unfailing goodness. Sermon after sermon drew attention to the battle raging between God and Satan. The witch trials were about religious loyalty, good and evil, God and the devil.	3
Reis's analysis of Satan and women is among the book's strongest points. She argues that the women and men who heard these messages about Satan internalized them differently. As a result, responses to Satan's assaults on their souls varied along gender lines. "Lay women and men feared hell equally, but lay women" believed that it was "their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they may have committed" (37). The ministers helped acculturate women to believe that they were "weaker vessels" who were less able to resist Satan's unrelenting pursuit of their souls. Women, especially, believed themselves to be damned.	4
Puritans rejected the covenant of good works when it came to salvation. But as Reis describes these people, they seem to have accepted a covenant of bad works. Predestination notwithstanding, sinners could indeed work their way into hell. "In practice, the theology of predestination was Calvinist when it came to getting into heaven, but Arminian in terms of getting into hell" (19). Women, especially, believed that they could affect one possible outcome, that of sinning. The laity, the magistrates, and the clergy all assumed the maleficium was rooted in complicity with Satan. The prevailing cultural assumption that women were less able to resist Satan and more open to his advances, made it easier for women and men alike to accept the woman as witch.	5
The author's analysis of confessions sheds considerable light on how Puritan culture constructed gender roles. The trial records portray a cultural and religious world that was deeply gendered. The testimony against the accused linked unwomanly, sinful behavior with witchcraft. Witnesses for the accused had to convince the court that particular defendants were model Puritan women. Witches were women who did not appear to conform to prescriptive norms of female deportment. Early in the Salem proceedings it became clear that the court did not hang those who confessed. While Reis recognizes that confessions saved lives, she challenges those historians who argue that the women who confessed acted solely to avoid the gallows. Women were more likely than men to be convinced of their own complicity with the devil, and given such convictions about themselves they could more easily imagine that other women were equally damned. A confessing woman was the model of Puritan womanhood, even though she was admitting to the worst of sins. She confirmed her society's belief in both God and the devil. A good Puritan repented her sins.	6
Reis's emphasis on the ubiquitous belief in Satan and his extraordinary powers helps to explain why the magistrates accepted spectral evidence, those bizarre visions of the laity, and why members of the clergy were so reluctant to speak against its acceptance. Spectral evidence forced magistrates and ministers to confront the implications of the devil's capabilities. Trapped by their own theology, neither party dared deny the possibility that Satan had adopted these bizarre guises. The court's vigorous prosecutions and convictions in 1692 forced a rethinking of the issues by the clergy and laity alike.	7
Her survey of the supernatural landscape of New England led Reis to challenge Perry Miller's dictum that the "intellectual history of New England up to 1720 can be written as though no such thing ever happened." The Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues plausibly, changed "the concept of evil." Satan as a physical entity receded into the background as Puritans took more responsibility for their own sins and their own souls. The notion that Satan controlled sinners faded in the early eighteenth century.	8
Reis's insights illuminate the role of Puritan women and how they lived their theology. But what of those who were not church women? For example, she pays scant attention to the confession of Tituba, the West Indian slave woman, whose early vivid confession set the tone for the trials. Why did she confess? What did her confession mean in the context of the darker side of Puritan theology? These questions remain unanswered in what is otherwise an excellent retelling of colonial America's most fascinating episode.	9
John D. Krugler Marquette University

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