Reel History 3: The Crucible: Witchcraft and Puritan America

Always screaming. Screaming at nothing.

It's often said that the Pilgrims came to North America to escape religious persecution, but North America wasn't even their first choice- in 1593, the members of the English Separatist Church went to the Netherlands to find an opportunity in a Protestant country. Some say it was the economic situation in the Netherlands, others say it was to flee the lax attitudes of the Dutch and their ideas of 'too much religious freedom'. Either way, they hopped out of there as soon as they could, found financial backers in England, and 102 people made their way in the Mayflower to Massachusetts, where they would reach Cape Cod in 1620 and go on to found the second successful English settlement after Jamestown. And though they would be indispensable to American self-governance, their tolerance of religious freedom was surprisingly low, considering why they left, and the new settlers created a society as inflexible as the one they escaped.

The terms 'blue' and 'red' states in American culture come surprisingly late in the storied 230+ years of political partisanship. They were coined in 2000 by Tim Russert of MSNBC to differentiate liberal and conservative states in the Bush v. Gore election, and have been used as shorthand for two competing versions of the true America ever since. And though, from the news, it seems like politics in the United States has never been worse in terms of mudslinging and bickering and declarations of immorality, there has always really been two competing ideals struggling for control: from the Federalists versus Democrat-Republicans in the 18th century to the 'real' Midwest Americans versus East Coast Liberals today, competition for political (and moral) superiority has been around since the beginning. People can complain all they want, but it's just how it's always been.

Heck, it's even been like that since before the Constitution. Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, and the 1996 movie based upon that work (screenplay also written by Arthur Miller) draws a comparison between the Salem witch hunts of 1692 and the Communist witch hunts of the 1950's, and tells a story of the two competing societies in the process. After his friend, the director Elia Kazan, had been called to defend himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, Miller researched the events of the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials and wrote The Crucible. He himself was eventually dragged in front of McCarthy and after he refused to give anyone up as a Communist, Miller was denied a passport to travel to Great Britain and attend the play's London opening. Miller made a pretty important case then- as Jon Meacham says in his (vastly unrelated) book Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power: "History mattered enormously, for it could repeat itself at any time in any generation. And if that history brought tyranny, it was to be fought at all costs." Many generations after Salem, innocent people were being brought forward to defend themselves from accusations that would ruin their lives, and Miller found the parallel.

Miller didn't have to look hard, really. Early America, much like Europe, has a history of persecuting people accused of witchcraft- the first incident, a hanging in Connecticut, occurring in 1647. Various other accusations and trials took place in the following decades, with more hangings taking place in 1662. Because religion was so tied with every aspect of society, the political leaders of Puritan America were often religious leaders too, and with the news of many trials in native Europe, as well as books like Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions and Wonders of the Invisible World, made witchcraft a tangible fear. It's this fear that created the Salem Witch Trials.

With The Crucible, Miller got a lot of the names right- of the accusers, the accused, and the judges- but changed some of the character traits to strengthen the reasons for the girls to lie. The lead accuser, Abigail Williams (played with just pure malice by Winona Ryder), was not 17 as portrayed in the movie; she was actually 11, but her age was changed to make a relationship with John Proctor (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) possible. But it's quite close to the true events, which transpired as follows: Abigail Williams and a cousin were playing witchcraft in the woods, and when the two felt they might have gone too far began freaking out, they exhibited signs that Abigail's uncle, the Reverend Samuel Parris, could only diagnose as witchcraft. The girls took the story from there, accusing anyone in sight for their condition.

Despite the trials bearing the name Salem, making it seem like there was one location where these accusations occurred, there were actually two Salems- Salem Village and Salem Town. The rural village blamed their urban kinsmen for the evil demons among them because there was so much strife between them- property lines, church privileges, etc., etc.- and the Town was seen as one of your usual den of vices, as big cities are wont to be. It's this kind of relationship that begot many of the early accusations- Ann Puntnam Jr., one of the first girls to go along with her friends and feign possession (she later recanted and apologized), is now seen to have been motivated by her parents to accuse family enemies of witchcraft. And of the first three women accused, all were different from the Puritan norm- Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; Sarah Osbourne, a woman rarely seen in church and the re-married wife of an indentured servant; and Tituba, a slave belonging to the the Reverend Parris who was accused of corrupting them in the first place. All in all, 19 were hanged, one man was pressed to death, and at least five more died in prison (oddly enough, Tituba escaped death, despite being the first to 'confess'). Many more were accused and imprisoned, without any evidence other than screaming girls and confessions under torture.

So say what you will about today's climate of accusation and partisanship, but the United States has come a long way in creating a system of due process that prevented more of these incidences from happening again, even if it lapses now and again (as Arthur Miller experienced first hand). But the Salem Witch Trials dug Puritan governorship its own grave, in a way; says US historian George Lincoln Burr, "more than once it has been said, too, that the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered." At least today, being accused of immorality won't get you hanged or pressed.

The European witch-trials are often exaggerated to demonize religion, like when Bertrand Russell said that millions were killed in his Why I Am Not a Christian; in reality, the most common estimates are between forty and sixty thousand between 1480 and 1750 (forty and sixty thousand too many, of course). But the Salem witch trials are still a shameful period, a dreadful case of mass hysteria in an isolated theocracy, and that's a fact Americans never really forgot. An example to go along with Miller's: there was one judge of the 1692 trials who never showed any remorse for his part in what transpired, and one of his ancestors altered his name to hide the relation.

The judge's name was John Hathorne, and his much more famous ancestor added a 'w' to become Nathaniel Hawthorne.

NEXT WEEK: Some true American propaganda, Roland Emmerich's The Patriot, directed by a German and starring two Australians.

Also: Ann Putnam, Jr. (called Ruth in the movie to avoid confusion with her mother) delivered this confession post-hangings:

I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father's family in the year about ninety-two; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several people for grievous crimes, whereby their lives was taken away from them, whom, now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though, what was said or done by me against any person, I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan.

And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humble for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were taken away or accused.

I should add my views on the movie: it was good. A good movie. Look for Daniel Day-Lewis in, by my counts, three more movies in this series, as well as more information about the McCarthy Trials of the 1950's- I think I didn't discuss that as much as I should have.