WITCHCRAFT IN COLONIAL AMERICA

Katherine Howe, ed., The Penguin Book of Witches (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2014) ("This book argue for witchcraft's presence in the mainstream of thought in colonial North American culture, extending beyond passing fits of unreason or hysteria. Belief in witchcraft was not an anomalous throwback to late medieval thought by provincial colonists, nor was it an embarrassing blip in an otherwise steady march to an idealized nationhood. It was not a disease. It was not a superstition. Witchcraft's presence or absence was constitutive to the colonial order. It was a touchstone that reinforce what was normal and what was aberrant. For upper echelons of society--in the world of the Protestant church and the court system--prosecution of witchcraft allowed for the consolidation of power and the enforcement of religious and social norms. For common people, belief in witchcraft explained away quotidian unfairness and misfortune. These two circle of belief intersected in the bodies of individuals, usually women, who were out of step with their society, and who were thought to have pledged themselves to the Devil in exchange for the power to work their will through invisible means." Id. at xiii.).