The Role of Bishop in the Salem Witch Trials: A Gender Perspective - Prof. Janet P. Smith, Study notes of World History

Download The Role of Bishop in the Salem Witch Trials: A Gender Perspective - Prof. Janet P. Smith and more Study notes World History in PDF only on Docsity! Kelley Bumgarner Section # 004 Seat # 103 Document 4-5 “Words of the Bewitched” Pg. 76 1.Cotton Mather, (1692) published in 1991. The intended audience was those in the towns reading about the witch trials that were going on. 2.Reading and Discussion: 1. There were many person’s who came forth with testimonies again Bishop, back during this time word of mouth was a main source of evidence against a person. Because Bishop pled “not guilty” this allowed the court to bring in many people to testify against her. The reason everything that Bishop had done that involved “witchcraft” only came out in 1692, and not before then is because no one had a way to explain the occurrences. Then after others had been accused of “witchcraft”, then those who had taken notice of similarities in the actions figured Bishop also was performing “witchcraft”. 2. According to her accusers she had a number of instances where she had witch like occurrences. One instance is where her “shape” appeared and tormented the person or persons. Other times where her “shape” would appear and it would bite, hit, or abuse the person. I believe the reason the town would place blame on someone rather that reasoning with chance or accident is because people like to be able to have a solid reasoning to explain what happened. It makes