¡Descarga The Salem Witch Trials: A Historical Tragedy and Its Impact on Literature y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura inglesa solo en Docsity! Class Schedule: The Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch Trials were a spectacular episode in American colonial history. The accusations of witchcraft against neighbors by a group of seemingly afflicted girls led to a frenzy of fear that transfixed Puritan Massachusetts in 1692. Before it ran its course, over 150 people had been imprisoned and twenty executed. Four other prisoners died in jail. As the trials came to an end, a war of words erupted. A prosperous merchant and mathematician named Thomas Brattle penned a letter highly critical of the proceedings. A forerunner of the Enlightenment, he expressed skepticism about the magical torments inflicted on the accusing girls. On the other hand, the distinguished minister Cotton Mather defended the witch prosecutions with his Wonders of the Invisible World (1692). Mather believed that the punishment of the accused had saved Massachusetts from a satanic plot. Echoes of these two positions have reverberated in American arts and letters to the present day. Nathaniel Hawthorne's regret that an ancestor played a leading role in the Salem trials helped inspire his The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Arthur Miller used the 1692 witch hunt as a metaphor for McCarthyism in The Crucible (1953). Popular culture has often embraced the notion that there really were witches in Salem, in productions as diverse as H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927) and the television series The Vampire Diaries (2009). History, however, has been emphatic that what happened at Salem was a tragedy. This began very early on. Within a few years, the citizens and authorities of Massachusetts realized that the witch craze had been a miscarriage of justice and began the slow process of rehabilitating the victims and making legal amends. Scholars have long attempted to explain this outbreak of witch mania, with theories ranging from class tensions to settlement patterns in Salem Village. ARTHUR MILLER’S The Crucible(1953) Summary of plot: The play is set in 1692, in Puritan New England. Betty Parris, daughter of the minister of Salem, suffers from an illness. Many think her possessed. Her father brings in a witchcraft expert, Hale. During his interrogation of Parris's slave, Tituba, and some of the village girls, the girls cry out that they have seen people with the devil. The leader of the girls, Abigail Williams, had an affair with an independent-minded farmer named John Proctor. Proctor ended the affair, but Abigail still harbors feelings for him. The second act takes place in the Proctor house. Proctor and his wife Elizabeth suffer marital difficulties as the result of Proctor's affair with Abigail. A court has been set up in Salem to try those whom the girls have accused of witchcraft. John debates about telling the court that he knows the girls are faking, a fact he learned from Abigail. As he and Elizabeth discuss this, Hale arrives to report that Abigail has mentioned Elizabeth's name in court. Hale, knowing the Proctors' good reputation, hopes to clear her before the accusations accelerate. Before the end of the conversation, the Marshall arrives and arrests Elizabeth. In Act 3, John goes to the court with a deposition from his servant, Mary Warren, stating that she did not see the spirits she pretended to see. The head of the court, Danforth, almost believes Mary, but the girls cry out that Mary Warren is sending a spirit against them. This angers Danforth and frightens Mary, who wavers. Proctor then charges the girls and calls Abigail a whore. He tells the court of their affair, which Abigail denies. Danforth sends for Elizabeth to ask her the truth. Elizabeth tells the court that John did not have an affair with Abigail. When Hale sides with Proctor, Abigail again cries out that she sees a spirit sent by Mary Warren. Mary snaps and accuses Proctor of sending spirits to make her overthrow the court. She runs to Abigail, again joining the girls, and Danforth believes the performance. He demands that Proctor confess to witchcraft or hang. Hale, in protest, quits the court. The fourth act takes place in the jail. Proctor will hang at dawn because he has not confessed. He learns that Elizabeth is pregnant and will be spared the rope until her child is born. Hale has returned to counsel the prisoners to confess - he prizes their lives above
