Witchcraft in Different Literary Works

While humanity’s view of witchcraft has changed from hostile in the Middle Ages to playful enjoyment in the Harry Potter Age, the fact remains that humanity has an undeniable fascination with witchcraft. Similar to the religions of the world, witchcraft serves as an explanation for what we can’t understand. The animal response when confronted with the unknown is fear, but as more complex creatures, humans couple our instinctual fear with intense curiosity. Our most celebrated authors and playwrights explore different aspects of witchcraft, as well as the validity of famous accusations of alliances with the devil, in the plays, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Zabillet by Penelope Duckworth, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and the novel, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé.

When William Shakespeare wrote the Scottish play in the early 1600s, King James the First was on the English throne and urged his kingdom to pay special attention to witchcraft. King James was keenly superstitious, and in his book, Daemonologie, he writes as though the reader is caught up in a dialog between two men who debate the legitimacy of witchcraft and all that it entails. One of the chapter headings, “The Devilles contract with the Magicians: The division thereof in two partes: What is the difference betwixt Gods miracles and the Devils,” (King James the First) reflects the common belief of Shakespeare’s time, that supernatural forces of both good and evil existed, and that witches were the agents of evil. Shakespeare himself never explicitly stated that the three women who prophesized Macbeth’s fate in the play were witches, and it can be argued that the younger playwright, Thomas Middleton, who was involved in the adaptation of Macbeth in 1616, was responsible for any acknowledgment of sorcery. In an enquiry composed by Marcus Dahl, Marina Tarlinskaya, and Brian Vickers, Macbeth is studied line by line in an attempt to discover how much of the text is Shakespeare’s work and how much is Middleton’s revision. The report’s many conclusions generally agree that Shakespeare did not intend on emphasizing witchcraft in play, and that Thomas Middleton, who himself wrote a play entitled The Witch, slightly changed the original message of the play with his additions.

An aspect of the play that seems to imply that Shakespeare did not mean for the three women to be viewed as evil, is the fact that the main character, Macbeth, is the person who plans and executes the evil acts committed in the play. The three soothsayers simply predict the future. With support from his wife, Macbeth killed the King of Scotland when he was staying with Macbeth as his guest. Fearful that he would be found out, Macbeth committed a string of murders to cover his actions. It was he who perpetuated the evil, not the three women who spoke to him of his future. While influenced by King James’s obsession with witchcraft, Shakespeare’s true intent for the play was to comment on the goings-on of the time, which consisted of nation-wide fear of the supernatural and one of the first witch-hunts in England.

Just over a century before Shakspeare’s Macbeth was written, France’s beloved heroine, Joan of Arc, was burned at the stake over accusations of witchcraft and heresy. The play, Zabillet, by Penelope Duckworth, illustrates the re-trial that took place twenty years after Joan’s death. Joan’s mother, Zabillet, insisted on the re-trial, and Joan was found to be innocent and a victim of the corrupt practices of the church. Because she was a woman and held no power, Zabillet had to work hard to secure support for the re-trial. The word of a woman held little to no power against the word of a man, and only with overwhelming support of both men and women on the side of Joan did the trial become a success.

Although the allegations of Joan’s association with witchcraft proved to be false, evil was still present in the actions of the church officials who condemned Joan and threatened her with torture and psychological warfare to force her to comply with their demands. These officials feared that their actions against Joan would be discovered, and in an attempt to save their image they tried to throw the re-trial. The most vocal of the officials was a man named Bernard, who tried to influence members of the jury to give into personal bias. His actions perpetuated the evil that was first committed against Joan, but the judge presiding over the re-trial was fair and Joan’s name was cleared.

Two centuries later women still struggled to be heard. The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, tells the story of the Salem Witch Trials that occurred as the result of wide-spread hysteria in the Puritan village of Salem, Massachusetts. Because nearly all of the townspeople of Salem were deeply rooted in the Puritan way of life, they also earnestly believed that the Devil was real and was continually trying to tempt them into performing his evil acts. Due to a lack of physical activity and a scarcity of food, the women of Salem often grew frail and sick. A few women resorted to learning the healing properties of local herbs, and they soon grew reputations as healers. However, fear of the unknown once again captivated the minds of the masses, and these women were accused of gaining their healing powers from the devil. However, the only evil present in the colony was the spite and infatuation with power of a group of young girls led by Abigail Williams. These girls began to have trance-like fits and accused women with shaky reputations of being witches. W.S. Nevins of the Salem Observer commented on the power that these young girls had, saying, “The terrible witchcraft delusion in Salem in 1692 was caused almost entirely by children. But for a half-dozen girls, those men and women would not have been hung on Gallows Hill,” (Rosenthal).

In the play, Abigail Williams was spurred on by her desire for revenge against Goody Proctor, who threw her out of the house when she found that her husband, John, was having an affair with Abigail. Despite their innocence, many women were condemned to the gallows because of false testimony borne against them by frightened people. The judges in charge of the official court proceedings were devout Puritans and twisted the testimony of many witnesses. These judges, along with Abigail’s determination to send Goody Proctor to her grave, perpetuated the evil of the trials until John Proctor was hanged for his attempts to save his wife. Although the trials appear to show progress in men trusting women since the judges took the word of Abigail and the girls over the word of John Proctor, the reality of the situation was that the Puritan church was using the girls to further their own cause. John Proctor had long been a thorn in the church’s side since he did not go to church, and the witch trials provided a way for the church to make an example out of John Proctor. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to portray the prejudiced proceedings of the Salem Witch Trials, and show how easily people were corrupted and condemned out of fear of the unknown.

The novel, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, by Maryse Condé is an imagining of the life of the character Tituba, a black slave from Barbados who was one of many condemned women in the Salem Witch Trials and a minor character in The Crucible. Born on the island of Barbados, Tituba witnessed her mother’s murder at a young age and was raised by an elderly woman named Mama Yaya who practiced the art of healing with the aid of supernatural spirits. Before Mama Yaya passed away, Tituba learned enough about the ways of healing and speaking with spirits to be called a witch when she practiced these arts in Salem. Even though Tituba only used her powers to heal, Abigail Williams accused her of casting evil spells and convinced the other girls of Salem to do so as well. Once again, Abigail was a source of the true evil in Salem, and Tituba was a victim with the misfortune of being both black and a woman, guaranteeing that she would not be able to defend herself in court. Author Maryse Condé implies through Abigail’s actions that some people are born evil, and that these people perpetuate evil because it is their nature to do so. The novel also brings to light the similarities between the Puritan faith and Tituba’s natural religion in that both are deeply rooted in the existence of supernatural forces and the struggle to resist evil entities.

Our natural instincts of fear when confronted with the unknown color the decisions we make, and often lead to a scramble to find a scapegoat on which to blame their fears. In Macbeth, the true source of evil was not the three so-called witches, but Macbeth himself, who tried to fulfill prophecies prophecy was by committing murder to alarming degree. In Zabillet, the pride of the church nearly caused justice to go unfulfilled, and Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft because the church feared her power. The men and women condemned in the Salem Witch Trials, the most famous witch-hunt in history, were actually the victims of a greater evil, the evil of the human need for revenge and power. This panic-induced manslaughter occurs anytime we are confronted with the unknown, not only when witchcraft is involved, a fact proved by the McCarthy era in American history. These literary works serve as reminders to encourage humanity to explore our fascinations with ideas such as witchcraft, but to never again allow these ideas to color our ethical and moral decisions.