The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

by Carol F. Karlsen

Confessing to "familiarity with the devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was "taken with very strange Fits," fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem.


More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Witches, American History, Witchcraft, Feminism, Religion

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly captivating. I read this as research for a novel I'm writing, but quickly fell under Carol Karlsen's narrative spell. Scholarly and well-researched -- and filled with beautifully drawn characters.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a revised dissertation, this book is quite good. Karlsen doesn't focus only on Salem, either. This is a study of how women were demonized early in the history of the northeast colonies. There are some charts with statistics to make the point that women were overwhelmingly targeted as "witches" in a frenzy that we still have trouble comprehending today.

This book shows how land disputes were often behind accusations of witchcraft. Land and property could simply be stolen from those accused and jealousy and paranoia fueled a national kind of misogyny of the period. Such studies are not easy for a man to read. Why it should be that one sex supposes itself to be superior is a question with which academics continue to struggle. Karlsen demonstrates that being female alone didn't make one a perceived witch. Being poor could be a strong contributing factor. Or having enough valuables to attract jealousy without courting powerful friends could also be enough to lead to an accusation.

Yet another informative aspect of this book is what it shows about how beliefs in the Devil grew. Puritans and others did believe in the Devil, but really had no conception of what it really was. In this respect it resembled biblical times. The witch hunts of early America began before Salem and continued afterward, but with declining intensity. What Karlsen makes clear is that these were dangerous times to be female. Especially in America.

For those who'd like to read more, I blogged about this book as well: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is both fascinating and frustrating. Its subject matter (witchcraft accusations in New England between about 1630 and 1692, which is the date of the Salem "outbreak") is compelling in that sort of oh god I can't look trainwreck fashion; I found it frustrating because Karlsen's theoretical models for how witchcraft accusations work socially and the cultural work they do are almost naively simplistic. And she has the problem I've noticed over and over again in books about non-"rational" beliefs in previous eras, where she gives lip service to the idea that the people involved, both witches and their accusers, believed in witches and Satan and were entirely sincere in their testimony, but her analysis assumes, over and over again, that we can treat these cases as if their subjects were consciously aware that they were lying. This tendency is especially notable in her chapter on possessed people, where her analysis makes it hard to imagine the young women involved didn't know exactly what they were doing. And that makes it even more difficult than it already is to understand the human beings involved in these terrible events.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel as if this book should be required reading for any student of Feminism in America. I couldn't believe how little of this information about witchcraft I knew, considering the praise this book has received since its original publication. Do not skip the afterword. It's a heavy academic read, so as a grad of Anthropology I loved every bit of it, but it is likely too dense for those who prefer light novels and occasional autobiographies.

[Lynette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic thesis on the New England witch craze! I've read a lot of books specifically on the Salem witch trials, but this one looks at New England as a whole. The reason I purchased this is because we just learned the my husband is descended from Lydia Gilbert, who was (supposedly) hanged for being a witch in 1654 (or, at least, he's descended from her husband. History can't agree upon which children were hers.)

I absolutely loved this deep dive into how gender played a crucial role in accusations. I realize this is nothing new, as this book came out over 40 years ago and has clearly been the basis for similar reasoning, but it was so well done and in-depth that I learned things about the Puritans' thinking I didn't know about before. Throughout the read I was telling my husband, "this is still going on, but in a different form!" - especially with the role women played in accusing other women.

Also, I don't believe in hell, but I hope a special one exists for Cotton Mather, one of the most despicable people to ever walk the earth. I've really hated that guy since I first learned about him 25 years ago.

[TheNinjaReadsHorror · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is something that should be taught in all US History courses. It covers beyond just the Salem atrocities and I don't need to say it but, it is an important part of women's history in this country. A perfect non-fiction for autumn. Of course, since this is an academic reading, it's quite dense but the statistics are horrific.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

God this was good! Totally my catnip!

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karlsen did a terrific job of gathering demographic information about the witch hunts in colonial America. She analyzes the sex, marital status, age, economic status, religious affiliation of both those accused of being witches and their accusers. She uses original source material and only draws inferences when they seem logical. She makes several conclusions about why some women were accused of being witches:
a. those who were due to inherit enough money to be independent;
b. those who had no husband or sons to care for them;
c. those who challenged the prevailing Puritan beliefs such as Quakers;
d. those who did not demonstrate sufficient subservience to the church or their husbands;
e. those who were past child-bearing years and were no longer valued for that function;
f. those who challenged the social hierarchical order;
g. those who were too poor to support themselves and were considered a social burden.
She also examines that changing numbers and types of responses to charges of witchcraft at different stages of social development. She was feminist in her analysis and acknowledged, unlike many male researchers, that witch hunts were targeted at women in order to keep them in line and to rid society of any rebellion, real or perceived.

[Maya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish this hellhole of a book. Not interesting at all sorry to the fans.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect that the reluctance to let go of "bad character" or "deviant personality" interpretations in light of these women's life histories is related to the deeply embedded tendency in our society to hold women ultimately responsible for violence committed against them.
-Carol Karlsen in the Afterword to the Norton Paperback Edition

Carol Karlsen's The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is excellent. It's very thoroughly researched with tons of information about New England witches, like their family histories, their financial stability, and their legal battles. Karlsen also examines Puritan writings, New England law, and demographic data. The overall result is a detailed picture of the accused witches and a thorough understanding of the cultural context of witchcraft beliefs and accusations.

Karlsen convincingly makes several very interesting arguments:
-She argues that women accused of witchcraft were not more likely than the rest of the population to be ill-tempered and contentious.
-She argues that women accused of witchcraft were more likely to stand to inherit property and/or to wield more economic power than the typical 17th century New England woman.
-She argues that poor women and older women were more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be executed for witchcraft.
-She argues that women who were young and unmarried were more likely to be accusers.
-She argues that witchcraft accusations, in general, were a symptom of men's discomfort with women having economic or sexual freedom.
-She argues that servants in more "godly" households - like minister's households - were more likely to be possessed.
*This is only a partial list of the interesting and novel ideas in the book.

Karlsen also makes the more obvious argument that witches were more likely to be women and that it was a gendered phenomenon, but apparently some popular scholarship rejects that interpretation!

Reader beware, it is a little dry and there is a decent amount of math. It's worth it, though.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though this is obviously an academic text, it's fluently written and completely captivating. I've tended not to read histories of the Colonial Americas, so this had a lot of information that echoes some of the similar events in England.

I was particularly glad that the author didn't just handwave away the actual beliefs of the people involved in the various witchcraft outbreaks, from the accused, the accusing, the possessed, magistrates and other leaders, and random observers. It's easy to read the outbreaks as cynical ploys rather than outcroppings of genuine belief that was twisted out of shape by severe sexual and economic pressures.

Regards to that twisting, it's infuriating to watch a theology twist itself into knots to ensure that women are kept in line as Puritans shifted from woman-as-necessary-evil to woman-as-necessary-good but only if she is subject to man. But I'm not really a Puritan fangirl to start with, so it wasn't precisely a shocker.

[lew:) · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

I went to Boston this summer on vacation with my family and was so excited, as a history buff, to hear we were also planning on going to Salem. Since reading Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" in high school, I've been obsessed with New England's witchcraft craze and had the best experience being able to be in the town it all began in. I bought this book at the Salem Witchcraft Museum after a historical tour and started it almost immediately after I purchased it.

That being said, this book is definitely dense. Its a great historical record of the witch trials throughout not just Salem, but all of New England, but it definitely is not a book to read all in one sitting (I read it, listened to the audiobook, read it, listened to the audiobook, etc).

If you're at all interested in the Salem witch trails/the witchcraft craze in America, pick this up! It has a ton of great information on the time period, the people affected, and even some of the "how/why" it all happened!!

[Kerry]

In The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol F. Karlsen researched the New England witch trials beginning in 1620 and including the Salem “outbreak” in 1692-1693. These were hard times for the colonists, with harsh weather, failed crops, hostile native populations, and religious fear. Karlsen presented interesting facts and interpretations of the events, observing that accused women were often single or widowed, and often older (past childbearing age), and often with the opportunity to inherit. However, she also points out that women who were “a burden” on the burgeoning society were most likely to be charged, convicted, and executed. Though there were men accused of witchcraft in New England at that time, the majority of those accused were women. This book draws from original source materials such as court records and includes charts to support the presented suppositions.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reaches a lot of conclusions I feel as if I already knew about witches in the American colonies (and more specifically in Salem) in the 17th century, but the way she so comprehensively argues and demonstrates these points makes it a worthwhile read. Paying special attention to the economic, religious and social standings of women (and their relationships with men) highlights that the problems the nature of patriarchy created were also addressed only by more patriarchy.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book started as a dissertation and because of that is very well organized, with a clearly laid out thesis and strong evidence to back it up. It is also easy to read -- the author has a scholarly yet conversational voice. I also found the afterward, where the author responds to criticism of her thesis, to be an interesting addition.

[gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great! Super informative and to the point.

[Jessica Nish · Rating 4 out of 5]

My biggest takeaway is that the attitudes of Puritans seeped down the centuries and helped form our subconscious and conscious opinions about women and our “place” in society.

[Elesha Maynard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dry. Even for the genre.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed learning about witch trials outside of salem
also the author refers to a large amount of witch accusations in a small window as "outbreaks" which makes it sound like witches are infectious

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this fairly disappointing. I think I was expecting more of a general survey of the various witchcraft accusations and the attitudes towards witchcraft, but instead it was mostly "the phenomenon of witchcraft accusations through a feminist historical lens". The biggest problem with this, in my opinion, is that it seemed taken for granted that people would want to oppress women, and so the mechanisms by which witchcraft accusations (and particularly successful witchcraft accusations) tended to hit specific demographics harder seems to have been neglected.

One example of this is that Karlsen suggests that one way witchcraft accusations were used was to keep inherited wealth and wealth in general in the hands of men, but this seems at odds with human nature to me. Most people care whether they, their families and whatever tribal associations they have control the wealth (generally in that order). It is much more likely that distributing the control of wealth along sexist and racist lines is in fact a "plausibly deniable" cover for reappropriating wealth rather than a deeply-held justification. In this light (and particularly since being sexist was not frowned upon in the 17th century), it makes little sense that people would use witchcraft as a cover for sexist redistribution, since the sexist redistribution is itself a cover for something else. To me, the groups she identified as the biggest targets for witchcraft accusations - unmarried women, widows, older women and especially lower classes - seemed to be the ones least likely to be able to defend themselves because their position in society was already marginal.

To be charitable to Karlsen, this book seems more academic in nature than populist, which makes me think it's possible that the problems I've identified are not flaws in logic but elisions made to avoid repeating the things everyone in the field already knows. She certainly seems quite detailed and fairly balanced, and this book comes off much more as an exploration of the phenomenon than any sort of polemic about the patriarchy. Still, it did leave me feeling like the causes and consequences have not been adequately fleshed out.

2.5 of 5 stars

[Annalisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and readable analysis of the witchcraft craze throughout New England in the mid-to-late 1600s, focusing on the age, marital status, and economic situations of the accused witches. The thrust of Karlsen's main argument is that New England witches were primarily women of middle age, whose husbands were deceased, had abandoned them, or were otherwise away or marginalized; who had no surviving sons and often no brothers, or were not on friendly terms with them; and who had lost and fought over, stood to gain, or already come into possession of a sizable inheritance. Their position therefore was one of a "worthless" member of society, unprotected and unsupported, at a time when many New Englanders were fighting over access to property.

I think that the book's best moments though are in the last chapter, when Karlsen turns her attention to the possessed (or "bewitched"), and how their fits and attacks often displayed an enormous anger and deep-seated resentment at male authority figures. She argues that these girls, many of them servants or orphans sent to live with relatives, in many cases almost certainly did believe they were being possessed by a devil or a witch, and were so disconnected from their internalized frustration and anger at their limited prospects in life that they couldn't express it in a healthy way.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author finds a social, religious, or economic reason for most of the witchcraft accusations. Economic pressures were caused by the English inheritance laws which caused most men to have to wait for land to start their lives with until theirs fathers were dead. If a women happened to inherit and live alone, she became an object of scorn and accusations of witchcraft could to follow. The Puritan society also placed tremendous pressure on women to conform to a behavioral ideal of meekness and subservience. Rebellion against ones superiors was viewed as a rebellion against God. This caused many women to question themselves if they felt frustration in their social circumstances which led to many of the confessions. Women who took religious leadership roles were also targeted with accusations (especially Quakers who were allowed roles in their church).

The text is rather dry until the last couple of chapters which dealt with possession (by the Devil). The author finally started delving into some of the psychological consequences of the rigid social structure which was far more interesting than the previous inheritance struggles.

[Marissa • thecriminologist_reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so amazing and deserves to be read in a much wider audience. Yes, it’s an academic text; it was Karlsen’s PhD dissertation, revised into book form. So, if academic writing isn’t your thing, don’t bother reading it and review-bombing it. However, if you want to learn more about the witchcraft era of colonial New England by a real historian, who knows how to check her facts and present information accurately, please give this book a chance. Though she is a historian, Karlsen presents the witchcraft trials from a sociological lens and attempts to understand what it was about the social context of that time and place that caused witchcraft to become a uniquely female characteristic. The gendered issue of witchcraft is important, and one which other historians are only too happy to ignore and accept as a given.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciate the scholarship and research that went into the writing of this book (on those counts a 5 rating) it’s not a book for general reading. A great deal of the book is dedicated to tables, appendixes and the like. It is a fairly early work (originally an academic thesis) and feminist analysis of the background of accusations and punishments of women accused of possession and of harming their communities in Puritan New England. The majority of the accused and punished were unfortunate poor, single, widowed or otherwise women lacking power in their church and communities. This is well demonstrated by the author. Still, I give it a 3 rating as lacking style and interest for the average reader. I found it more tolerable to read in small bites.

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've recently discovered that I am a direct descendent from not one, but 2 of the women who were executed during the Salem Witch Panic, so I wasn't going into this wanting just a casual account of what occurred. And while I usually abhor dissertations-turned-books, this wasn't half bad. It not only gave me insight to the women (and men) who were accused, but a much better understanding of the accusers, ministers, and the society the various players were a part of as well. However, if I was looking for an easy reading, story-telling-style general history of the Salem Witch Panic, I would've hated this book. In fact, I probably wouldn't've even finished it.

[Breanna]

I guess for me I just already knew a lot of this stuff, so reading this was like reading over old class notes or something. I'm not going to rate this book because it was more on me for why I didn't like it.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was not able to finish this book. Too many statistics and repeated information. The subject is interesting but I need it presented in a different format.

[Janet · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like a dissertation because it is actually someone's dissertation.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was both fascinating and frustrating. 2.75 ⭐️ rounded up to 3⭐️ for GoodReads

One of the things that needs to be clear to the reader before starting, is that this work was a PhD dissertation turned into a book. Why is it important? Because the intended audience of a dissertation and a trad-published book are not the same. A dissertation is to be read by peers with extensive knowledge of the topic/era discussed. A trad-published book, on the other hand, should be assumed that it can be picked up by any random Joe who might stumble upon it in a library or bookstore.

With this in mind, sometimes this book can be hard to understand if you do not have extensive knowledge of the time period. In my studies and work, I am used to reading academic papers and work, so I didn't find the tables, and other statistical aspects, hard to grasp. But for someone who has no prior experience, this might be complicated. The hard part for me was that there was very little introduction to societal/cultural settings for the random reader.

I picked up this book out of curiosity, being a non-American, I probably know even less about that time period. Unfortunately, Karlsen assumes that the reader HAS to know, and dives straight into her analysis. You can piece together things here and there in the different chapters. After all, Karlsen argument is that the Witch Trials can very much be explained through religious, economic, and political aspects of society at the time. However, her arguments feels, at times, like it's going in circles.

I also had some issues with her arguments particularly when discussing Tituba, the indigenous woman from Barbados who was a slave. She is the only occurrence mentioned by Karlsen of a non-white being accused of witchcraft and does not try to examine how her arguments just didn't apply to people who do not fit the mold created by Karlsen. These weaknesses in her arguments were also present when she discussed males accused of witchcraft. While she underlines the double standard between the propensity of males to be trialed as opposed to women, or for trialed men to be found guilty as opposed to women. She does not seem to apply the same standards to them.

Overall, this book was interesting but lacked the accessibility that trad-published books should have. Adding an extra chapter on context, I think, would have made it so much better. Moreover, the structure could have been reworked into shorter chapters as opposed to the 40+ pages chapters that can be highly intimidating for non-academic readers.

[Becks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dense academic book about the social structure in New England that led to people, mainly women, being accused of witchcraft. If you had asked me the driving force behind witchcraft accusations before reading this book, I would have said sexism and misogyny, which the book argues strongly. So I would not say the overarching themes in the book were shocking, but the amount of detail the author derives from primary sources to prove her case reveals how brutal the time period was for women society deemed out of place, and how that could extend to people (both men and women) associated with them. I removed one star because the book is so dense with statistics and facts that sometimes it was hard to follow. The postscript, where the author describes how the book has been received by the broader academic community and how she would change the book ten years after publishing, was incredibly eye opening. Turns out men in the field don't like being told that the witch trials and murders were mostly due to men being evil towards women.

I love the summary this review created, so I am copying it here for reference:
[Carol Karlsen] analyzes the sex, marital status, age, economic status, religious affiliation of both those accused of being witches and their accusers. She uses original source material and only draws inferences when they seem logical. She makes several conclusions about why some women were accused of being witches:
a. those who were due to inherit enough money to be independent;
b. those who had no husband or sons to care for them;
c. those who challenged the prevailing Puritan beliefs such as Quakers;
d. those who did not demonstrate sufficient subservience to the church or their husbands;
e. those who were past child-bearing years and were no longer valued for that function;
f. those who challenged the social hierarchical order;
g. those who were too poor to support themselves and were considered a social burden.