Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England

This book has been used in graduate courses that I took as a student, specifically for a Religion in Colonial America graduate lecture/discussion. The author presents a thoughtful consideration of gender and the ways in which it shapes religious experience, eschewing a lengthy analysis of Salem itself in favor of a fascinating study of Puritan theology of the seventeenth century and the ways in which it intersected with understandings of gender to structure the lives of New England Puritans. The most fascinating aspect to me was the evidence for different responses to sin - men tended to externalize their bad behavior as something committed but not an integral aspect of their inward character, while women tended to internalize their sins as a sign of their soul's depravity. When mixed with the fatalistic/nihilistic aspects of Calvinist predetermination this created an atmosphere of desperation and a crisis of salvation and faith that helps understand the passionate affirmations of bewitchment that accompanied the court confessions of women accused of witchcraft. This text is useful for anyone interested in Puritans, religion in the 1600s, and gender. I will be using this book in the undergraduate course that I am teaching in the fall as a more specific study of gender's influence on colonial British society and religion. A good companion text to read regarding the confessional relationship and power dynamics inherent in these confrontations, though in a different context, is Carlo Ginzburg's "The Cheese and the Worms," which is a microhistorical treatment of an obscure Italian Inquisition case brought against a radical miller named Menocchio that also addresses common beliefs that are often in opposition to, or differ from, institutional religious doctrine.

Loved this book! A great read!

Quick delivery and exactly what I needed.

Ordered for school.

Damned Women provides a thorough examination of the ways in which gender "damned" women from the very beginning. Her analysis of Puritan ideology is especially insightful, and this is one of the most helpful sources that I have found on the Salem witch trials.

Although i leanred new facts that i had never knew about the salem trials, i found my self nodding to sleep several times and reading the same points over and over.

all this book has done is denounce women and witches. the writer should review how her "subjects" really are before she strikes them down! VERY DISTATSEFUL