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When for "Witches" We Read "Women": Advocacy and Ageism in Nineteenth-Century Salem Witchcraft Plays
Theatre History Studies Pub Date : 2020-12-31 , DOI: 10.1353/ths.2020.0004
Chrystyna Dail

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • When for “Witches” We Read “Women”Advocacy and Ageism in Nineteenth-Century Salem Witchcraft Plays
  • Chrystyna Dail (bio)

In her landmark 1893 text, Woman, Church, and State, historian and women’s rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote, “When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity.”1 Gage dedicated a full chapter to “Witchcraft” in her book because the church—arguably one of the most powerful ruling forces in Western culture until the Enlightenment—regarded it as a sin exercised almost exclusively by women, with postmenopausal women considered highly suspect. This popular viewpoint resulted in legalizing women’s torture throughout Europe as well as colonial America, and, in many cases, led to punishment by boiling, burning, pressing, or hanging if found guilty. Publication of Gage’s work occurred the year after the Essex County witchcraft crisis bicentennial (1893) and followed a period that proved especially violent toward women over the age of forty (1830–1860).2 In the years leading up to the bicentennial, politicians, religious leaders, and artists called upon this historical event to serve their respective intentions. Several nineteenth-century playwrights recognized the dramatic potential of the political and religious overreach occurring in the Massachusetts colony during 1692. Like Gage, these playwrights drew attention to the oppression women suffered under seventeenth-century doctrine. Their work fueled postulations by public individuals such as politicians about whether this oppression persisted in nineteenth-century America. In this article, I address four plays written between 1846 and 1893 using colonial Salem, Massachusetts, [End Page 70] as their cultural backdrop. I analyze how these Salem witchcraft plays grappled with the early women’s rights movement. In addition, I explore how these works addressed a nineteenth-century social problem that remains prevalent in contemporary US culture: virulent ageism practiced against women.

Seventeenth-century records of witchcraft trials in colonial America elucidate the extreme violence practiced against women—especially middle-aged and elderly women—under the auspices of church and state.3 For example, in 1662, Rebecca Greensmith, described as a “lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman,” was hanged to death in Hartford, Connecticut, for witchcraft.4 What separates her confession from many other accused witches of the colonial period is that she actually admitted to having “familiarity with the Devil.” She confessed her crimes because each time she denied them a spectacular physical transformation occurred: “She was as if her flesh had been pulled from her bones.”5 Skin avulsion, or the tearing off of the skin from a body part resulting in irreparable tissue loss, is not common in everyday life. It has been medically proven to occur more regularly in geriatric patients because aging results in the loosening of skin properties: “The histologic deterioration of the skin due to aging correlates with the clinical findings: thinning of the skin, decreased resistance to shearing forces, decreased elasticity.”6 As torture was regularly used to force confessions from accused witches, it’s quite possible that the gory sensation Greensmith felt was actually occurring owing to the combination of her age and physical abuse undergone during jailing and examination.

Because of witches’ supposed supernatural abilities, as well as reports of exceptional physical changes occurring while accused bodies underwent torture, the majority of theatrical performances including witch characters included spectacular physical transformations or actions. Throughout the past century and a half, audiences have seen witch characters fall into fits, levitate, fly, transform, burn, disappear, break through shackles, and melt onstage. Although these spectacular physical events occur in US productions containing witch characters of all ages, and at times these events result in positive outcomes for witch characters, the elderly witch most often undergoes violence or is put to death onstage. This mistreatment is grounded in a deep-seated social antipathy, often leading to malice, aimed at peri-and postmenopausal women in American culture. How have we come to anticipate spectacular violence against the elderly female or “crone” witch onstage in the United States? Much of the violence can be traced to one of the first American plays addressing the Salem witch trials: the 1846 production of Cornelius Mathews’s Witchcraft: Or, the Martyrs of...



中文翻译:

何时为“女巫”阅读《妇女》:十九世纪塞勒姆巫术戏剧中的倡导和年龄歧视

代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:

  • 何时为“女巫”阅读《十九世纪塞勒姆女巫》中的“妇女”倡导和年龄歧视
  • 克里斯蒂娜·戴(生物)

历史学家和妇女权利活动家Matilda Joslyn Gage在1893年发表的具有里程碑意义的文字《女人,教会和国家》中写道:“当为“ wit子手”时,我们读到“妇女”时,我们会更充分地理解教会对这部分人的残酷对待。人性。” 1个盖奇在她的书中专门为“巫术”写了一整章,因为教会(可以说是启蒙运动之前西方文化中最强大的统治力量之一)将其视为几乎完全由女性行使的罪过,绝经后的女性被认为是高度可疑的。这种流行的观点导致整个欧洲以及整个美洲殖民地对妇女的酷刑合法化,并且在许多情况下,如果被判有罪,则处以沸腾,焚烧,压迫或绞刑的惩罚。Gage的著作发表于艾塞克斯郡巫术危机两百周年纪念的第二年(1893年),其后一段时期证明对40岁以上的女性特别暴力(1830至1860年)。2个在两百周年纪念的前几年,政客,宗教领袖和艺术家呼吁这一历史事件来满足各自的意图。十九世纪的几位剧作家认识到1692年在马萨诸塞州殖民地发生政治和宗教扩张的巨大潜力。这些剧作家像盖奇一样,提请人们注意十七世纪教义中遭受压迫的妇女。他们的工作激起了政客等公众人士关于这种压迫在19世纪美国是否持续的假设。在本文中,我讲了1846年至1893年之间使用马萨诸塞州塞勒姆殖民时期创作的四部戏剧,[完第70页]作为他们的文化背景。我分析了这些塞勒姆巫术如何与早期的妇女维权运动作斗争。另外,我探讨了这些作品如何解决在美国当代文化中仍然普遍存在的19世纪社会问题:对妇女实行有毒的年龄歧视。

十七世纪在美国殖民地进行的巫术审判的记录阐明了在教堂和国家的主持下针对妇女(尤其是中年和老年妇女)的极端暴力行为。3例如,在1662年,被描述为“淫荡,无知,相当老龄的妇女”的丽贝卡·格林史密斯(Rebecca Greensmith)因巫术而被绞死在康涅狄格州哈特福德(Hartford)。4她的认罪与殖民时期其他许多被指控的女巫的区别在于,她实际上承认自己“熟悉魔鬼”。她之所以承认自己的罪行,是因为每次她否认这些罪行时,都会发生一次壮观的身体变化:“她的肉好像被从骨头上拔了下来。” 5皮肤撕脱或皮肤从身体部位撕裂导致不可修复的组织损失在日常生活中并不常见。在医学上已证明,老年患者会更经常发生这种情况,因为衰老会导致皮肤特性松弛:“由于衰老导致的皮肤组织学恶化与临床发现有关:皮肤变薄,抗剪力抵抗力下降,弹性。” 6由于经常使用酷刑逼迫被指控的女巫供认,格林史密斯感觉到血腥的感觉实际上是由于她的年龄和在监狱和检查过程中遭受的身体虐待而发生的。

由于女巫具有超自然的能力,而且有报道称被告人遭受酷刑时身体发生了异常变化,包括巫婆角色在内的大多数戏剧表演都包括壮观的身体变形或动作。在过去的一个半世纪中,观众们看到巫婆的角色变得健康,漂浮,飞行,变身,燃烧,消失,冲破束缚并在舞台上融化。尽管这些壮观的生理事件发生在包含各个年龄段女巫角色的美国作品中,有时这些事件会给女巫角色带来积极的后果,但年长的女巫最常遭受暴力或在舞台上被处死。这种虐待是根深蒂固的社会反感,通常会导致恶意,针对美国文化中的绝经前和绝经后女性。在美国舞台上,我们如何预料到针对年长女性或“王冠”女巫的暴力事件?大部分暴力事件可追溯到美国最早针对萨勒姆女巫案的戏剧之一:1846年科尼利厄斯·马修斯(Cornelius Mathews)巫术:或者,...的烈士

更新日期:2020-12-31
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