The Salem Witch Trials, Not Such A Bad An Idea - Misogyny Finally Outed As The Real Reason For Burning At The Stake

Harrison Potter was a direct descendant of Hiram Potter, the 'Burning Judge' of Salem, a Calvinist minister who was alone responsible for at least twenty burnings at the stake.

Hiram was an ordained minister, devoted man of God, anointed by him to carry out his will to rid Salem of the scourge of witches, the presence of the Devil, and the weakness, credulousness, and moral infirmity of the community at large. 

'Idle hands make light the Devil's work, the age-old homily had its roots in Salem, although the injunction was far more severe.  It was the falling away from the Lord, the spineless, desultory faith, and the willingness to tempt God himself that made the community complicit in the devilry.  It was Proctor Potter's job to find, try, convict, and execute those women who harbored the Devil within their wombs, but to chastise and reform the people of Salem so that once the scourge of the Devil had been removed, the town would once again universally and uniformly return to faith. 

It was a wicked time in Salem in 1692 knowing the Devil was not only present but immanent.  Everywhere you turned there was a prim, bonneted, chaste-appearing, devout, and demure woman with the Devil inside.  Salem had become a walking zombie land, a town of deformed, horned, Satanic  creatures out for blood and souls. 

 

There was a hysteria in Salem, a belief that the Devil had chosen them from among the many towns of the New England colony to do his evil work, and nothing but a purge - a burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, a latter day Flood - would do.  Yet and still, God's anointed ministers were standing firm and strong against the Devil, and through them the town might be saved.  The Devil might be rooted out one by one until the town was once again pure and Christian. 

Conviction in Salem was a fait accompli. Although there were tests devised to ascertain possession, they were impossible to pass.  Accusation was tantamount to guilt, and despite the protests of the accused, they went tethered and bound to the stake where the crackling, sanctifying fires would burn them up and their devilish host together. 

Now, it must be stated, although a bit shamefully, that many of the men in Salem were delighted with this rather gruesome turn of events.  They had lived through penitential, cold marriages with hectoring, niggling wives but given the fierce religious tenor of the times were forced to live with them.  No civil law provided for divorce and it was against God's law.  Marriage was sacred, and the vows taken between man and woman were binding. 

So when Abigail Turner was taken from her kitchen and set before the Salem tribunal, her husband did not protest.  He, a devout Calvinist, could only approve of the will of God and the good judgement of his appointed representatives; and besides, he would be rid of his wife once and for all and be finally free from her carping pettiness. 

 

Of course he could never really admit this real reason for his complicity in the affair - that would test his faith and his endanger his spiritual future - but in the middle of the darkest night as he turned to the snoring, evil-smelling woman next to him, he could only hope that she was next. 

The Salem witch trials were quickly over and done with.  Their notoriety had spread quickly through the Calvinist establishment which felt it imperative to put a lid on such excess.  The high clergy never disavowed the presence of the Devil, but only denounced the overzealousness of the town.  Yet, they have never been forgotten and have served as a lesson and warning - religious zealotry is a dangerous affair and should be nipped in the bud before it turns into the fulminating disaster it was in Salem. 

Feminists of course were the first and loudest to condemn the witch trials. For centuries good, pious women had lived in fear of such fanatical abomination.  They had been called, condemned, and burned as witches long before Salem.  The whole idea of witchery - this inbred, innate, ineradicable evil femaleness - was seemingly indelible. 

 

In fact, the real motivation behind these attempts to rid society of witchery and female sorcery was a profound misogyny - men hated women, and burning at the stake was simply a convenient way of getting rid of them. 

Othello, accused of murdering his wife, Desdemona, told his judges that he had done them and all men a service, ridding the city of yet one more duplicitous, cuckolding woman.  Most men in Shakespeare's plays were convinced misogynists, never trusting the women in their lives, assuming their infidelity as a matter of female birthright, and hating them for it. 

Muslims have been on the Salem track and for centuries have locked women up, covered them from head to toe, suspected them, and hated them. 

Now, Harrison Potter knew the storied history of Salem very well, had made genealogical pilgrimages to the cemetery where his ancestors were buried, and studied the recorded history of the trials. It was through such academic diligence that he found out that his forbear was primus inter pares, the most feared, dedicated, obsessive judge of all those of the period.  In one way Harrison was proud he had such a noteworthy relative, but of course on the other, he was bothered by the number of innocent women he had condemned. 

Worst of all Harrison was married to a harridan, a vixen, a succubus who took her pound of flesh daily - a constant harangue, a badgering, hammering barrage of accusations, insults, and innuendo.  For reasons only known to him - and of course because of his wife's untold wealth - he remained married to her.  He, for all his pedigree, social status, and historical importance, was but a pusillanimous marital weakling.  

He belonged in a Daphne du Maurier novel - a Max de Winter brutalized by a cunning, abusive, hatefully ambitious wife with whom he stays married for all the wrong reasons - Manderley, the de Winter name, posterity, status, and stability.  Of course he murders her, something he must have always thought of but could never arrange, but there in the boat house, tempted, challenged, and taunted by Rebecca, he kills her and tosses the body into the deep. 

 

Harrison didn't have such resolve or enough frustrated anger in him to do the deed, but he wanted to; and could only thing of his great ancestor Hiram who had rid Salem of God only knew how many harridans like Harrison's wife.  Good riddance, Harrison thought unkindly, for he was very much in the throes of devilishly murderous thoughts. 

As much as feminists have come under fire for their misandry and universal condemnation of men as patriarchal buffoons, jailers, and slave-driving misogynists, they were on to something when they revised the thinking about Salem.  It was not about the devil but getting rid of women, as many as possible in as short a time as possible.  A divinely sanctioned extermination.  Men since the dawn of time have hated women, and Salem was only the most obvious and exaggerated example of it. 

'Nonsense', said men who had conveniently swept their wives' interdictions and harping under the rug, either put up with it or escaped for a cinq a sept, a sexual liaison, an overdue dalliance. 

The only men who rejected this overheated assumption were men who had been feminized, men for whom women could do no wrong but who had been oppressed and persecuted for millennia until now, the New Age of female superiority.  Yet even they, herded, corralled, fenced in by their wives' herculean drive, had their moments of doubt.  Maybe Salem was a good idea after all, perish the thought. 

Harrison was no Max de Winter, and he continued his tamed, uxorious life.  Salem was only a febrile dream; but the damage was done. He was not only a descendant of The Burning Judge, but a closet partisan of his efforts.