The Heady Legacy Of A Salem Witch - Abigail Putnam Was Indeed An Adulterer And A Serial One At That

In the days after the witch trials of Salem, after the years of persecution, misogyny and Puritanical hysteria, adulterous women were still damned by God and community, outcastes no longer welcomed into the commonwealth of men.  They were no longer branded with the scarlet letter, but forced to wear a black, roughly hewn scarf - a symbol of irredeemable sin and a warning to all men.  

When men saw such a woman walking towards them, they gave her wide berth as though she were infectious, as though her sin could become theirs.  So infected they would become adulterers, unrepentant sinners of the flesh. 

Of course this condemnation of women was not new.  Shakespeare's Old Vic theatre was filled to overflowing by those who wanted to hear Othello cry that he had done men a service by killing the harlot Desdemona; or hearing Posthumus' scornful, hateful screeds against all women.  Women, said Shakespeare, were never the pure, sinless, virgins of Sir Gawain or the Knights of King Arthur's roundtable, but complicit in their own undoing. 

They had agency, to use the now popular term.  Women might have been the complicit victims of men's jealous insecurities, but they also were strong, purposeful, indomitable sexual forces.  Goneril, Regan, Tamora, Dionyza, and Volumnia were mighty mistresses of their own fate, dominating men and subjecting them to their will.  Their lives might have ended badly - after all, even in the hands of a nihilist like Shakespeare there is some moral accountability. 

Sadie Thomas was of the fifteenth generation of a woman burned at the stake in Salem in 1692; and the recorded history of her ancestor, Abigail Putnam was a complex and disturbing one.  Sadie was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), membership in which requires a rigorous historical and genealogical review.  She and the DAR were quite certain that Isaiah Potter had indeed fought in the Revolutionary War, had distinguished himself many times over, and was revered in New Hampshire lore. 

From that starting point, Sadie was able to trace her ancestry back a hundred years earlier to Salem and verify that Abigail Putnam, her direct ancestor, had been set alight in February of 1693. 

The unofficial record drawn from related documents, family Bibles, and annotated gossip showed that Abigail had indeed been a loose woman. References to her harlotry, godlessness, apostasy, and wantonness appeared again and again.  She had been officially accused of adultery with the pastor of the Salem Church of Christ and bearing his child - an event illustrated by Nathanial Hawthorn in his book The Scarlet Letter - but the good folk of Salem knew that her moral turpitude had begun long before her affair with Pastor Gidden.  

The point was that Abigail Putnam was indeed a 'witch', that is a serial adulterous woman with 'a malevolent sexual perversion'.  

Hawthorne in his novel The House of the Seven Gables had written about the living legacy of the past. The spirits of the ancestors of Hepzibah Pyncheon were alive and well, and the same virulent misanthropy that ran through their veins ran through hers.  It took enormous will and great moral ambition to become a more worthy descendant of the past, but she was never able to do so.  There is indeed something about the sins of the fathers - a genetic legacy - which carries on undiluted through successive generations. 

Sadie Thomas had always thought of herself, her own serial adultery, and her obsession with sex as falling well within the normal distribution - the bell curve that describes all human behavior.  Yes, she might be located on one of the asymptotes, the randy one, but she was still a woman of natural instincts, desires, and pleasures. 

She had no sooner been married to St. John Fellowes, a scion of Boston Brahmin society, then she took a lover, an equally well-placed member of Beacon Hill society.  She had no brief with her young husband.  He was as attentive, loving, and considerate as any; but he lacked a certain sexual confidence. She wasn't looking for a satyr, simply a man who did not take her for who she was, a la feminist ideology, but for a woman, a sexual object and a very desirable one at that. 

It was during that marriage that she found out about her Salem ancestry, and her driven sexuality was finally put into perspective. Hawthorne - who himself had direct ancestors in Salem - was exactly right.  There is something indefinable but sure that is passed down through the generations. Of course most people in modern America are mongrels, but some families like Sadie's had, like the fictional Pyncheons, kept a certain generational integrity. 

When she found out about Abigail, she not only understood where she had come from, but felt proud of her ancestor.  Just think of it, Sadie said.  The will, the determination, the absolute undiminished ambition of the woman! A hero, a martyr for the for the cause of all women, gone up in flames like Joan of Arc, a volatile but persistent woman who led the French army to victory over the British and a patriot, gave her life for her country. 

This new knowledge did not spur her on to new adulteries - she had enough feminine gumption to do so on her own - but gave her a particular satisfaction.  Her ancestor and now she were giving the establishment a run for their money.  Today's women do not have to be protected and provided safe spaces.  No Means No is the idiotic fancy of indoctrinated, sexless women.  

Women have always had the upper hand because of paternity. Only a mother knows who the father is, and despite burqas, lock-and-key and punitive surveillance, Saudis are afraid, just like every other man, that his wife's children are not his. 

It didn't take paternity to fuel the aspirational passion of Ibsen's heroes - Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, and Hilde Wangel - women who had their will with overmatched men, and who sent them to their deaths simply because they could. 

Sadie took great pleasure in the fact that great ancestor Abigail went to the stake guilty as charged - not that she was possessed by the devil as the prosecution contended, but that sexual priority ran in her veins.  Men were little more than imbecilic, rutting creatures; but women were canny, savvy, and delightfully treacherous.  As she crackled, smoked, and charred, Abigail took it all with remarkable aplomb and dignity.  Those who were convinced she was possessed by the Devil were even more so as she was reduced to cinders without a cry. 

Sadie's husband found out about her affairs, confronted her, but was willing to take a contrite, apologetic wife back.  Of course Sadie did no such thing.  Her take it or leave it stance was intimidating.  Her husband pleaded and begged, but Sadie was immovable.  There was only one thing to do - dissolve the marriage - but thanks to a favorable pre-nuptial agreement, Sadie went into her next marriage very well off. 

Husband Number Two was treated no differently.  He was a good provider, companion, and dance partner but that was as far as it went.  Sadie was not one to be cowed into social brevity.  She would have lovers galore and be proud of it. 

She wrote her own obituary.  

Sadie Thomas, descendant of Abigail Putnam, burned at the stake in Salem in February 1692, heroine, indomitable force, individualist and sexual voyageur, died yesterday.  She was ____years old.  Heroine in her own right, fierce individualist, sexual icon, terror to many but admired by many more, Sadie will be remembered for her fierce, undiminished sexual candor and dismissal of the same Puritanical cant that charred her ancestor.