Today in Salem: The maid Mary Warren winces as her master, the harsh John Proctor, waves hot fire tongs at her. Mary has been half-dazed all day, tormented by unseen specters.
“Go ahead!” he shouts. “Run into that fire, throw yourself into water, and I won’t stop you! You say you’re afflicted – I wish you were even more so.”
“Why would you say that?” Mary asks, still cringing.
“Because you’re lying. All of you,” he says. “You’re accusing innocent people, and I won’t stand for it.”
John’s quarrelsome wife Elizabeth refills the wool basket and puts Mary hard to work at the spinning wheel. It isn’t long before Mary says she’s feeling much better, that the specters have left her entirely alone. Finally, she can breathe.
After supper Mary rides a mile and a half to the Meeting House and tacks a note on the door, thanking God for deliverance from afflictions. It’s a common practice, and tomorrow Rev Parris will read the note to the congregation. But when Mary returns, it’s Elizabeth who’s angry this time.
“How can you thank God for delivering you from something that never existed?” she asks. “You are telling lie upon lie!”
Today in Salem: Three hard raps on the Putnam’s door announce a visitor: Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law. When the door opens, he steps in without being asked and immediately confronts Ann Putnam’s mother.
“Who said it first?” he demands. “Who accused Rebecca first?” Yesterday’s slammed church door was a wake-up call to the beloved Rebecca Nurse’s family, and the men are taking action, starting with the Putnams.
Ann’s mother touches her pregnant belly and sits in her chair by the warm hearth. Her cheeks are flushed, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s from warmth of the fire. “If Ann says Rebecca’s specter is tormenting her, then she’s speaking the truth,” her mother says.
Ann Putnam is 12, but she’s never been questioned about her accusations. Now she’s shrinking as the man turns to her. ”Yes,” she admits in a small voice. She had seen the specter of a pale woman, sitting in her grandmother’s rocking chair. But she never said it was Rebecca. Her mother had encouraged her.
“You’re mistaken, child,” her mother says. “You were so upset. It was Mercy who said Rebecca’s name first.” Mercy Lewis is the family servant, but she’s not going to accept the blame, not this time. She, too, has never been questioned, and this angry man frightens her.
“How can you lie?” says Mercy, looking at Ann. And so it goes, from Mercy, to Ann, to her mother in a round robin of finger pointing that will not end.
Tonight the moon is new, and the dark tavern is lit by more candles than usual. In the flickering light, two men lean in to share a rumor they’ve heard: that the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor is the next to be arrested. But when a woman at the next table defends Elizabeth, one of the afflicted girls points into the empty air.
“She’s right there,” she says. “There!”
“Old witch,” another girl says. “I’ll have her hang.”
The men look at them coldly. You’re lying, one man says. He doesn’t see any specter, and he doesn’t believe they do either. Later he’ll testify that the girls treated it like a joke. The other man will say that the girls said they did it for fun. They needed to have some fun.
Today in Salem: A 20-year-old servant named Mary Warren is feeding wool through a spinning wheel when suddenly she pulls back, and puts her hands in the air. “It’s Martha Corey,” she shouts. “Her specter is in my lap.” Her master, the harsh John Proctor, looks up from his tools.
Mary reaches out to pull the specter closer. Wait. It isn’t the gospel woman Martha Corey. Mary opens her hand and sits back sharply. “It’s you!” she cries, and looks across the room at her master, the harsh John Proctor.
John is a large man, impatient by nature, and Mary provokes him like no one else. “It’s my shadow,” he says, and raises his fist. “Enough lying.” John’s wife, the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor, dumps another pile of wool in Mary’s basket. Elizabeth has already been accused, but doesn’t know it yet.
John steps down and leans down into her face. “Any more specters and you’ll feel it from me.”
Meanwhile, the girls’ leader, 12-year-old Ann Putnam, is pale with exhaustion. She’s been tormented for days now by the raging specter of the gospel woman Martha Corey. It’s hard to believe it’s Martha, though. She’s a full church member. How can this be?
The church deacons already know from Tituba’s testimony that specters wear the same clothes as their owners. So the deacons agree: if Martha and her specter are dressed alike, it’s proof that Martha is in league with the Devil.
They visit Ann Putnam to ask what the specter is wearing, but unfortunately Ann can’t see the specter today. The specter is furious with her and won’t let her see into the Invisible World until tonight.
The deacons can’t prove anything without that information, but they visit Martha anyway to tell her what she’s been accused of and to ask what she thinks. But they’ve hardly said hello when she interrupts them. “You’re here to ask if I’m a witch,” she says, and smiles. “Does the girl know what clothes I’m wearing?” she asks, and leans forward. “Well? Does she?” The deacons can hardly speak. How did Martha know they’d visited Ann at all, never mind that they’d asked her what Martha was wearing? How does Martha know she’s been accused?
LEARN MORE: Why did people believe that witches and their specters dressed alike? Why was that important?
When Tituba confessed, she described in detail the clothes worn by the specters she’d seen: a tall, white-haired man wearing black or woolen clothing, a woman wearing two silk hoods, and another woman wearing a wool coat with a white cap. That established fact #1: Specters actually wear clothes.
The day after Tituba’s confession, Elizabeth Hubbard saw the specter of the beggar Sarah Good. The specter was barelegged and barefoot, with her dress pulled down to reveal one breast. Later Elizabeth’s neighbors were shocked to find out that the real Sarah Good had been in exactly the same state of undress. This established fact #2: Specters were dressed like their “owners.”
In court, some testimonies mention what a specter was wearing or how their hair looked. It was considered proof that a particular person had a specter, and that it had been seen doing evil.
WHO was Mary Warren?
A servant to John and Elizabeth Proctor. She may have been an orphan when she started working for them, and at age 20 was beginning to lose any prospect of marriage and family.
When Mary was young she witnessed a heated argument between her father and their neighbor, Alice Parker. Shortly after that, her mother and sister became ill, possibly with smallpox. It killed her mother, and her sister became deaf (and eventually mute). Mary blamed Alice Parker for her family’s tragedies and indeed, when Alice Parker was accused of witchcraft, Mary was happy to testify.
Mary herself was accused of witchcraft, and in turn accused others. Of the people Mary testified against, eight were hanged, one was tortured, and one died in prison. Case files: Mary Warren
WHO was John Proctor?
The first male to be accused of witchcraft during the trials.
John was a forthright and practical man who could also be harsh. He’d been known to enjoy rum a little too much and often quarreled with his wife. But he was also respected throughout the community as an intelligent and upstanding citizen.
When the trials began, John was leasing a 700-acre farm and running a tavern from his home. By all accounts it was successful, in part because his wife Elizabeth always insisted on payment, even if it was with pawned goods. It’s possible some of the Village residents were jealous of his prosperity and success. Case files: John Proctor
Today in Salem: The girls’ leader Ann Putnam is sweating and shaking when her father demands “Who afflicts you?” Thomas Putnam is one of the most powerful and vengeful men in the Village. When he speaks, people listen, including his wife and children.
Ann is 12, but her father still frightens her. So when he asks if it’s the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor who’s tormenting her, Ann just nods. There’s been more than a whiff of suspicion around Elizabeth for 30 years, thanks to Elizabeth’s grandmother, a Quaker midwife and healer who was tried (and acquitted) for witchcraft 30 years earlier. Now Elizabeth is 40, stronger and more capable than most Puritan women, perhaps even too much so. She is her husband’s quarrelsome third wife, raising six of his children while adding five more of her own. She’s also supporting a 700-acre farm, running a tavern from the Proctor home and, like her grandmother, sharing knowledge of her garden herbs when people need a healer. If the Proctors are successful, it’s in good part due to Elizabeth.
Thomas is a Village farmer and has never liked the Proctors, whose tavern is open only to merchants and other well-to-do people from Salem Town. It wouldn’t surprise him if their prosperity was ill-gotten, through earthly means or not.
LEARN MORE: What was the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village?
Salem was divided into two distinct parts: Salem Town and Salem Village. Although they were part of the same entity, they were distinct in economy, social class, and values. The Village was inland, and most of its people were farmers. But the Town was a prosperous seaport, and most of its residents were merchants (many of them wealthy). But even though it was more prosperous, the Town still collected taxes from the Village, and depended on its farms for food.
As much tension as there was between Town and Village, there was also division within the Village itself. Those who lived near Ipswich Road, close to the Town, made more money as merchants and tavern keepers (like the Proctors). But those who lived farther away weren’t as prosperous, and believed the Town’s worldliness threatened their Puritan values.
In the early days of the witchcraft hysteria, most of the supposed witches and those who accused them lived on opposite sides of the Village, with the “witches” living closer to the Town.
WHO was Thomas Putnam Jr.?
Thomas, age 40, was a third-generation resident of Salem Village. Some of the most active accusers were his daughter Ann, his niece Mary Walcott, and his servant Mercy Lewis. He gave their accusations tremendous legal weight by seeking arrest warrants, transcribing depositions, swearing out complaints, and writing letters to the judges.
Thomas was seen as a resentful and bitter man, for reasons that boiled down to a family feud between Thomas’s family (the Putnams) and the Porters.
The feud began 20 years before the Trials, when a dam and sawmill run by the Porters flooded the Putnam farms, with the Putnams then suing the Porters. The Putnams lived in the rural Village, while the Porters lived in the urban, mercantile Town. The Putnams were farmers, and the Porters were merchants. The Putnams were prosperous enough, but all of their worth and income were tied up in a farm. The Porters, with their ability to start and fund new businesses, eventually became one of the wealthiest families in the region. It was a classic conflict of rural vs. urban, farmer vs. merchant, and Thomas was squarely on the rural farmer side.
The feud continued when Rev Samuel Parris arrived, and a Village committee dominated by the Putnams gave him a generous offer of house and lands. Later the Putnams were ousted from the committee and replaced by the Porters and others who were hostile to the Putnams.
The feud exploded personally for Thomas when his father died and disinherited him, leaving his estate instead to a half-brother who’d married into the Porter family.
Now, as the Trials set in, many of those accused of witchcraft were connected to the Porter family, with many of the accusers connected to the Putnams.
And Thomas had more than a few axes to grind.
WHO was Elizabeth Proctor?
When Elizabeth was about 10, her grandmother was tried (and acquitted) for witchcraft. Like her grandmother, the adult Elizabeth also grew medicinal herbs, had a significant knowledge of folk medicine, and was sometimes consulted as a healer.
Elizabeth was the third wife of John Proctor, a somewhat harsh man who rented a large farm just south of the Village. They also ran a tavern from their home, serving patrons only from the Town (not the Village), and while John ran the farm, Elizabeth ran the tavern. She was confident and quarrelsome, always insisting on payment, even if it was in the form of goods rather than money.
Elizabeth and John had 6 known children, one of whom had died. She was pregnant with a seventh when she and John were arrested. When she was tried and sentenced, her execution was stayed until after she gave birth. The executions came to an end before the birth of her son, whom she named John Jr.
