The Devil In The Shape Of A Woman Summary
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman Review
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is a pretty interesting book. Its only interesting cause it’s about the history of witch trials, and things like that kind of tickle my interest. It had its moments where I wanted to put it down cause it got so boring, but overall it was a decent read. I learn a couple of new things about the witch trials reading this book. Like parliament making a law in 1542 saying that witch craft was a capital crime. I learned that the majority of the English that were convicted were woman. I knew that but I didn’t know that the woman to men conviction ratio was so steep. Most people and would think or portray that witchcraft was hereditary, but the English parlament back in the day didn’t necessarily think that. In fact they thought that witches passed their witch craft down to their friends, servants, foes, pets, cousins, anybody was guilty if u had association. They had a list of grounds that they would use to accuse a witch. It went as follows: “if the party suspected be the son or daughter, the servant or familiar friend; neer neighbor or old companion of knowne or convicted witch, this …show more content…
Like in salem there were 141 women accused which 14 were executed and only 44 men accused with only 15 executed. The book talks about how if a man confessed to witch craft he was more than likely just punished or called a liar giving them a benefit of a doubt, but if a woman confessed she was taken up on her word and punished. Salem had the most accusations and executions with a total of 185 accusations and 19 excuted and Fairfield had the least with 7 accused and 0 executed. Even when it came to fornication men got off easier than women. I thought it was crazy that in the 1680s and 90s that a man could deny paternity and be easily relived of child support. The crazy part is that the woman in return would be charged with sexual
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is a pretty interesting book. Its only interesting cause it’s about the history of witch trials, and things like that kind of tickle my interest. It had its moments where I wanted to put it down cause it got so boring, but overall it was a decent read. I learn a couple of new things about the witch trials reading this book. Like parliament making a law in 1542 saying that witch craft was a capital crime. I learned that the majority of the English that were convicted were woman. I knew that but I didn’t know that the woman to men conviction ratio was so steep. Most people and would think or portray that witchcraft was hereditary, but the English parlament back in the day didn’t necessarily think that. In fact they thought that witches passed their witch craft down to their friends, servants, foes, pets, cousins, anybody was guilty if u had association. They had a list of grounds that they would use to accuse a witch. It went as follows: “if the party suspected be the son or daughter, the servant or familiar friend; neer neighbor or old companion of knowne or convicted witch, this …show more content…
Like in salem there were 141 women accused which 14 were executed and only 44 men accused with only 15 executed. The book talks about how if a man confessed to witch craft he was more than likely just punished or called a liar giving them a benefit of a doubt, but if a woman confessed she was taken up on her word and punished. Salem had the most accusations and executions with a total of 185 accusations and 19 excuted and Fairfield had the least with 7 accused and 0 executed. Even when it came to fornication men got off easier than women. I thought it was crazy that in the 1680s and 90s that a man could deny paternity and be easily relived of child support. The crazy part is that the woman in return would be charged with sexual