The Marginalized Victims Of Women During The Witch Trials
Women Were Primarily Victims of Witch-Hunting and They did not Exercise any Significant Agency/power through the Process of Witch trials. A well-established definition of a victim is a person who has been attacked, or injured by someone else and someone who is harmed by an unpleasant event. In addition, the reference to the word ‘significant’ in this thesis argument is an important qualifier. The word significant, being a subjective term, allows this author to argue women did not have significant agency/power during the witch trial process. Just being a woman subjected to male controlled witch trials removed substantial power from women accused of being witches. Both women and men of this period in history believed that men had God given
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Women were taught to be submissive to the rule of their fathers and men in positions of rank. This caused social tensions, and the agency of a woman was suspect if she acted outside this socially structured role. The roles of women in households and communities were connected to bearing and raising children, marriage, and purchasing goods for the household. The acceptance of women accused as witches being part of the marginalized and poor, she argues, is not reflected in the documents from the trials and did not support the idea that women accused of witchcraft were the marginalized members of the community. Just because they were women in their patriarchal culture, they lacked significant ability to exercise agency. Analyses by English anthropologists made it clear that the appearance of witchcraft-accusations were related to the tensions within local societies. Community members brought accusations against people who were their neighbors or members of the same household who felt harmed by the witch. The accused witches did not exercise significant agency during the witch trials as they were considered women who were perceived to have stepped outside their place in …show more content…
Kent’s “Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593-1680” reflects on the normalized dominance of men in several areas which demonstrated how women were primarily victims of witch-hunting and lacked the ability to exercise any significant agency through the process of witch trials. She mentioned the “subtlety of subcultural power in the areas of economic, social, religious and political behavior.” This subcultural power combined with the institutional power of a trial presided over by men, resulted in the subordinate and marginalized positions of women. Simply by being a woman in this culture resulted in significant loss of
Women were taught to be submissive to the rule of their fathers and men in positions of rank. This caused social tensions, and the agency of a woman was suspect if she acted outside this socially structured role. The roles of women in households and communities were connected to bearing and raising children, marriage, and purchasing goods for the household. The acceptance of women accused as witches being part of the marginalized and poor, she argues, is not reflected in the documents from the trials and did not support the idea that women accused of witchcraft were the marginalized members of the community. Just because they were women in their patriarchal culture, they lacked significant ability to exercise agency. Analyses by English anthropologists made it clear that the appearance of witchcraft-accusations were related to the tensions within local societies. Community members brought accusations against people who were their neighbors or members of the same household who felt harmed by the witch. The accused witches did not exercise significant agency during the witch trials as they were considered women who were perceived to have stepped outside their place in …show more content…
Kent’s “Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593-1680” reflects on the normalized dominance of men in several areas which demonstrated how women were primarily victims of witch-hunting and lacked the ability to exercise any significant agency through the process of witch trials. She mentioned the “subtlety of subcultural power in the areas of economic, social, religious and political behavior.” This subcultural power combined with the institutional power of a trial presided over by men, resulted in the subordinate and marginalized positions of women. Simply by being a woman in this culture resulted in significant loss of