Women, Religion, & Captivity
The word captivity means to be in the condition of being imprisoned or confined. My question is: Can only a physical body be held captive, or can personality, intelligence and opinions be also? If so, which is worse? Cotton Mather, a Puritan Minister in New England, wrote a book called The Wonders of the Invisible World in which he discusses the trial of Martha Carrier.
Carrier was a Puritan woman who was charged with witchcraft during the Salem witch hunt. She was accused of bringing smallpox over to kill people, but using her powers to save her loved ones. The Salem Girls did not help her cause; they put on a theatrical performance before the court, claiming they could see the ghosts of the thirteen smallpox victims that died. Cotton Mather believed that “that rampant hag, Martha Carrier… agreed that the devil had promised her she should be Queen of Hebrews”. In other words, the people of Salem believed Carrier to be the Queen of Hell.
What’s interesting about Carrier is that she never confessed. Her children did though. They had “frankly and fully confessed not only that they were witches themselves, but that their mother had made them so” (Mather). However, it is also believed that John Proctor was in the prison her kids were kept in and witnessed them get tortured until they told the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Eventually, the trial ended up with Carrier being hanged on August 5th, 1692.
Was Martha Carrier really believed to be a witch? Or did the Court use witchcraft as a scapegoat? Carrier was a strong woman. She was stubborn and didn’t comply to the norms of Puritan females at that time. She had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to speak it. She was authoritative, headstrong, and physically powerful. She ultimately threatened the Puritan patriarchy, and maybe the men just couldn’t have that threat and needed a way to eliminate it. Accuse her of witchcraft, make an example to all their women that to be unsubmissive is wrong and evil. This could be a far-fetched idea, but so is believing there are witches in an alliance with Satan plotting against you next door.
Martha Carrier’s life was taken in too soon and for all the wrong reasons. It’s believed that Salem documents actually disclose that her crime wasn’t witchcraft (as the court told the people) but it was for her “independence of mind and unsubmissive nature.” Sentenced to death for being a Puritan woman who behaved too much like a Puritan man. However, religion plays a different role in another Puritan woman’s life: Mary Rowlandson.
Rowlandson wrote in her book, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, about how she gets taken captive by the Native Americans during a war between the natives and the English settlers. At first, she views the natives as “barbarous creatures” (Rowlandson) but throughout the book, her opinion begins to change. While being held captive, she uses her Puritan religion to keep her going. She turns the situation into God’s will, saying:
“It is a solemn night to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, some there… yet the Lord by His almighty power preserved a number of us from death, for there was twenty-four of us taken alive and carried captive” (Rowlandson).
She takes her Puritan religion to reflect upon herself, rather than to attack others. Her opinions of the Native Americans even change, which is unheard-of in the likes of all the other English settlers. She begins to think that not much separates the civilized from the savage, because she sees similarities between her people and the natives (and even begins to like some of them). She seems to have a sort of intellectual relationship between herself and her religion. Her views seem to be very obscure compared to those of the likes of Cotton Mather.
Even though there are admirable traits shared between both Mary Rowlandson and Martha Carrier, it isn’t until present day that there seems to be anybody to admire them — or even acknowledge them. It raises the question of how many other women’s beliefs were held captive by their culture? Or how many men disagreed with the system in which they were living in but couldn’t say anything?
