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This book discusses the role of children in the Salem witch trials through a close reading of the many and varied narratives of the trials, including court records, contemporary and historical documents, fiction, drama, and poetry. Taking a critical theory approach to explore both what we might understand as a child in 1692 New England and to consider our adult investment in reading the child, Kristina West explores narratives of the afflicted girls and the many accused children whom are often absent or overlooked in histories, and considers how the trial structure is continually repeated in attempts to establish the respective guilt and innocence of these and other groups. This book also analyses later manuscripts and fictional rewritings of the trials to question the basis on which assumptions about the child in history are made, and to consider why such narratives of Salem's children are still relevant now.
List of contents
Introduction: The child as witch.- 1. 'Bitch witches': Reading 'affliction' in the Salem witch narratives.- 2. The case of Dorcas Good: accuser and accused.- 3. Childhood, witchcraft, and absence.- 4. Motherhood and witchcraft in Salem.- 5. Ann's Story.- 6. Fictionalising Salem: The reconstructed child.- 7. Conclusion: Salem in the twenty first century.
About the author
Kristina West is an affiliated member of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media at the University of Reading, UK. Her research focuses on American literature, children's literature, and critical theory. Her first book,
Louisa May Alcott and the Textual Child, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020.
Report
"West in her Reading the Salem Witch Child: The Guilt of Innocent Blood sheds light on how to interpret the roles of children and families in the Salem witch trials. ... West demonstrate that discerning the functions of the ordinary components of witchcraft, sometimes hidden in plain sight, can enhance our understanding of this complex subject. These two recent works help to contextualize childhood and material culture within the larger history of magic and witchcraft in early New England." (Tricia R. Peone, Early American Literature, Vol.57 (2), 2022)
