In "witchcraft in early modern Europe,"Jonathan Barry and Marianne Hester assert "witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles over gender". ... The patriarchal society tended to turn women into their contrast, that is to say a "non-woman" or a witch, so that the Early Modern Europe was male dominated in social relations, structures and discourses. ... Most of accusations against women as witches, aimed to diminish them to a wildly instinctive animal, having sexual intercourses with devil and dancing naked around a fire. ... Although witchcraft accusati...

• Word Count: 1848
• Approx Pages: 7

Earlier, Parris had heard a commotion in the forest and discovered his niece, Abigail, and her friends: Betty, Mary Warren, and Mercy Lewis, and Tituba, his Caribbean slave, swaying and dancing in the forest to Tituba's Barbados songs. ... Parris shares that he saw a kettle in the grass in which the girls danced; Abigail dismisses it as soup, but Parris is still afflicted by hysteria, and fearfully tells that he believes he saw some movement in the soup! ... Miller points out that in his modern crisis "Nobody but a fanatic, it seemed, could really say all that he believed....

• Word Count: 2297
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

(Klaits, 19) But whether witchcraft existed or not, the concept of it dominated the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era. ... (Klaits, 59) It was believed that women danced around naked, ate babies, had huge orgies, had sex with the devil, and then had his incubus child. ...

• Word Count: 1685
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography

Some modern versions cast the story as something that has to do with intolerance of difference, that the accused were really just oddballs that the community tacitly approved getting rid of, but most of the people who were accused, convicted and executed in Salem were remarkable by their very devotion to community norms. ... Parris from then on denies the true story and only admits that the girls were dancing. ...

• Word Count: 1822
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Abigail is beautiful, passionate, and headstrong with desires which she acted on specifically the dancing in the woods and having an affair with John Proctor. ... This in modern times is a very powerful tool as it was also back then. ...

• Word Count: 1854
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School