Customer Reviews

The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While this book, first published in 1949, is very readable, the serious student will be chagrined by it's factual errors.

The writing style makes for a pleasant read, and Ms. Starkey does give the researcher clues where to find the real facts, but for the most part, read this book with a grain of salt.

For instance, Ms. Starkey tells us that Lady Mary Phips was the widow of her own father... that the infamous George Burroughs was good at raising molasses kegs with 2 fingers... (the story is a MUSKET not molasses!)

The errors continue into even more important realms. (Such as which Nehemiah Abbot was released by virtue of the 'afflicted' deciding they had 'the wrong man' - young Abbot's eloquent defense and calm demeanor should not be negated nor glossed over - or worse - attributed to another man!)

On and on, one error after another.

Frankly, as often as this book is used as a reference, I'm surprised someone else hasn't pointed out the poor research!

I first read, "The Devil in Massachusetts" in the late1960s as part of a colonial history course. Having also an interest in psychology at that time, I was impressed with the story of the mass-hysteria and the book made a lasting impression on me.

I re-read the book following a visit to Salem, Massachusetts this summer. I had noticed the same mass-hysteria involving false charges of child-sexual abuse along with the recovered memory movement during the 1980s an 1990s. Although Starkey necessarily presents her tale against a background of religion and religious delusions, the contempory mass-hysteria has no apparent connection to religion but the reactions of the public (society) shows a distrubing duplication of the process of hysterical contagion.

Once a "cause", whether it be sexual abuse, gun control or other "hot-button" issue, is pushed into the limelight and kept there by fanatics of whatever stripe, abetted and given publicity by the media, the society (public) has almost a religious need to curtail critical thinking, accept accusation as proven fact, believe stories of impossible events and destroy their fellow citizens without compunction.

And that is the horror that is demonstrated by Starkey's work; and the naivete of the old, standby reassurances, "It couldn't happen in this day and age", "It could never happen here".

Using her knowledge of psychology and psychoanalogy, Starkey gives us an interesting look at the 1692-93 Salem witch trials. Rather than using a boring textbook format, Marion turns the entire event into a story. A story that, while sometimes questionable, is undoubtedly entertaining.

"The Devil in Massachussets" is both a fair resource and a good novel. Put simply, it's worth buying.

I normally don't like books like this, especially books that pass themselves of as scholarly. However, I've always been interested in the Salem Witch Trials, and Starkey's "Devil in Massachusetts" is definitely not to be overlooked.

This may not be the best, or the most thorough account of the trials, but if you're looking for the basics, as well as a little background info, "Devil" provides a very intriguing and interesting read. At times, Starkey's wording and verbosity seem a little exhaustive and can be overlooked. But for the brunt of it, Starkey provides enough information to justly conclude what did happen in Salem, what caused it, and the events that followed.

Be scholarly, verbose reads your cup of tea or not, if you're looking for some great, solid information on the bleakest event of undemocratic justice ever to stain American history, Marion Starkey's "Devil in Mass." will definitely shed some reason and light on the "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble" of the Salem Witch Trials.

I recently became interested in Salem Witch trials and related subjects, and Starkey's "The Devil in Massachusetts" was recommended to me as a starting point. And, it was an interesting read. It is the first book to which I would read about the witch trials in 1692 Salem.

I also find it interesting to learn about the reactions from the locals and authorities to hysteria or paranoia regarding "witches" in Salem and relating tales. It involved a look at the social background from both accused and the accusers during this time period. It almost reminds me of reading about the mass hysteria of Chinese society of 1768 in Philip Kuhn's Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768.

This book was first published in 1949, and it is roughly 300 pages with twenty-two chapters. The writing style almost read as a historical scholarly article as it is almost wordy. However, the information lies within interests me to inquire further on the subject to which the "selected bibliography" was helpful for starting a research.

In my opinion, it is very informative reading, and it is certainly shows one example of a mass hysteria that can happen in any town or society.

This book would be a good basis for a TV movie on the Lifetime channel. It may be based on solid primary sources, but it is written like a non-fiction novel full of conjecture and theory using the basic facts as a foundation. In other words, it is not good reference material; a good book to give an overall story line, but that would be it, hence the three star rating.

Starkey raised my eyebrow with his Preface comment, "Only twenty witches were excecuted," as he compared what happened in Puritan New England to the rest of the world. When speaking of Dorcas Goode, the five year old sent to prison for eight months, he almost implies that she deserved her fate. While this may be his methodology for being frank and blunt about a serious subject, perhaps wanting to stir the emotions of the reader, I found it a bit callous, if not dismissive--which might have been his goal.

From a scholar point of view, he provides no background, and simply starts at the beginning of the hysteria with the "illnesses" that afflicted Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. He ignored Ann Putnam, the older of the "original three afflicted" who kept the hysteria going, especially with her dramatics at each of the examinations.

Again, I give it three stars just because it provides a shallow start for further investigation and relatively easy read. Sort of a "if you read one book on the Salem Witch Trials, you've read them all" category.

Caveats out of the way first: yes, there are some factual inaccuracies in this riveting account of the Salem witchcraft hysteria. Fifty additional years of research will inevitably alter the record. And yes, by virtue of the same fifty years of additional work, certain of Marion Starkey's interpretations (by no means all) are now generally considered to be superseded.

All that admitted, what a gem this book is! I read it as a teenager and it demonstrated the possibilities of historical narrative for me as no other book had. The facts of the story are gripping in themselves, of course, and when presented with Starkey's novelistic and dramatic flair, the result is informative, thought-provoking, and exceptionally moving. Starkey wrote this book in the shadow of McCarthyism, the "witch hunt" of the 1950s, and that lends especial power to her majestic conclusion.

Starkey was a most considerable writer (so reading some of the criticisms of her prose here at Amazon is confounding -- we must not be teaching our young people to read complex sentences very well!). Any budding historian or novelist would do well to study her work here most carefully -- for example, the sheer brilliancy of her chapter endings. The Devil in Massachusetts achieves literary status and should be part of any American reader's basic education.

If I remember correctly, Starkey's book started off as a doctoral thesis. It reads like one, despite her attempt to inject drama into a period of history that needs no such injection. Her modern enquiry is rather dated now, as she used the technique of Freudian analysis to explain away the hysteria surrounding the trials and to explain how something like this could have happened. The psychoanalysis may hit on a grain of truth, but a lot of what she stated was merely conjecture. I would have been more interested to know about the link between the real dangers the Puritans faced (dangers over which they had very little control in their new, hostile, strange environment) and their belief system, which left them ripe to believe in imagined ones.

It's a cliché, but I literally could not put this book down once I started it. It's beautifully written, the bare-bones facts fleshed out with details of the appearance and atmosphere of 17th-century Salem. The inexorable and horrifying progress of the witch hunt, which, once begun, became an unstoppable machine, fed by gossip, self-interest, and religious repression, is recounted in day-by-day detail, focusing on the characters of those involved on all sides. It sometimes shows its age--it was originally published in 1950--but very few books today show such mastery of style in historical writing. It was an influential book in its time, serving as source material for Arthur Miller in his play "The Crucible," which he wrote as a cautionary parable about the figurative witchhunting of the McCarthy era. It's a tale of a time and place when persons could be imprisoned without benefit of counsel for indefinite periods, when a word of protest could bring accusations of treason, when powerful, well-connected people could influence the course of justice, when the forces of religious and political intolerance walked abroad in the land. Does this sound familiar?

This book takes the Witchcraft in Salem through the entire process from the beginning to end. It takes each of the people involved and brings the reader into their lives to see what happened. The analysis is at a minimum and the content is there to draw one's own conclusions. This is what I like.