Puritanism & Salem

Mary Sibley and Increase Mather from S01E09

In the 1692 Salem, Puritanism was the main religion and it took a central place in the Witch Trials.

To understand its importance in this colony of Massachusetts, we will first deal with the definition of Puritanism by giving an overview about their practices and believes before tackling how they acted in the Witch Trials. These elements will be highlighted with the representation of Puritanism in the TV series Salem by trying to analyze and compare fiction with historical facts and common definitions of the term.

Puritans were religious reformers. They represented a branch of the Church of England since the end of the sixteenth century and moved from Europe to escape persecution. As they were influenced by the Enlightenment, many of Christians started to read the bible and understood it in their own way. They wanted a strong separation between the Church of Rome and the Church of England and wanted to turn the Church as a stronger and harsher institution. As they flew European persecutions, they found their main nest in Massachusetts where they settled and organized themselves as societies. They started to build small villages and lived around very rigorous believes such as the supremacy of the man as a male and as a father, the submission of women, the respect of the parents, chastity outside marriage and many other conservative believes. In other words, they stood for purity and the Bible were their holy book. We often associate the image of puritans as a very rigid group who did not really open themselves to others.

In the TV series Salem, the vision of Puritans is deployed through all the characters of the village. In a way it sticks to historical facts since Puritans colonized first Massachusetts and as we saw earlier organized societies. The TV Series tackles the subject of the Witch Trials which took place in the Puritan village of Salem. Most of the characters are represented in an accurate way since they all wear black clothes in public and women had their hair covered in sign of purity and modesty.

In addition to their common outfits, Puritans in Salem are also represented as strong defenders of the Christian faith through many believes and themes such as the ban of sexual intercourses outside the wedlock. Indeed, the first episode of the first season opens in a very shocking punishment scene where a man is held in front of the entire village and got the letter F burnt on his forehead because he slept with a woman who were not his wife. We can see this punishment as a reference to the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1850 in which a woman is condemned to wear the letter A because she is accused to have committed adultery in the puritan society of Boston at the time. For the little story, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Massachusetts into a family that descended from 17^th Puritans who lead the Witch Trial in 1692.

Furthermore, Puritans were sticked to family values and aimed at an idealistic vision of a nuclear family with a respected but also submitted mother, a strong paternal figure and well-educated children. On the one hand, Salem perfectly pictures this characteristic of the Puritan families to some extent. Indeed, the Hale family is composed by different sex parents and apply the biblical laws inside their home in order to educate their daughter Lucy who succeeds in being a model young woman.
On the other hand, the TV series depicts a criticism of Puritan society to some extent. Indeed, the characters of Mary Sibley and Isaac come to contradict the strict vision of marriage and family. Indeed, we know that Mary Sibley married the mayor of the village in order to get what she wants and to provide her an alibi if suspicions are raised concerning her witch status. Isaac, the one who have the nickname of the Fornicator and the one who got punished with the scarlet letter F also represent a character that goes against the Puritan conventions. The most striking one is the reverend who slips with a prostitute he fell in love with. These two male characters in particular emphasize the fact that even led by rigorous religious laws, human urges are sometimes stronger if they are forbidden which draws a satire of the Puritan religion.

Furthermore, only men politically run the village of Salem in the TV series which corresponds to historical content.

Moreover, Puritans had a tough belief concerning the existence of Hell and Devil. They acted in a certain way in order to reach heaven after death and condemned every behaviors that tended to go against the holy book which is why they played an important role in the Witch Trials. Indeed, they wanted to eradicate every evil comportments of their society and considered witches as the very essence of evil. In the series as well as in the historical records, Puritans were the ones who led the witch hunt and sentenced more than twenty women to death because of their 'witch-behavior.'

To conclude, we can say that fiction and history are consistent concerning Puritans in Salem during the Witch Trials. 

Drawing representing Puritans chasing a Witch in Salem in 1692