Purkiss

Purkiss focused on the women’s role in testifying against other women and in the role of the women themselves in their trails for witchcraft.  She believes that, even though many people say that the testimony of women from witch trails cannot be trusted because it was written down by a man, that something can still be learned from these statements.  I think that Purkiss is right in this because even if we do not get what a woman said verbatim, we could still learn something about how society was structured and how these women were viewed by the things that were emphasized in their speeches. 

This reading focuses a great deal on how a woman’s role was defined in terms of the household.  There has been quite a common thing in most of what we have read about witches and why women were accused more often then men.  Witches were considered to kind of be a anti-housewife and therefore they posed a threat to everything that wives and mothers did for their homes and their families.  Purkiss argues that it was one of the woman’s most important duties to keep a boundary between the outside world and the home, and that when this boundary was crossed that a witch had the chance to enter and cause problems. 

One of these situations of boundary crossing was when women would go to meet each other to exchange gifts or gossip.  I cannot imagine how terrifying life must have been to always be wondering if you neighbor or friend was planning to harm you every time you stepped out of your house or everything that they stepped into your home.  Another situation in witch witches could do quite a great deal of harm when the boundary of the house was down was during childbirth.  The normal boundaries that surrounded the house were not present at this time and by inviting someone to come to your house you were opening yourself up to witchcraft, especially if you had unwomanly emotions during the pregnancy.  However, witches could not just enter your house, they could also punish you for not entering your house.  All of this must have put an immense amount of strain on the mother, and it’s a wonder that they kept having children at all, except it was their place and duty in life.