Judyth’s Reviews > The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England > Status Update

“A symbol used to describe the model wife was the snail: ‘that little creature, that goes no further than it can carry its house on its head.’”
As the previous owner of my copy of the book wrote: “Fuck”

“Acknowledging herself to be ‘a female, a weaker vessel, subject to passion.’” -Katherine Harrison, forced to say these things in court, while fighting for her own property and against witch accusations.

“He [Cotton Mather] and other writers sometimes referred to accused witches in terms such as ‘an ignorant and a scandalous old woman’ or ‘a lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman.’”

“History offers few subjects as endlessly fascinating or as intellectually frustrating as witchcraft. The word itself evokes images so diverse, ultimately so contradictory, as to defy definition. It is associated with old age, frightful ugliness, and female wickedness on the one hand, with youth, beauty, and female sexual power on the other.”