Abstract
Perhaps no event from New England’s colonial history attracts as much attention as the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Hysteria. During the bicentennial year of the witchcraft episode (1892), Mary Wilkins Freeman published work that incorporated this crisis, a short story, “Little Maid at the Door,” and Giles Corey, Yeoman: A Play. In these works, Freeman explores the dynamics of power in colonial New England, and by extension, the New England of her own day. This chapter analyzes how Freeman blends elements of the regionalist tradition with those of the Gothic in order to explore the anxieties that emerge during a period of threatening change, whether in colonial New England or in the late nineteenth century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
G. Harrison Orian’s “New England Witchcraft in Fiction” provides a list of novels about witchcraft published prior to the Civil War. Attention to the witchcraft episode continued in the second half of the century; Longfellow’s play Giles Corey of Salem Farms appeared in Christus (1872).
- 2.
The Wilkins genealogy is discussed in Foster’s Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Other factors that contributed to the animosity between Bray Wilkins and John Willard appear in Salem Possessed.
- 3.
“The Little Maid at the Door,” first appeared in Harper’s Magazine in February 1892 and was later collected in Silence and Other Stories (1898).
- 4.
Freeman may also have been related to Giles Corey through her paternal grandmother, Mary W. Wilkins, nee Moulton. Giles Corey’s daughter Elizabeth had married John Moulton of Salem; Freeman mentions this possible connection in a letter of 1928 (Kendrick 422).
- 5.
Elizabeth Proctor was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to hang on the same day as her husband, but her execution was delayed because she was pregnant. That delay saved her life; William Stoughton signed a new execution warrant for her for February 1, 1693, but it was countermanded by William Phips (Schiff 353).
- 6.
See Infant Sphinx for details of the performance history based on Eugene Presbrey’s adaptation.
- 7.
The stage direction reads: “he flings the door to violently and slips the bolt.” Italics identify stage directions in the text and will be used here; quotations from the play will be identified by act and page number because neither the serial version nor the book included line numbers. Pagination refers to the Harper’s Monthly version.
- 8.
Upham says of Mrs. Ann Putnam that her family “seem to have had constitutional traits that illustrate and explain her own character and conduct. They were excitable and sensitive to an extraordinary degree. Their judgment, reason, and physical systems, were subject to the power of their fancies and affections. . . . [contributing to] the all but maniac condition to which excitement brought her own mind” (II: 238).
- 9.
Phoebe’s character may be based in part on Dorcas (Dorothy) Good (1687/8 – ?), a child accused of witchcraft and jailed; she had testified against her mother.
- 10.
In the actual court transcripts, Hathorne demands, “Why did you say, if you were a witch, you should have no pardon?”—Corey answers: “Because I am a —— woman.” (Upham 2: 49).
Works Cited
Anderson, Donald R. “Giles Corey and the Pressing Past.” American Transcendental Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2, 2000, pp. 114–26.
Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard UP, 1974.
Campbell, Donna. Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885–1915. Ohio UP, 1997.
Elbert, Monika. “Dying to be Heard: Morality and Aesthetics in Alcott’s and Hawthorne’s Tableaux Morts.” Death Becomes Her: Cultural Narratives of Femininity and Death in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Elizabeth Dill and Sheris Weinstein. Cambridge Scholars, 2008, pp. 19–36.
Foster, Edward. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Hendrick House, 1956.
[Freeman], Mary E. Wilkins. “Giles Corey, Yeoman: A Play.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1892, pp. 20–40.
[Freeman], Mary E. Wilkins. “The Little Maid at the Door.” Silence and Other Stories. Harper & Brothers, 1898, pp. 225–254.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels. Library of America, 1983, pp. 115–345.
Kendrick, Brent, ed. Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Scarecrow, 1985.
Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers and Fathers. Norton, 1996.
Orian, G. Harrison. “New England Witchcraft in Fiction.” American Literature, vol 2, no. 1, 1930, pp. 54–71.
Reichardt, Mary R. Mary Wilkins Freeman: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne, 1997.
Roberts, Sîan Silyn. “Transnational Perspectives on American Gothic Criticism.” Transnational Gothic, edited by Monika Elbert and Bridget Marshall. Ashgate, 2013, pp. 19–33.
Schiff, Stacy. The Witches: Salem, 1692. Little, Brown, 2015.
Shaw, S. Bradley. “New England Gothic by the Light of Common Day: Lizzie Borden and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s ‘The Long Arm.’” New England Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 2, 1997, pp. 211–36.
Upham, Charles W. Salem Witchcraft. Boston, Wiggin and Lunt, 1867. 2 vols.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women. Fordham UP, 2008.
Westbrook, Perry D. Mary Wilkins Freeman. Rev. ed., Twayne Publishers, 1988.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pennell, M.M. (2021). New England Gothic/New England Guilt: Mary Wilkins Freeman and the Salem Witchcraft Episode. In: Elbert, M., Bode, R. (eds) American Women's Regionalist Fiction. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55552-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55552-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-55551-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-55552-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)