Damned Women In Puritan New England Chapter Summary

Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England by Elizabeth Reis(1999) is a book on the witch panic in colonial New England and why women were so heavily considered the targets. This panic spread through out the Puritans and in this book Reis tries to discover and explain why this might of happened and the changes it caused. Many or all of the points Reis makes in the book have to do with the outlook of females and the female soul in the Puritan settlements. Reis described the shocking equality that she found among the genders by the Purtians but the preaching of the ministers effected them differently overall. This preaching prayed upon the guilt of the person and the women seemed to be move heavily affected. She also talked about how Women were seen to be weaker than men and that there overall weak female body was the reason there souls could be more easily affecting and taken by the devil. These are two of the main reasons Reis described for why witches were so heavily female opposed to male.

Reis argues in Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England that also due to these two things, women were not just looked at as more likely to witches, they also …show more content…
Reis states that the reason it eventually subsides is because the belief around the form the devil can take and the way he affected people changed. The preaching of the Puritans beliefs also tended to change suddenly causing people , mostly women, to change beliefs on the matter and started to feel differently. Finally, at the end of the book, Reis discusses how the devil was forever looked at differently and how the devil is more of a symbol. Reis also pointed out how these beliefs and events with the Puritans changed how the world viewed them and the devil and fascinated many writers and