At least Arthur Miller tried to give a reason to the events, Schiff just tells you they happened. In turn, she didn’t attempt to convince the reader who instigated the accusing. Schiff makes no attempt at persuading the reader to believe the events were true, that the teenage girls were truly afflicted. These were interesting perspectives I would have liked to read more about. A look into the modern Salem as it’s residents grow to accept the past that for so long they had attempted to hide in the shadows of history. A conclusion that depicts the teenage girl accusers as being oppressed puritan girls who were finally given a voice for a fleeting moment in their lives. What’s particularly disappointing is that once Schiff finds her voice the book becomes as interesting as I had anticipated, however it takes her nearly 400 pages to find it at length. Accusers are not written to “supposedly” have seen a witch, their hallucinations are written as events.) (This at times was jarring, especially when one has yet to understand Schiff’s writing style. She presented the events bare, with no opinion other than that Arthur Miller was wrong. She went out of her way, it seems, to strip the ordeal. She resented that portrait he had caused Salem to now be synonymous with. She wanted you to know Arthur Miller got it wrong. They all blended together, and so the politics all really blurred for me.įrom the beginning it felt like Schiff had a chip on her shoulder, another early fault. I lost track of which old guy was the minister, who was the governor, who was overseeing the courts, who was clerking. Realistic me thought it was, for a time, interesting to get into the politics of the puritans and 1600’s America. And I understand that it’s likely a lot easier to find information about the men in positions of power than it is women and men charged with witchcraft and teenage girls who accused them. You could point to the subtitle as an excuse for why this is acceptable. Instead, 80% of the book is focused on the old men in charge who let it happened. I’m referring to the fact that when I read “The Witches”, I’m assuming this book is going to focus on either the victims of the witch hangings or the young girls who caused them. No, I’m not referring to Schiff taking the pragmatic approach of assuming you realize that there likely wasn’t any real witches hung in Salem in 1692. The title is a contradiction from what’s presented in the book. My first issue with this book is the title pretty good place to start in terms of a list of grievances with a book. Sadly, The Witches by Stacy Schiff wasn’t what I was expecting, and what I got wasn’t enough to satisfy me. Maybe I went in with too many dreams of Arthur Miller and the tourist traps of Salem in my head.
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