Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Van Tuyl, Jocelyn

Area of Concentration

Literature and Religion

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which religion, race, and gender lead to witchcraft accusations in the Witch Trial fictions of contemporary authors Maryse Condé, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Celia Rees. The Puritans of the historic Salem Witch Trials constructed an ideal Puritan as it best fit their rigid social and doctrinal expectations, and this excluded religio-racial and gendered Others, making these individuals more susceptible to witchcraft accusations. The protagonists in Gaspar de Alba’s Calligraphy of the Witch and Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem have differing ethnic identities and religious practices from the Puritans in the novels; the Puritans’ misinformation regarding these identities and practices causes them to denounce protagonists Concepción and Tituba as witches. In Rees’s Witch Child and Condé’s I, Tituba, the protagonists challenge Puritan strictures placed on women’s knowledge and actions, which complicates the Puritan gender hierarchy. By crafting fictions that implicitly critique the Othering of marginalized groups, these three authors provide a lens through which to examine present-day racial and gender oppression.

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