A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials
by Marion L. Starkey
Well, darn. Fascinating book, well researched, well told. The author did her job well, pulling no stops and naming all names. She followed up, too--didn't just stop with the first witch hanged but kept the story moving until the close. Well...there's never really a "close" to history, but you know what I mean. Until the people were moving on with their lives, making amends (or not), and the history was history--not current events.
But I yearned for details, explanations, even theories. When I read the introduction, Ms. Starkey said she'd been inspired to do the researched by her two college classes on psychology. So I expected a lot more psychology than I got--and what I got, was darn little. The book was published in 1949 so I didn't hope for a modern-day analysis, but I still expected her to explain terms like "hysteria" using the interpretation of the day. But no--all we got was the word, as if it explained everything. I had to look it up in the encyclopedia to understand what it (used to) mean.
She also had a tendency to throw around names of religions and doctrines like they were common knowledge, like everyone knew what Puritanism was and predestination meant. I did--vaguely--but I didn't know enough to make any sense out of the paragraphs that cited them as causal to the phenomenon. He'd talk about the limitations in the lives of young girls in that era, but seldom give the details that would make us understand just how god-awful boring they were. And how limited.
And thus, my disappointment. I give her A for exposition, C for world-building, and F for introspection. I might have disagreed with every single psychological diagnosis she offered, but at least she could have offered them.
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