A chronic case of mass hysteria

There have been many books devoted to the terrible events that took place in the small rural community of Salem Village and its larger sister, Salem Town, between February 1692 and May 1693. As Stacy Schiff points out, most of them are shaped by particular theses — she lists 13 in all. This approach doesn’t just offer readers the consolation of an overriding explanation, but gives authors built-in filters, enabling them to concentrate on what proves their particular case.

Such a strategy is tempting because of the unruly complexity of the Salem phenomenon, with its hundreds of accusers, accused, magistrates, ministers and fearful bystanders. Schiff’s own selective cast of characters runs to six closely printed pages and lists 88 names. Nevertheless, she herself chooses not to squeeze what happened into the straitjacket of a predetermined interpretation. Instead she has assembled a vast array of data and then crunched it down chronologically, enabling her to tell the story day-by-day.

This is an impressive and valuable achievement. In discussing lacunae in contemporary reports of the crisis, Schiff points out that ‘the wealth of detail was too much for anyone’ — except, it seems, for Schiff herself, who is never overwhelmed by it. Readers may be, though, flipping back to the cast list, as with the baggier sort of Russian novel, to remind ourselves who was who.

For 400 pages Schiff sticks to telling the story as it might have been understood by an observer at the time, from the first disturbing outbreaks in the Parris parsonage to the final hangings and the soul-searching that followed them. Only towards the very end does she offer her own modest explanations: the girls might have been suffering from hysteria; Thomas Putnam, husband and father of prolific accusers, was a fraud and a manipulator.