How we cite our quotes:
Quote #10
“You’d do well to heed what we say, Matthew Wood. John Wetherell’s boy died today. That makes three dead, and it’s the witch’s doing!”
“Whose doing? What are you driving at, man?”
“The Quaker woman’s. Down by Blackbird Pond. She’s been a curse on this town for years with her witchcraft!” (17.27-29)
Because she is a Quaker, Hannah has been cast out from Puritan society. The townspeople fear her rather than try to understand her. Here she becomes the scapegoat for the fever in the town.
Quote #11
“Please,” Kit ventured. “Those other women you spoke of – Goody Harrison and the other? What happened to them?”
“Goody Harrison was banished from the colony. They hanged Goody Johnson.” (18.71-72)
A harsh fate awaits social outcasts in the Puritan society. Women who are accused of witchcraft are either killed or banished. Why are only women accused of witchcraft? What is it about Kit that made her a likely target for these kinds of accusations?
Quote #12
Another woman testified that one afternoon last September she had been sitting in the window, sewing a jacket for her husband, when she had looked up and seen Kit walking past her house, starring up at the window in a strange manner. Whereupon, try as she would, the sleeve would never set right in the jacket. A man swore he had seen Kit and Goody Tupper dance round a fire in the meadow one moonlit night, and that a great black man, taller than an Indian, had suddenly appeared from nowhere and joined in the dance. (19.31)
The witch trial includes a list of ridiculous accusations against Kit. Notice how the Puritans project their fears and anxieties onto the girl.