34 pages • 1-hour read
Escaping Salem
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Themes
The Differing Modes of Knowledge
Throughout the text, different modes of knowledge are presented. One way this is present is through the differentiation between one’s role and one’s education, a concept that might feel quite strange in the modern era, in which education is meant to directly correlate to vocation, role, and authority. However, in Escaping Salem, we see first that Sarah Bates, who was not a physician, was nevertheless called upon to perform the duties of a doctor; later, we see that the magistrates were called upon to oversee trials, despite being untrained in legal philosophy and it being uncertain if they could even understand legal texts.
Additionally, a major theme of the text is what constitutes evidence and what does not. The magistrates differentiate between what’s strong enough for an indictment and what’s strong enough for a conviction, and it is suggested that the latter is much more rigorous. Indeed, much of what passes for evidence has either been discarded as quackery (e.g., ducking) or has been deemed insufficient for a conviction (e.g., misfortune following a quarrel). This calls into question our own understanding of objective knowledge, a question that is a theme of the modern era, as well—what constitutes strong evidence? How do we know what, or whom, to trust?
Legal Precedent Versus Public Opinion
To that same end, the text frequently returns to the difference between legal standards of proof and what’s good enough for the public. The author’s argument is in part that New England witch trials were more measured and required a higher standard of proof than is commonly believed; however, this assertion is muddied by the fact that this higher standard of proof only seemed to exist for the magistrates, who were reluctant to overturn the decisions of the jurymen.
As a result, jurymen tended to reflect public opinion, which was more about emotional response and retribution than legal standards of proof, and in some instances the acquitted were asked to leave town for their own safety. This question is not unfamiliar to a modern society, and indeed this is a question that has been prominent in the era of social media: should legal standards of evidence be more stringent than the public’s? And to what extent can or should the public’s conceptions of evidence and guilt conform to the legal requirements? To what extent is it ethical to have two separate standards of guilt?
Modern Versus Early American Understanding
It’s difficult to read a text like Escaping Salem and not apply a modern sensibility to it, which is precisely what needs to be done. Much of the text documents events that seem illogical to a modern reader, yet are to some extent logical when considered from an early American’s perspective. This is an important consideration because the author’s purpose is precisely to lend a level of logic to these events; that is, even if a contemporary reader don’t see the events as logical, our task is to find the logic and evaluate the actors on their own terms.
The Shared Responsibility of the Community
The text begins by bringing three disparate voices together in the Prologue: two people passing in the night, plus Katherine Branch’s scream in the background. It is established early on that New Englanders of the time required of one another a shared sensibility; the quarrels that led to such trials often arose from what was viewed as a betrayal of this shared sensibility. There is a constant tension between the concept of the individual and the concept of the community, one that some may argue is quintessentially American: to what do we owe our state or our country, and to what extent can this be at odds with what we owe ourselves? The magistrates even wrestled with this idea when considering how best to approach the trials, balancing the rights of the accused with the demands of the public. Community is at the center of the narrative, and, in many ways, the narrative is about a betrayal of community—or, at least, how such a perceived betrayal at the time had disastrous consequences.
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