Vexed with Devils

Stories of witchcraft and demonic possession from early modern England through the last official trials in colonial New England

Those possessed by the devil in early modern England usually exhibited a common set of symptoms: fits, vomiting, visions, contortions, speaking in tongues, and an antipathy to prayer. However, it was a matter of interpretation, and sometimes public opinion, if these symptoms were visited upon the victim, or if they came from within. Both early modern England and colonial New England had cases that blurred the line between witchcraft and demonic possession, most famously, the Salem witch trials. While historians acknowledge some similarities in witch trials between the two regions, such as the fact that an overwhelming majority of witches were women, the histories of these cases primarily focus on local contexts and specifics. In so doing, they overlook the ways in which manhood factored into possession and witchcraft cases.

Vexed with Devils is a cultural history of witchcraft-possession phenomena that centers on the role of men and patriarchal power. Erika Gasser reveals that witchcraft trials had as much to do with who had power in the community, to impose judgement or to subvert order, as they did with religious belief. She argues that the gendered dynamics of possession and witchcraft demonstrated that contested meanings of manhood played a critical role in the struggle to maintain authority. While all men were not capable of accessing power in the same ways, many of the people involved—those who acted as if they were possessed, men accused of being witches, and men who wrote possession propaganda—invoked manhood as they struggled to advocate for themselves during these perilous times. Gasser ultimately concludes that the decline of possession and witchcraft cases was not merely a product of change over time, but rather an indication of the ways in which patriarchal power endured throughout and beyond the colonial period.

Vexed with Devils reexamines an unnerving time and offers a surprising new perspective on our own, using stories and voices which emerge from the records in ways that continue to fascinate and unsettle us.

Erika Gasser is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati.

While much attention has focused on the place of women in the witch trials, in Vexed with Devils, Erika Gasser...shifts focus to look at the lesser studied place of men in these incidents...[Her discussions]add additional depth to our comprehension of how issues of gender impacted not just the trials themselves, but also the broader societal discussion regarding the presence of witchcraft and possession in early modern society.

Writing a few years ago, Alison Rowlands urged scholars to do more research into the 'extent to which the prosecution of witches was imagined, carried out, and justified as an expression of godly, dutiful, patriarchal manhood.' Gasser's book is a necessary response: a convincing treatment.

Marion Gibson,Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus:
Vexed with Devils brings together a number of key attributes: an important topic approached through excellent research involving a broad range of early modern texts and secondary historical scholarship. Erika Gasser is to be congratulated on a broad and detailed survey of material, which is well-expressed and interesting to read.

Gassers reading of these texts is close, careful, and extensiveGassers contribution to this scholarship is noteworthy. She provides a corrective to the direction that many previous studies took investigating mostly women, perhaps even women only- and failing to appreciate the attitudes about manhood that affected the outcomes of so many witchcraft cases.