In “Did Solipsism Kill the Manosphere,” we noted the five solipsistic ways—anecdotes, social cliques, passing judgment, emotional manipulation, and authoritarianism—that are regularly found in the Manosphere. As part of that examination, we showed how solipsism is used to enforce ideological purity through exclusion. We also examined how the accusation of being a cold and non-empathetic plays a role in the ideological witch hunt.
My 9-times Great Grandmother was Susannah North Martin, one of the 14 executed “witches” of Salem. Even so many generations removed, I see a woman with a temperament very much like my own. She too was falsely accused being a servant of Satan and of being a heartless liar who showed no compassion for those who viciously attacked her. She too showed poise and gave logical responses in the face of sheer irrationality. Even in the face of death from the falsehoods against her, she still wouldn’t judge her accusers as liars and she only wished good upon them. I even have her sarcastic tone and her…gallows humor. So similar is my grandmother to myself that her words could have come from my own lips without a hint of dishonest appropriation.
Here is an account of the trial prior to her execution. I’ve placed her words in bold.
May 2, 1692 • Monday
Salem Village
Today, Amesbury constable Orlando Bagley escorted Goody Martin the twenty miles to Salem Village. They arrived late, and the afflicted convulsed as soon as she entered the meeting house. Those who could speak accused her, expect for Elizabeth Hubbard and John Indian who said she had never hurt them. Before they collapsed, Mercy Lewis pointed wordlessly and Ann Putnam Jr. threw her glove in a fit at the defendant. Goody Martin, from derision or nerves, laughed at the spectacle.
“What? Do you laugh at it?”
“Well I may at such folly.”
“Is this folly?” demanded the magistrate. “The hurt of these persons?”
“I never hurt man, woman, or child,” she said.
“She hath hurt me a great many times,” Mercy Lewis cried in anguish, “and pulls me down.”
Goody Martin laughed again, and the onlookers thought her utterly heartless. When others said she hurt them, she denied working witchcraft or consenting that her specter be used. She had no idea what ailed these people.
“But what do you think ails them?”
“I don’t desire to spend my judgement upon it.”
“Don’t you think they’re bewitched?”
“No,” she said “I do not think they are.”
“Tell us what your thoughts about them then.”
“No, my thoughts are my own when they are in,” she answered defiantly, “but when they are out they are another’s. Their master—”
“Their master?” the court interrupted. “Who do you think is their master?”
“If they be dealing in the black art, you may know as well as I,” she snapped, suggesting that the afflicted were themselves witches and that the court was ignorant as she about the matter. Susannah herself had nothing to do with it.
“I desire to lead myself according to the Word of God.”
“Is this according to God’s Word?” the magistrate asked, indicating the afflicted.
“If I were such a person, I would tell you the truth.”
Her specter again tormented the afflicted, and when asked about that, she answered “How do I know? He that appeared in the shape of Samuel, a glorified saint, may appear in anyone’s shape.” But the magistrates would not contemplate a parallel as appropriate as the false specter raised for King Saul by the Witch of Endor. The afflicted’s present extreme suffering was more influential on the court than Susannah’s pointed Biblical challenge to its one-side interpretation of events.
“Do you believe these do not say true?” asked the bench.
“They may lie, for aught I know.”
“May not you lie?”
“I dare not tell a lie if it would save my life.”
“Then you will speak the truth?”
“I have spoke nothing else. I would do them any good.”
“I do not think you have such affection for them whom just now you insinuated had the Devil for their master.”
Elizabeth Hubbard flinched and murmured to Marshal Herrick that Susannah Martin pinched her hand. Other afflicted shouted that her spirit was on the beam.
“Pray God discover you,” said the magistrate, “if you be guilty.”
“Amen, amen,” she snapped back. “A false tongue will never make a guilty person.”
“You have been a long time coming to the court today,” exclaimed Mercy Lewis. “You can come fast enough in the night.”
“No, sweetheart,” Goody Martin said sarcastically. Mercy and most of the others convulsed, which seemed to upset the accused enough that she gnawed her lip.
“It was that woman!” cried John Indian, now in violent seizures. “She bites. She bites.”
“Have you not compassion for these afflicted?” exclaimed the magistrates.
“No. I have none.”
The court again attempted a touch test, once more lapsing into folk magic that had neither legal nor religious approval. But Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Goody Bibber were all repelled. John Indian shouted that he would kill her if he could get close enough, but some invisible force threw him down before he reached her. It seemed as if a devil were right there in the courtroom among them all.
“What is the reason these cannot come near you?” asked the court.
“I cannot tell,” said Goody Martin. “It may be the Devil bears me more malice than another.”
She suspected they could approach if they wanted to, and offered to approach them herself, but the offer was ignored.
“Do you not see how God evidently discovers you?”
“No. Not a bit for that.”
“All the congregation think so.”
“Let them think what they will.”
But the frantic accusations and stubbornly irregular proceedings drowned out the defendant’s sharp defiance and insistence on her own innocence. Susannah Martin was committed to prison all the same.
— Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege
July 19, 1692, Tuesday
Salem Town
Between eight o’clock and noon, Sheriff George Corwin transported Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good, and Sarah Wildes – all praying that God would prove their innocence – from prison by cart through the streets of Salem to be hanged. Quiet housewives or turbulent scolds, well-to-do or in rags, all five women now faced a painful, public death.
It was customary for the dying to attempt facing death in a spirit of forgiveness lest their souls appear before Heavenly judgement seething hatred. Sarah Good would have none of it. At the gallows Rev. Nicholas Noyes urged her to confess what the courts had seemingly proven and at least not die a liar. When she denied the guilt, Noyes said she *knew* she was a witch. “You are a liar” she snapped. “I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink.” (the folk curse was loosely based on a verse in Revelation. Tradition states that in 1717, Noyes suffered an internal hemorrhage and died choking on his own blood.
Rumors hinted that the Devil might attempt a last-minutes rescue of his followers, but all five hanged as scheduled on the ledge above the tidal pool. Joseph Ballard probably witnessed the executions on his way from Andover. Soon after, he entered a complaint in Salem before magistrates Gedney, Corwin, Hathorne, and Higginson against Mary Lacy and her daughter Mary Jr. for tormenting his wife Elizabeth with “strange pains and pressures.” He even put up a £100 bond “on condition to prosecute.” (Plaintiffs customarily did this in civil suits, the sum forfeit if the plaintiff didn’t appear in court, but this is the first recorded bond in these witch cases where the accusations seem to have been treated as a public emergency.) The magistrates issues a warrant for only Goody Lacy, however, and not for her daughter.
The bodied of the dead, meantime, were buried (if only temporarily) near the rocky execution site. By family tradition the Nurses waited for darkness (sunset was about a quarter after seven) then rowed up the North River to the bend by the ledge and exhumed Rebecca’s body. According to another tradition Caleb Buffum (a distant relative) noticed this effort from his home nearby and helped carry the remains to shore. From there a small craft could slip downstream past town on midnight’s high tide, then north up the estuary to Crane River and along its narrowing length to the Nurses’ land, where they buried her privately on home-ground.
— Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege
What do you think of this anecdotal bit of history? Too much emotional manipulation? It definitely contains too much judgment! And maybe, just maybe, exactly the right amount of satire.