Betty Parris Quotes

Lots of people see visions when they stare into shiny surfaces like crystals, or mirrors, or bodies of water,” Charlie explained. “Remember how the West Indian servant taught Betty Parris and her cousin how to break an egg into a glass of water to see visions of their future husbands? They were using the white of an egg in a clear container as a substitute for a crystal ball. When people stare into something intently like that, they’re more than likely to see images. For people with psychic ability, those images may sometimes reflect past or future events. There’s nothing supernatural about it, it’s just what happens.

The girls expressed in fits what they could not communicate in words, or what no one seemed to hear when they entrusted it to words.* Mather and Sewall were mistaken about lightning and its preference for parsonages.† But Parris was correct in noting that the devil targeted the most pious. Hysteria prefers decorous, sober households, where tensions puddle more deeply; it made sense that the Salem minister wound up with more witchcraft victims under his roof than anyone else. (The surprise was that he did not wind up with more. Two Parris children soldiered on, forgotten by history.) Instructed not to fidget, well-mannered, well-behaved Betty and Abigail writhed. They could not unburden themselves as did those loudmouthed, plot-propelling bad girls Abigail Hobbs and Mary Lacey Jr., who may actually have believed they had signed pacts with the devil and sound as if they would have if they could. It would have been easier at the parsonage to have a vision than an

BEFORE PARRIS CONCEDED they were bewitched, before they turned into visionaries or martyrs, before anyone dismissed them as “vile varlets,” Abigail Williams and Betty Parris were thought to be diabolically possessed. They returned to that diagnosis as they grew to womanhood.

noticed. That’s when you use your power. Sometimes you got to act like you are nothing—so long as you remember that it’s a lie. So long as you remember you’re as strong as you believe you are.” Salem, 1693 Tituba, little Dorcas Good, Sarah Carrier, and ninety-three other falsely accused women, men, and children stumble out of Salem and Boston jails when the court of Oyer and Terminer is suspended by the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Judge Hathorne watches them limp back into Salem—the orphaned children, the widows, the daughter who testified against her mother. He rages at the magistrates who recant their verdicts and at the accusers—Betty Parris and Ann Putnam first among them—who apologize for the terror they wrought. “The victims believed Satan was here and I still believe it,” Hathorne tells his wife. “You