THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT DELUSION: ""Have You Made No Contract with the Devil?

Though Dickinson's summary has none of the commanding fascination of Starkey's reconstruction (KR, 1973), this is a reasonable, informed recapitulation of the Salem girls' ""affliction"" and accusations, the witchcraft trials, and the town's subsequent return to sanity. Unlike Starkey, Dickinson doesn't emphasize the roles of Ann Putnam or her probably deranged mother, nor does she consider their visions and pathology as motivating conditions. In the end Dickinson explains the girls' behavior as a combination of real suffering and doctors' suggestions, understandable though irresponsible play-acting (when they realized their power as victims but not perhaps the seriousness of their actions), and finally a guilty, terrified, half-believing surrender to a course they had set but could not longer control.