Sittenauer 1

Kat Sittenauer

Dr. Katie Gilbert

ENGL 201

3 April 2019

Political and Religious Influence: The Entanglement of Politics and Religion in

Paradise Lost and The Witches, Salem 1692

Politics and religion have coexisted in this world for as long as people have been

governed. During the time of the English Reformation, Protestantism was seeking to right the

perceived wrongs of Catholicism in England. Spurred by Martin Luther’s 95 theses in the late

sixteenth century, the political power of the Catholic church began to wane, and the Protestant

church began to have more power and influence in government and over the people. This is best

personified in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. Published in 1667, this poem put the

damnation of Lucifer front and center during a time of religious unrest, highlighting the Catholic

fear of Sin and the casting out of the rebellious angels. Across the pond in America, Salem,

Massachusetts was developing into a non-secular community, governed at large by the Puritan

church and the occasional visit from the alienated government provided by England. The witch

trials of 1692 were the boiling point of the mixture of political and religious ruling and influence

in the small town. As exemplified in Stacy Schiff’s biography The Witches, Salem 1692 she

highlights the politics of the trials and how heavily religion played into the fear that fueled the

prosecutions. Both Milton’s and Schiff’s works show the influence of politics and religion, the

entanglement of the two, and the effect both had on the respective literary work. The political,

religious, and social unrest of England in the mid- to late-seventeenth century influenced both
 Sittenauer 2

Milton’s description of Sin in Paradise Lost and the descriptions of the Salem witches as told by

Schiff in The Witches: Salem 1692.

Sin is described as a horrible beast of a woman, reflecting the social and political

thoughts of women as the source of Original Sin in the turbulent times. Sin is also representative

of the disrupted hierarchy of England, and, since Sin is part woman part monster, she seeks to

pervert the roles which Man serves. Dr. Joanna Pypłacz makes the initial connection between Sin

and human error, in that “Sin […] personifies the corruption of the whole of mankind, this being

the main reason for its fall” (Pypłacz 421). The idea that Sin in any novel can represent the fall of

man is not new, however, the application of this personification to Milton’s time speaks to

comment on the state of mankind amidst the chaos of a changing world. With the Scientific

Revolution shaking up the non-secular world, Sin was seen as folly and Man’s fall from the

divine grace of Heaven. Revolutions in reasoning are reflected in Paradise Lost in that such non-

secular forms of rationality are seen as vanity, that “Sin with vanity had filled the works of men

[…] [with] all things vain…” (Bk III Ln 446-448). The politics of the shifting social

conveyances reflected negatively into Paradise Lost in that Discord was the “first Daughter of

Sin” (Bk X Ln 707-708). Discord, paired with Sin and Death represented the vices to which men

fell victim to when they fell out of the non-secular society and fell out of the pre-ordained

hierarchies set forth by the church and government. With the new revolutions in thought “By Sin

and Death a broad way is now paved to expedite your glorious march” (Bk X Ln 473-474). The

rejection of full faith in the church brought about this “broad way” by which Sin and Death

would march to overtake Heaven and the church’s hierarchies.

It is paramount to note, moreover, the description of Sin as a woman. Women in Milton’s

time were meant to stay in the house, maintain it, and not subvert the hierarchy of the home and
 Sittenauer 3

society. Milton draws specific attention to Sin and her perverted looks, reflecting the stresses on

women to maintain their place within the hierarchy that was quickly evaporating in seventeenth

century England. Sin is described as sitting “Before the gates there sat On either side a

formidable shape: The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many scaly

fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed With mortal sting” (Bk II Ln 648-653). Sin is

described as having a “formidable shape” with the top of a beautiful woman, and the bottom half

a vile snake. This perversion of the woman’s shape reflects the shifting social and political views

of women but also of the larger state of society. The picture of a woman as anything but perfect

in the way that society needed her to be is a direct representation of that same society falling

apart, in Milton’s case, society falling to the worldly rationality of science. This picture of Sin

ties in with Milton’s world, in which he “harbored a vividly imagined […] religious passion, in

tension with his secularly conceived social reforms based on rational criticism” (Fernee 60).

Central to society’s view of women also was her ability to reproduce. With England in turmoil,

this threatened the hierarchy that kept women home producing children. As reflected in Sin,

Milton writes that she had “about her middle round A cry of hell hounds never ceasing barked

With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal” (Bk II Ln 653-656). These hell

hounds continuously tore at her womb and buried themselves in there, a perversion of birth and

rebirth. This image of social perversion is only able to happen with the image of a woman

representing Sin. The final frontier that women represented was that of the home. With monarchs

being usurped in favor of a more democratic government, science overtaking religion as the

baseline for rationality, and the major reform of the church from Catholic to Protestant, the last

place where the old hierarchy still meant anything was in the home, where women were

subservient. The deviation of women as shown in Sin represents the social, religious, and
 Sittenauer 4

political upheavals present in the disorder of social hierarchies as a whole. “Milton’s retelling of

the traditional Biblical Fall allegorizes the 17th century Scientific Revolution, English society

overwhelmed by market forces, and early modern […] wars” (Fernee, 53).

Similar to Sin, Schiff states that the extreme descriptions of the witches of Salem reflect

the influence the social and political institutions had on the literature from the witch trials.

Though written centuries after the Salem Witch Trials, Schiff’s The Witches, Salem 1692 looks

at the official records that echo the political and religious influence of the Puritan Church in the

small village. Demonizing descriptions of the women and men suspected of witchcraft show the

effect this society had on its literature and the literature to come years afterward. Similarly, the

descriptions of the hauntings and conjurations by these witches also have strong echoes of the

religious politics present in paranoid Salem. Though only records of the court proceedings during

the witch hunts survive today, the Puritans used style and form to create “a […] [church-centric]

reading that read history out of allegory” (Rivett 400). Similar to Milton, the story told by the

records from Salem is presented as allegorical and Biblical in its proportions and imagery.

Schiff’s biography paints the same picture with the same grandiose as what has been seen from

other accounts of the witch trials. The politics of church membership in Salem, as well as the

politics of being a member of such a small community meant that said politics were integral to

survival. Witches then, were the outsiders of the community since they had no reverence for the

Puritan God and “Traditionally, witches were marginals: outliers and deviants, cantankerous

scolds and choleric foot-stompers” (Schiff 53). The hierarchy of Salem society is threatened by

these woman witches. Women were not meant to have any power in this society, but a pact with

the Devil gave them the power they needed to completely subvert the Puritan sense of order.
 Sittenauer 5

Women here were given the same “mortal sting” possessed by Sin from Paradise Lost and used

it to disrupt the home and wreak havoc on social affairs.

The way in which the Puritans kept their records was also non-secular in nature. Several

scholars cite the Puritans interpreting their world and the influence of witchcraft under

hermeneutic lenses, that “The legacy of a Puritan hermeneutic […] persists in certain forms of

national exceptionalism that are sustained by typology, allegory, and a commitment to biblical

inerrancy and scriptural precedent” (Rivett 398). With this in mind, it is easy to see why the

Salem witch hunts were as colorful as they were written about. The witch hunts survived in

literature because they created a modern Biblical story of good overcoming evil. Witches were

seen as women who had danced with the real devil, and they could be taken down by the

Godly Puritans in their own narrative. Schiff points out this correlation between witches like

those in Salem and the literature surrounding them in that “As workers of magic, as diviners,

witches and wizards extend as far back as recorded history. They tend to flourish when their

literature does” (Schiff 63). With the witch now established in literature as a real-world evil, the

Puritans could write their own ending in which they save the good and Godly people the way it

went in the Bible. This presence of the real-world witch in literature isn’t new, “Frenzied

prosecutions began at the end of that century with the publication of the Malleus (Maleficarum),

the volume that turned women into “necessary evils”; witchcraft literature and prosecutions had

a habit going hand in hand” (Schiff 64). Beginning with the Malleus Maleficarum, witches were

brought from the storybooks into reality. In Salem especially, “The witch as Salem conceived her

materialized in the thirteenth century as sorcery and heresy moved closer together; she came

wholly into her own as a popular myth yielded to a popular madness” (Schiff 64). Salem saw

their witches as women (and sometimes men) who would disrupt cattle, seek to do harm to
 Sittenauer 6

children, and above all seek to destroy the relationship the community had with God. Schiff’s

language is on point in stating that the witch of Salem was “conceived” as in the idea of a

Salem witch was not written down in the Bible, nor any authoritative text. Similarly, her

relationship to the devil was also conceived and contrived from piecemeal Bible quotes; “Pan’s

distant ancestor the devil was not yet on the scene. He arrived with the New Testament, a volume

notably free of witches” (Schiff 63). The witch of Salem was a creation born from paranoia and

the anxieties of living in the New World. Even after the witch hunts, the political influences on

the church and the literature produced from this community is evident, “Again a golden age of

witch craft coincided with a golden age of witchcraft literature” (Schiff 323).

The importance of recognizing these influences is paramount to understanding these

works as a whole and understanding the climate that made them. Taken out of context, Paradise

Lost is simply a dramatic re-enactment of one part of the Bible, not a political statement made by

a blind poet in the midst of the Protestant Reformation. Similarly, The Witches, Salem 1692 is

simply a biography of one of the stains on America’s history, not a comprehensive look at the

effect of religion on politics taken to the extreme. Taken within the context of the English

Reformation and the rise of the new Protestant church and all of the religious unrest that brought

along, mixed with the ever-present grab for power, the entanglement of secular politics and

religion often has an incredible impact on society and its literature.

Milton wrote this epic poem as a chronicle of the turmoil in English society and politics.

The Scientific Revolution brought Chaos and helped Sin tempt men to vanity. The English Civil

War brought Death and Error by killing monarchs and the innocent. Milton wrote of the loss of

paradise in that man had lost the heavenly world to Chaos, Sin, and Error and that the Fall was

his doing alone. Milton succeeded in this with the employment of Biblical imagery and the
 Sittenauer 7

personification of vices. This imagery worked to reconcile God with man in that “The political

agent, according to the rights of God, must act upon the assumption of having full knowledge of

God’s will, and impose it on reality” (Fernée 58). This blind acceptance of the word of God is

what ruled non-secular governments and hierarchies up until this point, with the explosion of

rationality and worldly reason from the Scientific Revolution. This horrified those in power who

were bolstered by the Church, and those who believed that the introduction of science over

religion would eradicate religion in its entirety. This social and civil unrest affected Milton as

well; as evident in his grim depictions in Paradise Lost, “Yet for Milton it spelled desolation, a

sense of wordlessness, like the unity of God and Man might be fracturing, against the ever-

changing cosmic hypotheses of modern science, or, worse, the New Jerusalem of his hopes

might border on a dream” (Fernée 62). With this information, gleaned from the historical

accounts of the time and a comprehensive look at Paradise Lost, the epic poem now stands for

more than a warning against sin and falling out with God, it warns against the specific follies of

man in accepting worldly reasoning and rationality and the effects of disrupting the hierarchy set

in place by God and society.

The Salem witch hunts and trials were exceptional because of the way they have been

immortalized in the American story. The witch hunts were the amalgamation of social and

political unrest mixed with the paranoia of being in a new country. When things weren’t going

right, the Puritans had to blame something, and what better than a supernatural being who could

be among anyone of them, disrupting the most precious bond they had with their God? This

same theme is seen in their literature surrounding the event, but also in modern American

thought in that these witch hunts were “a religious manifestation of our national culture, […]

because the rhetoric of origins and exceptionalism […] is almost always inherently religious in
 Sittenauer 8

form, convention, and epistemology” (Rivett 392). As stated before, the Puritans used the witch

hunts in a secular and political way to bolster their religion and make it to where they were

casting out demons and protecting the Lord’s people just like the stories in the Bible. Without

this understanding of the larger political and secular forces at work that shaped not only the

community of Salem Village, then “we fail to understand how a peculiar seventeenth-century

Protestant sect transformed into the millennial ‘proof-texts’ of the redeemer nation; we fail to

perceive the rhetorical sleight of hand that still aligns ‘New England,’ the city upon the hill, and

‘America’ in popular culture” (Rivett 397). It is important to delineate between secular and non-

secular governance, especially when evaluating literary works within their respective historical

contexts. The reflection of the entanglement of political and religious power in vastly different

literary genres confirms the potent influence on the people and, in turn, the literature.
 Sittenauer 9

Works Cited

Fernée, T.G. (2017). “Tolerance or a War on Shadows: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the English

Civil War, and the kaleidoscopic early modern frontier”. English Studies at NBU, 3(2),

53-73. Retrieved from https://esnbu.org/data/files/2017-2-1-fernee-pp53-73.pdf

Milton, John, et al. Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Pypłacz, Joanna. “Fertilis in mortes: Lucan’s Medusa and Milton’s Sin”. Terminus, vol. 17, no.

4, 2015, pp. 417–443.

Rivett, Sarah. “Religious Exceptionalism and American Literary History: The Puritan Origins of

the American Self in 2012.” Early American Literature, vol. 47, no. 2, May 2012, pp.

391–410. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/eal.2012.0037.

Schiff, Stacy. The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem. Back Bay Books,

2016.