The Witch Of Blackbird Pond

Growing up in her grandfather’s island home, Kit enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She even learned to swim at a time in history when girls were rarely taught this skill. Upon leaving Barbados, Kit finds that not everybody is as tolerant as her grandfather was. New England Puritans are a particularly narrow-minded group when it comes to other people’s behavior and beliefs. Goodwife Cruff’s shrill denunciations begin the minute Kit dives into the water to rescue Prudence’s doll. Witches swim; god-fearing women don’t. While still on shipboard, both Nat and John try to teach Kit the danger of being different:

In spite of his mocking tone, Nat had unmistakably warned her, just as she knew now that John Holbrook had been about to warn her. There was something strange about this country of America, something that they all seemed to share and understand and she did not (14).

Once Kit first meets her uncle, she becomes aware of just how judgmental Puritans can be. Rules of behavior in New England are well defined, and everybody is expected to follow them. Punishments for the failure to conform abound in Puritan society since the whipping post and stocks are positioned right outside the town’s religious meeting house.

Uncle Matthew takes intolerance to a new level when he bans Reverend Bulkeley from his home because the two men don’t share the same political views. “As the heavy door finally closed, Matthew Wood turned fiercely toward his wife. ‘That is the last time,’ he pronounced, ‘that I will have Gershom Bulkeley under my roof!’ (64). Matthew’s dogmatic attitude nearly costs him his daughter’s life when he refuses to seek help from Bulkeley for Mercy’s illness. Luckily, the minister offers his services to treat Mercy before tragedy results.

The Puritan intolerance for different beliefs has far more damaging consequences for outliers like Hannah Tupper. Because the old woman and her husband were Quakers rather than Puritans, they were branded and expelled from Massachusetts. Kit fears that teaching Prudence to read against her mother’s wishes will invite punishment: “Looking at the child, Kit felt again a fleeting uneasiness. What misery would be the child’s lot if these meetings were discovered? The miracle that had been taking place before their eyes had made it all too easy to forget the danger” (172).

Both Hannah and Kit are regarded with suspicion because they are different. Their refusal to conform to normative behavior invites a charge of witchcraft, which carries the penalty of death. Fortunately for Kit, even Puritans are capable of common sense. When Prudence successfully reads from the Bible, she proves to the court that Kit taught her letters, not magic spells. Other actual witch trials in New England during the same period didn’t end so happily. Puritan intolerance proved to be more dangerous than witchcraft itself.