.”42 Thus begins the string of names cried gleefully by Betty, Abigail, and Tituba to insuretheir own freedom from blame. With that, almost every woman in town is accused of being awitch, and the cycle continues.43 Another important example of hysterical paranoia from thePuritan era is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This novel does not deal so muchwith witches as it does with the Black Man, which “is a traditional American name for theDevil.”44 In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Reverend ArthurDimmesdale. She is discovered and forced to wear a mark of shame, the scarlet letter A, on herdress for the rest of her life. Soon Mr. Prynne, her presumed-dead husband, returns to discoverall of this.45 Now called Roger Chillingworth to hide his identity, he sinks to a new low as hetortures Dimmesdale by keeping him alive to suffer his guilt and shame.46 Chillingworthbecomes an almost supernatural being, part devil, part medieval alchemist, and part evilscientist.47 Hester’s daughter, Pearl, is described as a “demon child”48 who constantly tauntsher mother. She is also another unnatural link to this story. It is of common belief that MistressHibbins, the town witch, often dances in the forest with the Devil.49 One day, she calls toHester, saying “there will be merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh promised the BlackMan that comely Hester Prynne” would be there.50 To this Hester answers no, but this situationpresents the stereotypical witch that many Puritans feared, but that probably did not exist. Thenext occurrence is the meteor in the sky. “Nothing was more common in those days than tointerpret all meteoric appearances and other natural phenomena” as supernatural revelations.51 When Dimmesdale, in all of his guilt, sees the meteor streak across the sky, he imagines that it is“an immense letter... A marked out in line of d...
