Elizabeth Reis observes that Puritans commonly perceived the feminine soul (naturally inclined to insatiability, as they thought) to be an object of desire fought over by Christ and the devil. Consequently, it was easy to view women as particularly subject to being “defiled and deflowered” by Satan’s wiles, uniquely inclined to the evils of witchcraft.65 In this jumble of subliminal anxieties that made up the Puritan psyche, sexual desire was thus stripped of its power to communicate a deeper longing for God and projected onto aberrant women in the process of securing social stability and
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