Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

…and so infidel-like he would call me a whore and concoct the most wild stories as to my behavior, and then he would strike me in the name of discipline as if I were an untutored child. —Petition for Divorce filed by Mary Deerfield, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III

How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

one could never win an argument with a person so fundamentally unreasonable.

“She was sent to the scaffold because she had a sharper tongue and a shrewder mind than her accusers. It is always the case when men hang women.

“Men call bright women dim whenever they are threatened. So, take no relief in the names that any man calls thee. There is no safe harbor there.”