If the witch-hunts particularly targeted older women, it is likely because they displayed an unbearable degree of confidence. Confronted by their neighbors, by priests or pastors, even before judges and torturers, these women talked back; as Anne Barstow writes, they “talked back in a time when they were increasingly expected to be submissive.”69 They were better able to do so, being unconstrained by a father, husband or children. These were women “given to speaking out, to a bold tongue and independent spirit.”70 It is no surprise that such unwelcome, even feared speech could be taken for
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