The characters seem to have changing personalities, in particular Rebecca’s. One time she’s well-read, strong and independent and the next she’s ignorant, foolish and naive. And that was not because of some scheme of hers as we follow her story in first person narration, so we very well know her thoughts and intentions. Manningtree is a town and civil parish in the Tendring district of Essex, England, which lies on the River Stour. It is part of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. [2] Smallest town claim [ edit ] Do you agree with this assessment of its style, and why? Are there any parts of the text you can find that exemplify your view?

The novel unfolds primarily through Rebecca’s first-person point of view. But it shifts sporadically to third person to describe scenes and events in which Rebecca is not present. These unnecessary shifts can be jarring and confusing. Rebecca’s diction is detailed and evocative. Replicating the idioms of 17th century England, it is replete with graphic descriptions, pungent odors, and immersive imagery. The diction is generally effective but can occasionally veer toward being too flowery and obscure. One could romanticize on whether Hopkins’ early death was the result of a hexing spell cast by one of his victims; a true, practicing witch. There is also a popular fiction that Hopkins met his end by being accused of witchcraft himself. Either would have been a fitting finale. Less dramatically, however, Hopkins died from tuberculosis, coughing up blood and unable to breathe, much like the final throws of his victims who died from hanging on the gallows. This buttress wall is all that remains of Manningtree’s church; the same church where the local community (accusers and accused, watchers and searchers, witchfinders and prosecutors) would have met for regular worship. It’s also where the self-styled ‘witchfinder general’ Matthew Hopkins’ stepfather, the rector of Mistley and Manningtree, preached his sermons to a largely pious crowd.Known as Old Knobbley, this ancient, gnarled oak tree is thought to be around 800 years old. Over the centuries it has born witness to wars, famines, even a mini Ice Age as well, of course, as the 17th century witch hunts. For decades, these events were the stuff of folklore and horror movies, while serious historical studies focused on religious conflicts and “mass hysteria” as motivations for the judicial murder of thousands of women. More recently, Marxist feminist historians have begun to place the witch trials at the centre of accounts of early capital accumulation. Silvia Federici argues convincingly that witch hunts were not a relic of medieval superstition, which was gradually superseded by Enlightenment rationalism. Rather, they were a product of modernisation, being rooted in the disintegration of the peasant community, already suffering from the enclosure of the land, punitive taxation and incarceration in workhouses. Witch hunts took flight during years which saw popular revolts, epidemics and war. In the mid sixteenth century, treatise on witchcraft began to multiply across Europe. After 1550, there were laws and ordinances legalising the persecution of witches and making witchcraft a capital offence. In The Manningtree Witches, the women’s accusers are Puritans, but across Europe both the Catholic Church and its Inquisition and Protestant nations, countries who were at war with each other, united in their persecution of witches. Given the entrenched misogyny, together with religious zealotry sanctioned by both Church and State in the 1640s, there was little hope for any woman accused of being a witch. Yet those accusations were but one step in the execution of these women by hanging. Next, was the extraction of a confession of Devil worship. By 1616, Manningtree was prosperous enough to build for itself a new church; one featuring a monument to Thomas Osmond, who had been martyred in the town a century earlier. Osmond was revered in this part of the country; a member of the Protestant Christian sect that had separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation of the early 1500s. His legacy of heresy against church authority was to be carried yet further in the late 16th century with a new reform movement, Puritanism.

Ref: Michal Wojcik (2013) Matthew Hopkins’ Advanced InterrogationTechniques“, One Last Sketch blog, 2013 [ ↩] Devastating detachment … Fiona Shaw in the Deborah Warner’s adaptation of The Testament Of Mary by Colm Tóibín. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The GuardianWitch hunting destroyed a universe of practices and beliefs whose existence was incompatible with capitalist work discipline and weakened women’s capacity to resist the reorganisation of social reproduction along capitalist lines. The women of Manningtree seek out the ancient Elizabeth Clarke for potions and charms to help them attract a husband or conceive a child. Like many older, poor but experienced women, Clarke is a contradictory figure. She is both respected and despised, both powerful and dependent.