The Devil in Massachusetts
Potpourri
by .Knopf, $3.50.
In the charming preface of her narrative record of the Salem witchcraft of 1692, Miss Starkey says she has tried “to uncover the classic dramatic form of the story” (in its aspects of Greek tragedy). She has also undertaken to establish, in the light of modern psychology, the relevance of the witchcraft as an allegory of our times: one witch hunt is analogous to another, no matter what name you give the witches.
Miss Starkey, for all her intelligence and humor, and despite the exhaustive and responsible study which clearly she has made of her subject, fails to make good the promise of her preface. The story emerges with blurred outlines and confused centers; the psychological interpretation (brought, inconspicuously to bear upon it) seems only to trade old ambiguities for new. The failure, a fair guess would be, is one of a creative literary imagination equal to a paralyzing task.
Still, Miss Starkey’s book has its points. She has put a great deal fact and thought into her nutshell in a readable, unadorned prose, and her material from beginning to end is steeped in fascination. Moreover, she has the audacity and good sense to relate the hysterical obsession of the witch-ridden young girls of Salem Village to the mass hysteria ot the modern brigade of bobby-soxers.