I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem

The first three words of Part 1, Chapter 1 are: “Abena, my mother” (3). Throughout the story that follows, Tituba continues to refer to “Abena, my mother” or “my mother, Abena.” Each time the phrase appears serves as a reminder of the violent rape that led to Tituba’s conception and to Abena’s later execution.

Abena is raped on a slave ship. When her slave owner discovers her pregnancy, he gives her to Yao, another slave. At age seven, Tituba witnesses the public hanging of her mother, who is executed for defending herself from an attempted rape by a plantation owner, turning Tituba “into a slave, an orphan, and an outcast” (49). After her death, Abena becomes one of three spirits who guide Tituba throughout her life.

As part of Condé’s fictional creation of Tituba’s childhood, Abena’s rape on the ship from Africa and execution in Barbados serve as explanations of why the fictional creation of Tituba is necessary to provide an accurate representation of the condition of women.

Tituba’s adopted father—who continues to advise her as part of the spirit trio with Abena and Mama Yaya—is Tituba’s first experience of love and affection from a man. Unlike the lovers who feed her intense passion, Yao represents gentleness, unconditional love, and the spiritual connection that her romantic relationships lack. With the exception of Iphigene, Yao is the foil to Condé’s representation of men.

Tituba’s adopted mother, teacher, mentor, and spiritual guide stays with Tituba, and she, Abena, and Yao are present at the gallows to take her to the spirit world. Her presence on the island—and non-presence for almost all of Tituba’s time in America—presents an image of the witch that is the exact opposite of the Puritan depiction.

Mama Yaya represents what the novel asserts to be the true definition of a witch, which was erased, like Tituba, from history: “the ability to communicate with the invisible world, to keep constant links with the dead, to care for others and heal, a superior gift of nature” (17).

It is difficult to understand how John Indian—an exaggerated, bigot’s caricature of how a black man should walk, talk, and behave—becomes the compulsive love that convinces Tituba to give up her freedom.

Mama Yaya warns Tituba, “Men do not love. They possess. They subjugate” (14). Abena, her mother, warns Tituba: “That nigger will get you into no end of trouble” (29). John Indian warns Tituba: “Tituba, you know […] they say you’re a witch […] I want to prove […] it’s not true” (18). Tituba notes in hindsight: “I knew should have fled. Instead, I stayed […] passive and adoring’ (18).

Tituba is ashamed and angry watching John Indian’s exaggerated submission: hopping “from one foot to another;” speaking “in a whining humble voice, like a child;” and responding “in a comical and exaggerated way” even when his owner strikes him (21-22). Her anger only intensifies her desire. For the love and affection of John Indian, Tituba knowingly becomes a slave: “The slaves who flocked off the ships […] were freer than I was [they] had not chosen their chains […] That is exactly what I had done” (25). 

What John Indian ultimately represents for Tituba is an observation Tituba makes in hindsight: “And therein lay my misfortune. I wanted that man as I had never wanted anything else” (18). What Condé delivers through Tituba’s selectively blind passion is a man, a black slave, who manages to escape the brutal treatment Tituba suffers at the hands of Puritan America and eventually land in the bed of a white woman.

John Indian is a caricature but one for whom—in Hester’s words—“Life is too kind, regardless of the color of [his] skin” (100)—precisely because he is a man.

Although the part Susanna Endicott plays in Tituba’s story is brief, the effects of her role last throughout the novel, to the day Tituba faces the gallows. After consenting to be Susanna’s slave for her love of John Indian, Tituba uses her spiritual powers to get rid of her.

Before her death, Susanna warns Tituba: “I want you to know that […] I shall get my revenge” (33). In every encounter with tragedy and misfortune that follows, that echoing threat plagues Tituba.

The reason is less because of the threat itself; rather, what haunts Tituba reflects an ongoing theme in the novel. Repeatedly, Tituba recalls and stays true to the teaching of Mama Yaya: “Use your powers to serve your own people and heal them [or] you will have perverted your heart into the bargain” (29-30). What Susanna Endicott represents is Tituba’s ultimate awareness that even the Puritan hatred and violence—the true evil—does not justify a witch to perform a harmful act. 

The famed historical counterpart to Samuel Parris was, like the character, the fanatical Puritan minister responsible for enabling the hysterical, murderous events of the Salem witch trials following the accusations of Tituba and two other women. As Samuel was father and uncle, respectively, to Betsey and Abigail, two of the main accusers and afflicted, the reader can construe that his tyrannical teachings of death and damnation may have influenced their aberrant behavior.

Symbolically, Samuel Parris reveals the metafictional convention Condé uses to draw attention to this novel’s indictment of Puritan and American society. Samuel Parris represents first the hypocrisy and brutal irony of justifying misogyny, racism, and murder for one’s religion. Through the metanarrative presence of the author, Samuel Parris is the figurative representation of the white, patriarchal writer of history—“a black person is supposed not to have any history except the colonial one [that] the Europeans decided to give them” (203).

The interlacing of historical record within the events surrounding this character marks the strong presence of the author in staging the scenes of the witch trials. Her presence serves to remind us that what colonial America calls history is precisely the opposite; its omissions and distortions led to this re-creation of history, which declares its truth precisely by bringing to the forefront the need to fictionalize and locate the missing pieces.

The wife of Samuel Parris, although a white woman, is a both a victim to—and a victim of—intolerance and religious extremism. There is little difference in the eyes of her husband, Samuel Parris, between striking Tituba for refusing to confess her sins and striking Elizabeth for trying to stop him.

They both bleed after the blows, and Tituba’s words—“This blood sealed our alliance” (41)—echoes the metanarrative presence of the author. Condé contends, in the Afterword, that, “It seems to me more important that [Tituba] was forgotten because she was a woman […] I stress her condition as a woman more than I stress her condition as a black […] the discrimination and ruthlessness against women” (210).

Elizabeth’s character confirms this condition. She is indoctrinated to believe the rules of the white man’s world: “It’s Satan’s heritage in us […] don’t you think there’s a curse on being a woman?” (43). That indoctrination makes her a victim to fanaticism and discrimination, and she willingly confesses to the “sin” of allowing Tituba to heal her and her daughter, kneeling before her husband.

Equally, she and Tituba remain on the same side of the dangerous social and psychological climate of Puritan Salem—where women who go against convention are easily executed. Even her description of her relationship with her husband is similar to an assault: “He takes me without removing his clothes or mine, so hurried is he to finish the hateful act” (42). There is little difference between her experience and Tituba’s description of Darnell Davis pressing her mother “against a calabash tree” and undoing “his trousers […] groping for his penis” (8).

Like their historical counterparts, Betsey Parris—daughter of Samuel Parris—and Abigail Williams—niece of Samuel Parris—are the first two girls to claim to be afflicted, which incites the hysteria that ends with the mass executions of those accused of bewitching.

Their fictional significance lies in their representation as children. Naïvely, Tituba uses her healing powers to help the family—and as they depart for Salem, she even ominously concludes, “A child could not be dangerous” (55). Later Tituba recants: “I am naïve. I was convinced that even a race of villains […] could produce some good” (76).

Yes, they are children. Raised in fanatical Puritanism, what they represent is the product of dangerous, narrow-mindedness. It is the young Betsey who exclaims: “You’re a Negress, Tituba! You can only do evil. You are evil itself” (77). As Condé’s creations, they reflect her indictment of a society that, generations later, has failed to evolve much from these ancestral patterns.

Hester Prynne is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, in which she is convicted of adultery in colonial America. In I, Tituba, the pregnant Hester, arrested for adultery, shares a prison cell with Tituba. While imprisoned together—as Condé points out in the interview reproduced in the Afterword—they “discuss feminism in modern terms” (212). Their dialogue elucidates the element of parody and the metanarrative presence of the author, who uses it as a device to address “the discrimination and ruthlessness against women” (210).

Hester is also pivotal in Tituba’s understanding of her sexuality. The sexual encounter with Hester in Tituba’s dream, as well as her friendship with Hester in prison, influence the change in Tituba’s perspective of her lovers. Tituba shifts from attributing her “only moments of happiness” to the man making love to her to a more modern understanding of finding happiness in sexual pleasure itself (50).

Through Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, the Jewish merchant who buys Tituba from prison then becomes her “sweet, crooked, misshapen lover” (140), the author addresses the narrow-minded fanaticism of the Puritans, who use their religion to justify the harm they inflict on others whose beliefs or cultures do not conform to theirs.

There is a clear irony in the movement of Puritans to the New World, where they could practice religion freely, and, as Condé points out, “how petty the Puritans really were, how their minds were narrow, full of prejudice […] opposed not only to blacks, but also to the Jews [who] they forbade to settle in […] Massachusetts” (201).

Tituba’s Jewish lover provides a space for their pillow talk about the historical persecution of their ancestors, while the killing of his children and his move to Rhode Island parallel the historical treatment of Jews in the colonies. Benjamin also serves as a foil—a symbol of a religion that neither discriminates against others for skin color or race nor censures others for their spiritual practices.

Christopher—leader of the maroon camp in Barbados—becomes Tituba’s lover, father of her unborn child, and murderer of both mother and child through his betrayal. Christopher and the other maroons are fugitives escaping slavery, and Tituba knows that her affiliation is almost certain to end in death. However, her happiness from sharing a bed with Christopher convinces her to stay. What prompts her to leave is the withdrawal of that affection—“he would come into my hut in the middle of the night and take me without removing his clothes” (154). Tituba is reminded of Samuel Parris and his treatment of Elizabeth, unaware that she is about to be victim of the same treachery and cruelty from one of her own countrymen.

Christopher’s presence serves as an allusion, echoing the phrases that foretell of Tituba’s fate during her earliest conversations with Mama Yaya and Abena: “Why can’t women live without men?” (15); “There’s no way of escaping” (19); “You cannot change your fate” (30). He draws the reader’s attention to Tituba’s fondness for love and affection—both the reason she stays and the reason she leaves. Her time with Christopher marks the opening scene to a final act in which Abena’s words ring in echo of those early conversations about John Indian: “If there’s one thing you’re not good at, it’s choosing your men. Oh well, soon everything will be back to normal” (168).