46 pages • 1 hour read
Maryse CondéI, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary
Part 2 of the novel marks the beginning of the Puritan inquisition. The Puritan ministers open Chapter 1 in the Parris dining room. The girls file into the room and respond to the question of who is tormenting them by pointing to Tituba. Then, for no reason Tituba can understand, they link two others—whose namesakes appear in the records of the trials as convicted and executed—to Tituba: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.
The men, like “four great birds of prey,” charge into Tituba’s room, “wearing black hoods with holes for their eyes” (90). They tie her down, beat her, and rape her repeatedly with a sharp stick. They order her to confess and denounce Good and Osborne and the others.
When Tituba refuses to cooperate, they threaten worse harm, reminding her: “For you’re not worth the rope to hang you on” (91). As the assault intensifies, John Indian arrives, and they leave, telling him to make her listen. John Indian does as he is told and insists that she cooperate.
The village constables arrest Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. On the road to the Ipswich prison, Tituba vows revenge. Once in the cell, the two women turn on Tituba, screaming until she is pulled out of the cell and tied to a hook outside.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
The beautiful Hester—the famed Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter—opens Chapter 2, instructing a constable: “There’s room here for two. Let that poor creature come in” (95). As Hester and Tituba exchange names, Hester asks in irritation why Tituba allowed a man to name her, explaining her hope that other societies do not follow this male-dominant practice. Tituba muses, “Perhaps in Africa […] But we know nothing about Africa anymore and it no longer has meaning for us” (96).
They discuss Tituba’s crime of witchcraft, and Tituba argues: “Why in this society does one give the function of witch an evil connotation? The witch, if we must use this word, rights wrongs, helps, consoles, heals…” (96). Hester mockingly apes the Puritan explanation that witches only do evil.
They move on to discuss Hester’s crime—adultery. Tituba is alarmed, knowing the gravity of that offense for the Puritans. The now pregnant Hester calls the Puritan practice fanaticism, then defends herself, arguing that men and physical delights shouldn’t be beautiful and irresistible, and that has landed her in prison. Rather than live with the punishment of wearing a scarlet letter, Hester explains that she is preparing her unborn child to die with her.
Together, they prepare Tituba’s testimony. Tituba fears making any statement that draws attention to John Indian. An irritated Hester replies, “Don’t talk to me about your wretched husband! He’s no better than mine. Shouldn’t he be here to share your sorrow? Life is too kind to men, whatever their color” (100).
Tituba reluctantly admits to herself: “The color of John Indian’s skin had not caused him half the trouble mine had caused me. Some of the ladies, however Puritan they might be, had not denied themselves the pleasure of flirting with him” (101).
Part 2, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Like the names of the afflicted and accused, the trial testimony of Tituba Indian from the Essex County records allows for fiction and non-fiction to intermingle in this section.
The birds-of-prey reference is repeated four times in the text, and three of them appear in Chapter 1 of Part 2. The sequence describes the questioning, then rape and beating, then arrest of Tituba. In the poetic paralleling and exaggerated caricatures of the men, the metanarrative presence of the author emerges to mock these men of great power who need to use a sharp stick to rape. The reference appears a fourth time in the Epilogue, where the omniscient and present Tituba offers the prediction of America as the cruel land where white men will be covering their faces to torture people of color.
Like Tituba, Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne—a famed female protagonist of American literature—has been scorned and condemned by her Puritan neighbors. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester arrives in the New World ahead of her husband, who is later shipwrecked and presumed dead; after getting involved with the local pastor and falling pregnant, Hester is imprisoned, convicted of adultery. In Tituba and Hester’s prison cell, the author’s indictment of American society’s treatment of women becomes sardonically clear with the introduction of Hester reprimanding Tituba’s weakness for men.
