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.
Symbols & Motifs
Invisible Spirits
The somewhat comical banter and presence of Tituba’s spirit trio—Mama Yaya, Abena, and Yao—emphasizes the element of parody that the author inserts intentionally. The make-believe element here keeps the reader aware that the tale being told is also telling the tale of its own creation. Culturally, the spirits also represent the divergence between African and American understandings of spirituality.
For Tituba, the spirits are guides and mentors—not evil spirits of the occult. Similarly, magic or witchcraft itself is an art of healing and helping for Tituba, whereas in Puritan ideology such healing or helping are acts of evil, not the miracles of the unknown. Ironically, this tension is what leads the devoutly religious to perpetuate evil and hatred in the name of their God.
Rape and Assault of Women
From the opening line, “Abena, my mother, was raped” (3), the images of sexual assault appear and reappear. Tituba’s mother is hanged for defending herself from a rape attempt. Samuel Proctor’s wife describes sexual encounters with her husband with details that resemble Darnell’s assault of Abena. Samuel Proctor is equally physically abusive with both Tituba and his wife. The Puritan ministers use rape with a sharp stick to demonstrate their power and authority; while violent, the image also suggests their impotence. Even Tituba, who rejoices in her sexuality, describes how Christopher—the father of her unborn child and killer of both child and mother—engages in sex with her in the same manner as Samuel Proctor and Darnell Davis. These recurring incidents demonstrate one of the main themes of the novel: discrimination and violence against woman.
Execution and Hangings
The first hanging Tituba witnesses is her mother’s. She describes seeing Abena swinging from a tree, her body going around in circles. Such imagery continues throughout the story. She and the Proctor girls walk by a hanging, and Tituba describes the body snapping stiff with the head fallen to one side. Samuel Proctor relishes in the detailed description of what Tituba would look like swinging from a tree. Hester hangs herself in her cell. Later, Tituba describes the process of being pressed to death—the fate of Giles Corey. Finally, Tituba describes Iphigene at the gallows just before her turn. The image recurs, yet none of these descriptions refer to the hangings associated with the trials at the center of Tituba’s story. What they suggest is the aberrant behavior of a society so fanatically obsessed that it justified flagrant violence in the name of religion. Such a practice raises suspicion about those in authority who inflicted the violence, who were also those in authority to create public record of what is considered American History.
