I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

First published:Moi, Tituba, Sorcière . . . Noire de Salem, 1986 (English translation, 1992)

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of work: The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Locale: Barbados and Salem, Massachusetts

Principal Characters:

• Tituba, a black Barbadian slave, conjure woman, and revolutionary
• Mama Yaya, Tituba’s teacher and spirit guide
• Abena, Tituba’s mother and spirit guide
• John Indian, Tituba’s husband
• Samuel Parris, the Salem village minister, the owner of Tituba and John Indian
• Hester Prynne, Tituba’s cellmate in Ipswich jail
• Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, a Jewish merchant, Tituba’s owner and lover
• Christopher, a Barbadian revolutionary and Tituba’s lover
• Iphigene, a young revolutionary and Tituba’s foster son

The Novel

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is a fictionalized portrait of a historical figure who was a main participant in the notorious Salem witch trials of 1692. The novel is divided into three parts. The first section traces Tituba’s childhood as a slave in Barbados as well as her voyage across the sea to seventeenth century New England. The second section recounts Tituba’s adventures in Massachusetts, including her experiences as an accused witch in Salem Village. The last section tells of Tituba’s return to a much-changed Barbados and her execution as a revolutionary. The story is told by Tituba herself, lending an immediacy and power to the narrative.

The main themes of the novel, the violence of slavery and the oppression of women by men, are established in the opening sentence as Tituba recounts the circumstances that surround her conception. She says simply, “Abena, my mother was raped by an English sailor on the deck of Christ the King one day in the year 16—.” This savage incident foreshadows other events in Tituba’s life in which she is treated cruelly by both white and black men.

After Abena arrives in Barbados, she becomes the house slave of a plantation owner. When he discovers that she is pregnant, he banishes her from the house to the fields. When Tituba is seven, she witnesses the attempted rape of her mother by the master. Abena defends herself and stabs him. Although the master does not die, Abena is hanged for attacking a white man.

After Abena’s death, Tituba is adopted by Mama Yaya, a natural healer who teaches Tituba her art. Tituba becomes proficient in using spells and herbs for healing. When Tituba is fourteen, Mama Yaya dies, and Tituba lives in the forest. However, Tituba is not alone. Mama Yaya and Abena act as her spirit guides and offer her solace and advice.

Tituba eventually ventures into the surrounding towns and meets John Indian. Smitten with the smooth-talking slave, she marries him. When he is sold to Puritan minister Samuel Parris, Tituba is part of the deal. She and John sail with Parris and his family to New England, where Parris obtains a pastorate in Salem Village.

Tituba and John are regarded with contempt by the villagers, and Tituba feels alienated and homesick. Her familiar spirits, Mama Yaya and Abena, cannot communicate with her because they are forbidden to cross the sea. Nevertheless, Tituba practices her healing art and is in demand by the villagers. Although she helps cure their diseases, the people regard Tituba with a mixture of awe and suspicion. When several village girls experience strange fits, they accuse Tituba and two more women of bewitching them. Soon, the girls charge others with consorting with the devil. John Indian advises Tituba to admit to the charge to avoid the death penalty. Tituba acts on his advice and is jailed in Ipswich. Afraid for his own life, John abandons Tituba.

While incarcerated, Tituba meets Hester Prynne, the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter. Condé portrays Hester as a seventeenth century feminist who is angered by the fact that she is jailed—and pregnant—while her partner in “crime” is free. Unlike the Hawthorne heroine, who comes out of prison and resumes life doomed to wear the scarlet “A,” Condé’s Hester commits suicide as a protest against her humiliating fate. After the witch hysteria subsides, Tituba is freed from prison and sold to Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, a rich Jewish merchant and widower with children. Tituba and Benjamin, both outsiders in a Christian society, find a common bond in their isolation. They become lovers, and their affection for one another surmounts the slave/master relationship. When Benjamin’s children die in a suspicious fire, he decides to move to Rhode Island, where religious tolerance is practiced. Before he leaves, he frees Tituba and arranges for her passage to Barbados.

Soon after her return to her homeland, Tituba meets Christopher, a fugitive slave who is the leader of a revolutionary group. She becomes pregnant by him, but after they have a falling out, Tituba returns to the cabin where she lived as a teenager. Her reputation as a healer grows, and one day several slaves bring her Iphigene, a boy who is near death as a result of a severe whipping. Tituba nurses him back to health and treats him like a son. Iphigene is also part of the revolutionary movement, and he asks Tituba’s help in mounting an insurrection. Christopher, though, discovers their plans and betrays them to the planters, who ask English troops to crush the revolt. Tituba and Iphigene are hanged for their crime. Tituba is reunited with Abena and Mama Yaya in the spirit world where she continues to influence her people as they fight for their freedom.

The Characters

Although I, Tituba is partly based on actual people connected with the Salem witch trials, Condé had little historical information about Tituba’s life in Barbados, and she possessed a limited number of facts concerning the role Tituba played during the witch hysteria. Condé invents characters such as Mama Yaya, Abena, and Benjamin to give Tituba a history of her own. Condé’s characters are often deliberately exaggerated or overdrawn, and her use of parody emphasizes the novel’s central themes.

The reader is immediately drawn to Tituba’s humanity and warmth. She is loving, compassionate, and gentle. She uses her healing power for the good of the communities where she lives, not for her own gain. Her sense of ethics is apparent when one Puritan woman secretly asks her to cast a spell on one of her neighbors, a request Tituba refuses. When she is tried for witchcraft, Tituba is naturally resentful and angry, but she does not take revenge. She declines to point her finger at innocent people, even though the court pressures her to do so. Her loving nature is also expressed through her passionate sexuality and appreciation for life. However, her love for others is both a strength and a weakness. Mama Yaya and Abena warn her that she loves men too much. Her relationships with John Indian and Christopher end in abandonment and betrayal. Yet she holds no grudges and readily forgives. In many ways, Tituba is a mock-epic heroine. She is almost too good, and her extreme goodness diminishes the people who, because of race, gender, or social class, believe that they are her superiors.

The appearance of Hester Prynne is another example of Condé’s use of parody. At first, it is puzzling to find the main character of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in another author’s novel. The fact that Hester engages in modern-day feminist discourse is even more jarring and subverts the historical basis for the story. Condé portrays Hester as a woman who, like Tituba, loved a man too much. Pregnant by a clergyman and incarcerated for her adultery, Hester criticizes her lover, who walks free while she languishes in prison. Hester is the victim of a patriarchal culture. She protests her situation and cheats the system by taking her own life and that of her unborn child.

Samuel Parris is a historical figure whose part in the Salem witch trials has been amply documented. His tenure as Salem’s village pastor was marked by controversy. The witch hysteria began in his house when his daughter and niece experienced unexplained seizures. While Condé bases her portrayal of Parris on actual events, her characterization of him is exaggerated and goes beyond historical fact. He is more Puritan than the most dedicated Puritans. Tituba says of Parris, “However fanatical and dour were those who shared his convictions, they were not as frightening as this tall, irate silhouette with his words of reprimand and warning.” Although a minister, Parris is the very antithesis of Christian love. He also verbally mistreats his wife and daughter. Condé’s portrayal of Parris is a reflection of the repression nonwhite people suffered under colonial rule as well as a commentary on the domination of women by men.

Critical Context

Maryse Condé’s fourth novel, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, was the winner of France’s prestigious Grand Prix Literaire del la Femme in 1986. It was the first French-language novel to link the histories of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. The novel also parallels Condé’s own literary quest to discover what it means to be a Caribbean woman. A native of Guadeloupe, she moved to the Ivory Coast as a young woman. Her first three novels, Hérémakhonon (1976; English translation, 1982), Une Saison à Rihata (1981; A Season in Rihata, 1988), and Ségou (1984; Segu, 1987), are set in Africa. Condé also lived in Paris, where she taught West Indian literature at the Sorbonne. When Condé moved back to Guadeloupe, she began to come to terms with her own Caribbean identity, which finds its expression in the character of Tituba. Her later novels, La Vie scélérate (1987; Tree of Life, 1992), Traversée de la mangrove (1990; Crossing the Mangrove, 1995), and Les Derniers Rois mages (1992; the last magi), are all set in Guadeloupe.

A staunch supporter of independence from France for Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana, Condé is politically active. She has been a member of Union pour la liberation de la Guadeloupe, a coalition working for Guadeloupe’s independence, and was a candidate for the regional council in 1992. Her political involvement parallels her literary commitment to represent a Caribbean identity to the international community.

Bibliography

Arnold, A. James. “The Novelist as Critic.” World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (Autumn, 1993): 711-717. Discusses I, Tituba within the context of the triangle trade and the racism of Puritanism.

Bernstein, Lisa A. “Demythifying the Witch’s Identity as Social Critique in Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.” Social Identities 3 (February, 1997): 77-89. An astute exploration of the voices of women writers in Caribbean literature.

Dukats, Mara L. “The Hybrid Terrain of Literary Imagination: Maryse Condé’s Black Witch of Salem, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, and Aime Cesaire’s Heroic Poetic Voice.” College Literature 22, no. 1 (February, 1995): 51-61. Discusses the issue of “voicelessness” as it relates to the shaping of identity in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aime Cesaire, and Condé.

Dukats, Mara L. “A Narrative of Violated Maternity: Moi, Tituba, Sorcière . . . Noire de Salem.” World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (Autumn, 1993): 745-750. Explores the feminist theme of the violated slave mother and relates it to colonization.

Manzor-Coats, Lillian. “Of Witches and Other Things: Maryse Condé’s Challenges to Feminist Discourse.” World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (Autumn, 1993): 737-744. Connects the black woman as “witch” to angry contemporary women and feminism.

Mudimbe-Boyi, Elisabeth. “Giving a Voice to Tituba: The Death of the Author?” World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (Autumn, 1993): 751-756. Parallels reconstruction of Tituba’s history to that of Caribbean history.