Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials

Author: Stephanie Hemphill

Date: 2010

Publisher: Balzer and Bray

ISBN: 9780061853289

Plot Summary: In 1692 seven girls play a” dangerous” game in Puritan New England. It leads to accusing a slave woman of witchcraft and starts a firestorm of hysteria that sweeps through their town and the surrounding areas. No one knows who will be next accused. Innocent and perhaps not so innocent people die and lives are changed forever all because of seven “Wicked Girls”.

Critical Analysis: Hemphill’s verse novel, written in free verse tells the story of the Salem Witch Trials through the voices of the seven girls that began it all. Hemphill’s use of language gives us a feel for the personality of each character. Her imagery allows the reader to wander in the minds and emotions of each and invites the reader to see each girl’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Margaret’s jealousy of Mercy and her pain at the thought of losing Isaac can be felt within the lines,

                                   

“I wish to bite her. I wish to punch her

                                    Arms till they turn black, but I just

                                    Collapse like a tree slashed down.” (Hemphill, 266)

The reader can almost see Margaret’s rage and sorrow on her face even as she leans on her "enemy" for comfort. 

Ann’s yearning to be noticed can be seen and felt in, What is Good, What is Great and What is Amazing. Hemphill’s language and imagery evokes Ann’s longing for the attention of her family within the heart of the reader. One can almost taste her desire to truly be noticed for who and what she is.

“What is good about witches

                                    is that when I call out “Mother,”

                                    Mother listens and replies,

                                    “Yes, dear Ann.”

                                    And When I do say

                                    I see the Invisible World

                                    Father doth bend an ear

                                    and hold me upon his lap.

                                    But what is most amazing

                                    about Affliction

                                    is that Mercy is come along now

                                    as my sister.

                                    She eats beside me at the table.

                                    We sit in meeting and examination as kin. (Hemphill, 89)

The reader can practically hear the contentment in her voice when her mother actually answers her with a loving tone and her father holds her on his lap. There is a sense of pathos that lets the reader understand her motives in spite of the consequences of what she has involved herself in.

When taken as a whole, Hemphill’s verse novel leaves the reader with an interesting and thought provoking view of the undercurrents swirling beneath the surface of one of the most controversial events in America’s history.

The reader will want to go back again and again to poems like Isolation and Family. Both evoke the feelings of what it is like to be isolated from everyone around you or the yearning to be a part of something, to matter to so someone at almost any cost. 

Wicked Girls is a thought provoking, heart touching, and emotion laden read.

Reviews and Awards:

In subtle, spare first-person free-verse poems, the author skillfully demonstrates how ordinary people may come to commit monstrous acts. Haunting and still frighteningly relevant. Kirkus Review

 Layering the girls' voices in interspersed, lyrical poems that slowly build the psychological drama, Hemphill requires patience from her readers. What emerge are richly developed portraits of Puritanical mean girls, and teens will easily recognize the contemporary parallels in the authentic clique dynamics. An excellent supplementary choice for curricular studies of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this will also find readers outside the classroom, who will savor the accessible, unsettling, piercing lines that connect past and present with timeless conflicts and truths. Booklist Starred Review

Connections:

Use in conjunction with lesson plan on Puritans. Not recommended for younger grades.

Read as a supplement to the Crucible by Arthur Miller

Fiction read for unit on Salem Witch Trials

Select various poems from the book to hold a discussion on feelings, peer pressure, bullying

Hemphill, Stephanie. 2012. Wicked girls: A novel of the salem witch trials. New York: Balzer and Bray.