Ann Putnam has sent her daughter Ruth to get Tituba to conjure the spirits of her seven dead babies. Tituba, a slave from Barbados, conducts island rituals, but it seems Ann Putnam must believe these rituals can reveal truth. Ironically she is one of the first to call Tituba a witch.
She questions how others like Rebecca Nurse can have so many healthy children while she has only one, having lost seven at birth. Goody Putnam holds the midwives responsible for the babies' deaths, and in her twisted mind, she condemns them as witches. Although we can feel sympathize with her loss of apparently healthy babies, we are distressed that the warped logic she uses ensnares innocent people. The Puritans' understanding of science was primitive by today's standards so they had few ways of determining why some events happened, such as the babies' deaths. Ann Putnam and her husband are eager to blame others for their complaints.
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