Female, underage, victim—the girls standing at the plaintiffs' bench in the Salem witch trials had hit the "grand slam." No lawyer would be foolish enough to defend the accused side.
It was an impossible task. The chaos and destruction those girls had caused were practically equivalent to a war and a plague; the civilians of Massachusetts had all fled.
They were victims too. At first, perhaps they had only wanted to have fun, show off a little, and drink in bars only adults were allowed to enter. Now they were trapped, and only their age could serve as a reason for them to escape punishment.
Nietzsche called minors supermen. Before someone could do what John Proctor had done—beat them and drive the devils out of them—there was no solution. Even John Proctor had been hanged, leaving behind twelve children. His will had not stipulated that the relatives inheriting his property had to raise his children to adulthood. That was both good and bad.
The good thing was that the children would not be divided up among relatives, who could reasonably take the Proctor family's property under the pretext of caring for infants. The bad thing was that after inheriting the property, those relatives could simply ignore the children and leave them to fend for themselves—unless Elizabeth Proctor could win back her husband's wealth in court. Before that, however, she had to struggle to stay alive, and after the trial ended, she still had to prove that she was alive.
In theory, in a world where the scepter of power was passed between men, women should have united and fought for their own rights, the rights of their daughters, and the rights of women everywhere.
Women were emotional and easily swayed by their feelings. They also tended to understand themselves through