Rachel Dyer: A North American Story is a Gothic historical novel by American writer John Neal. Published in 1828 in Portland, Maine, it is the first bound novel about the Salem witch trials. Though it garnered little critical notice in its day, it influenced works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Walt Whitman. It is best remembered for the American literary nationalist essay, "Unpublished Preface", that precedes the body of the novel.
Following a darkly poetic narrative, the story centers on historical figure George Burroughs and a fictional witch hysteria victim named Rachel Dyer. With about two-thirds of the story taking place in the courtroom, it follows the trials of multiple alleged witches. Themes include justice, sexual frustration, mistreatment of Indigenous Americans by Puritans, the myth of national American unity in the face of pluralist reality, and republican ideals as an antidote for Old World precedent.
Originally written in 1825 as a short story for Blackwood's Magazine, Rachel Dyer was expanded after Neal returned to his hometown, Portland, Maine, from a sojourn in London. He experimented with speech patterns, dialogue, and transcriptions of Yankee dialect, crafting a style for the novel that Neal hoped would come to characterize American literature. Ultimately, the style overshadowed the novel's plot. Rachel Dyer is Neal's most famous novel and widely considered to be his most successful, with a more controlled construction than his preceding books. A second edition was not released until it was republished by facsimile in 1964.
Plot The novel opens with an overview from the narrator of the historical context preceding the Salem witch trials. The narrator describes belief in witchcraft as a universal human trait that was well established amongst educated authorities of the 1690s in both England and its colonies. When Puritans fled persecution in England and colonized New England, they quickly turned to violence to control Quaker colonists and Indigenous Wampanoag. Mary Dyer was executed for her religious convictions and fellow Quaker Elizabeth Hutchinson (based on Anne Hutchinson) cursed their persecutors. A series of events impacting the Massachusetts Bay Colony fulfilled that curse: King Phillip's War, King William's War, epidemics, an earthquake, fires, storms, conflict within the church, and finally, the witch trials. The narrator then introduces the peculiarities of colonial court proceedings and early Puritan leaders, Governor William Phips and Reverend Matthew Paris (based on Samuel Parris).
Paris is grieving for his recently deceased wife. Psychologically vulnerable and superstitious, he centers his life on his ten-year-old daughter, Abigail Paris (based on Betty Parris). She and her twelve-year-old cousin, Bridget Pope (based on Abigail Williams), begin to exhibit what he perceives as demonic behavior. Indigenous neighbors who used to visit the household begin avoiding it and Matthew Paris searches for an explanation. He interrogates Tituba, an enslaved Indigenous household servant who lives in the household with her husband, John Indian. Paris accuses Tituba of witchcraft, and she is arrested, tortured, convicted, and executed. While undergoing torture, she implicates Sarah Good of the same crime in her confession.
Reverend George Burroughs appears at Good's trial. Of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry and upbringing, Burroughs is a Puritan minister who has been a widower twice. He witnessed the recent Battle of Fort Loyal while serving as minister in Falmouth (now Portland, Maine), but refused to take sides. He escaped injury by mingling into the crowd of Pequot warriors outside the fort, dressed and speaking as a Mohawk. Burroughs defends Good in court and criticizes colonial leaders of breaking treaties and waging unjust war with the Iroquois. Despite Burroughs's defense, Good is convicted and at her execution she proclaims her innocence and prophesies that other innocent victims will be executed. Rachel Dyer (a fictional character not based on any historical figures) appears in the crowd and shouts her support for Sarah Good. Rachel is described as a hunchback with red hair. She and her sister Mary Elizabeth Dyer are Quakers and granddaughters of Mary Dyer, the latter taking her middle name from Elizabeth Hutchinson.
Salem resident Martha Corey is accused of witchcraft. By the time of her trial, many more have been arrested for the same crime, and fear of accusation has swept the town. Burroughs unsuccessfully attempts to defend Corey, who is aloof throughout the trial. Following a speech from Increase Mather, Corey is hanged. Burroughs visits Matthew Paris to investigate the origin of the witch hysteria and finds the household fearful and lifeless. Burroughs then visits the Dyer sisters because of their vocal opposition to the witch hysteria. The three learn that authorities in Salem have issued warrants for their arrest. They flee and are captured en route to the colony of Providence Plantations. While imprisoned and awaiting trial, Burroughs fails to convince the Dyer sisters to issue false confessions in the hope of delaying their own executions until the hysteria passes.
Salem resident Judith Hubbard, who is jealous of Burroughs's affection for Mary Elizabeth Dyer, appears at his trial. She provides spectral evidence by testifying that both of his dead wives have appeared to her as spirits and told her that he murdered them. A boy named Robert Eveleth testifies that Hubbard, Abigail Paris (now dead), and Bridget Pope (who is dying) conspired against Burroughs. Eveleth's testimony is dismissed, and Matthew Paris is going mad and unable to provide corroborating testimony. Burroughs is convicted on Hubbard's testimony but is comforted by Rachel Dyer. She is convicted later the same day. Burroughs is executed and Rachel Dyer dies in her cell clutching a bible. Their martyrdom breaks the witch hysteria before Mary Elizabeth Dyer or anybody else is executed. The final chapter is followed by an appendix labeled "Historical Facts", in which Neal cites connections between first-hand accounts of the witch trials and the circumstances of the story.
Themes
Many scholars see Rachel Dyer as a story of injustice rooted in the imposition of Old World legal forms upon the free will of New World people. Neal connected the disparate mid-17th-century stories of Quaker dissenters Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer of Boston with the story of the 1692 Salem witch trials. This has been interpreted as a critique of English common law's reliance on precedent by setting up the witch trial story as supernatural retribution for Dyer's and Hutchinson's persecution under unjust laws. As the court's most outspoken opponent, Burroughs questions the judges' rulings and receives in reply: "such was the law, the law of the mother-country and therefore the law of the colonies". But the story centers more on the Dyer sisters' martyrdom, which is presented by Neal as a female tradition of quiet dissent to patriarchal legalism. According to author Donald Sears, juxtaposing crown colonies of the 1690s with republican America of the 1820s highlights the relative value placed on human life in each era. Historian Philip Gould and literature scholars David J. Carlson and Fritz Fleischmann feel the juxtaposition critiques early nineteenth-century American reliance on tradition and hierarchy.
This critique of Puritans as opponents of personal liberty is balanced by Neal's nationalist desire to portray them as a founding body of the US. Neal was at the forefront of the early American literary nationalist movement, which he implies with this novel is deeply connected to the creation of a new legal system that abandons common law through codification. Rachel Dyer was published the same year as Noah Webster's first dictionary. Literature scholar John D. Seelye feels that both books represented a broader literary search for a national American identity. Neal commented on this search by making the greatest opponent to common law in his novel, George Burroughs, of mixed English and Indigenous American ancestry and upbringing. Writing indigenous and racially mixed characters into his novels is one of the ways Neal fashioned his literary nationalist brand.
As a Gothic novel, Rachel Dyer uses gloomy narration, associates dark spaces with immorality, depicts New England forests as the devil's domain, and portrays superstition as the product of rural isolation. Nathaniel Hawthorne cited the novel's Puritan Massachusetts setting as an influence in writing The Scarlet Letter, and Sears argues that Sarah Good's curse from the gallows may have inspired Matthew Maule's curse in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. After reading Rachel Dyer, John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were inspired to include witchcraft in their poetry and prose.
Neal used the novel's interpretation of republican American values to condemn the treatment of Indigenous Americans by European Americans. He defends Metacomet's legacy from King Philip's War and characterizes the witch hysteria as supernatural retribution for the Puritans' mistreatment of their Indigenous neighbors. Carlson argues that these story elements anticipated many 21st-century historians' characterization of war-related anxieties as a cause of the witch hysteria.
As presented in the novel, Indigenous Americans represent life, though the Puritans associate them with death and dismiss their insight. Neal's choice to give Burroughs a multiracial identity and have him navigate between white and Indigenous worlds is interpreted as a challenge to the concepts of national unity and imperialism. According to Carlson and Edward Watts, Neal used that mixed-race identity to critique colonial America while implying that the mistakes of the 1690s were at risk of being repeated in his own time.
Neal clearly states in the preface that one of his intentions in crafting the novel's title character was to counteract the dominant literary theme that links positive personal attributes with physical beauty, saying "that a towering intellect may inhabit a miserable body". This is a theme he also employed with the character of Hammond in his 1823 novel Errata. Despite her physical deformities, Rachel Dyer demonstrates high morals and commitment to female solidarity in spite of the jealousy she felt at other women's attraction to Burroughs. She also bemoans how differently she may have been treated at trial, had she been more physically attractive. Neal wrote at a time when most critics attacked literature that failed to conform to traditional British conventions, and he intended Rachel Dyer to defy those criticisms.
Sexual frustration is also a theme throughout the novel. Neal links the origin of the witch hysteria to the sexual development of young Bridget Pope, whose bewitched behavior stems from sexual frustration and is calmed too late when she is reunited with her love interest, Robert Eveleth, after the trials have already begun. Matthew Paris is depicted as an isolated, sexually frustrated man. With Tituba and John Indian the only couple in the household, Matthew Paris is threatened by their sexuality, and makes his accusation as a result. Finally, Neal portrays Judith Hubbard's false testimony against Burroughs as revenge for romantic rejection from Burroughs.
Background