Full Details
Erika Mailman
| Full Name: | Erika Mailman |
| Born: | |
| Occupation: | Novelist |
| Nationality: | American |
| Links: |
Biography
I wrote my novel The Witch's Trinity after spending a lifetime thinking about the men and women accused of witchcraft in the Middle Ages. For some reason, I had been fascinated by witchcraft ever since I was a child.
Once I sat down to write, something astonishing happened: my mother told me we were related to an accused witch, Mary Bliss Parsons. This news came by email, no less, and I've mulled quite a bit over the oddity of such old news (my ancestor was first accused in 1656) coming to me via such new technology. My mom sent a link to the UMass website on Mary Bliss Parsons, which is well worth clicking over to (but then return, please!)
This site contains all the extant testimony from Mary's first case, and the indictment from the second. Yes… she faced trial twice. The most amazing thing is looking at the scanned-in handwritten documents prepared by the court clerk—that old-timey writing where S's look like F's, and they use very strange abbreviations, like "yt" standing for "that."
Luckily, my ancestor was acquitted both times and died of old age. The Witch's Trinity has an Afterword about her story.
But the novel is about a fictional woman Güde. I first thought of her as I listened to a history professor's lectures about the statistical phenomenon of daughters-in-law accusing their husband's mothers of witchcraft…because they were starving, and wanted to rid the family of an older, useless member. As I so often do when I hear stories of atrocity, I think not of numbers, but of one solitary, specific person.
The witch craze in Europe qualifies as a holocaust. Women (and men) were executed during a 400-year period. Can you imagine, four hundred years of such incredible ignorance and downright foolishness? The United States celebrated its bicentennial when I was a child, so if we applied Europe's madness to our history, we would still be killing witches until the year 2176.
I crafted Güde from thin air to demonstrate the Everywoman of these horrible times. Like most real accused witches, she is older, she is somewhat unstable mentally, and she is a burden to her family.
One of the saddest parts of my witchcraft research has been learning that we haven't left this fear behind in the dungeons-now-museums of Europe and New England. Today witchcraft persecutions continue in modern-day African countries such as Congo, Congo Republic, Angola and Zimbabwe, to name a few where I have heard specific accounts emanating from. At my blog, I write about these witchcraft reports in the hope that increased awareness can make a difference.
If you have already read The Witch's Trinity, you know about the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witch hunting Bible from medieval Germany. It is no authorly fabrication, sadly. The book exists, and was responsible for fanning the frenzied flames of witchcraft fears. I've included a tab on my navbar if you want to learn more about this book and witchcraft in general. And I also blog excerpts from it as well.
In a more succinct manner, a few biographical facts are that I grew up in Vermont and attended Colby College and the University of Arizona, Tucson. My first novel, Woman of Ill Fame, tracks the progress of a scheming, unapologetic Gold Rush prostitute. I have been a Yaddo fellow, and live in California with my husband and daughter.
[From the author's website.]
Works in the WWEnd Database
Non Series Works |
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