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Article: Cotton Mather's "Dora": the case history of Mercy Short.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Early American Literature
- Article date:
- January 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 University of North Carolina Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"The frequency of hysteria is not less remarkable than the multiformity of the shapes which it puts on."
--Robert Sydenham (1624-98)
Mercy Short, a 15-year-old, orphaned servant girl, is one of the most puzzling and intriguing figures to emerge from the witchcraft crisis in seventeenth-century New England. "Cursed" on an errand to a Boston prison by an accused witch, she quickly fell into fits described by Cotton Mather as "just such, or perhaps much worse,... as those which held the Bewitched people then Tormented by Invisible Furies in the County of Essex" (Brand 260). Her afflictions were episodic, lasting for a period of about nine months, during ...