The Witch of Blackbird Pond Social Sensitivity

The Witch of Blackbird Pond Social Sensitivity

There is little in The Witch of Blackbird Pond that is likely to offend readers, though one reviewer has taken issue with the suggestion at the novel's end that Nat and Kit will marry, calling this conclusion a "sexist compromise." But Speare is writing about an age where even the most independent young women had extremely limited options available to them, and so it would be difficult for her to suggest another future for Kit without sacrificing the novel's historical authenticity. Furthermore, Speare implicitly criticizes the treatment of women in seventeenthcentury New England by showing how charges of witchcraft were used to suppress independent women, who were perceived as a threat. The kind Hannah Tupper is persecuted not only because she is an independent woman, but because of her Quaker faith, and in this sense Speare's novel also criticizes intolerance of religious differences.