Erika Gasser is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati.Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her new book, Vexed with Devils: Manhood and Witchcraft in Old and New England:
Vexed with Devils is a cultural history of the role that manhood played in early modern instances of demonic possession and witchcraft. Many people know that women were more commonly suspected, prosecuted, and executed for witchcraft in England and New England, and so the book begins with things we do not expect to see—men and manhood in witchcraft and possession—and uses them to analyze the varied ways that gender mattered for early modern people. The book contains a few case studies of particular accused witches or demoniacs (those who appeared to suffer from the symptoms of possession), and one that would suit a film adaptation is the story of Margaret Rule, a seventeen-year-old girl in Cotton Mather’s Boston congregation who appeared to be possessed in 1692-93, just after the conclusion of the famous outbreak of witchcraft at Salem.Learn more about Vexed with Devils at the NYU Press website.
For the role of Margaret Rule, I immediately thought of Anya Taylor-Joy, who was so electrifying as a Puritan girl in The Witch (2015). In addition to showing a facility with period language, Taylor-Joy showed vulnerability and glimpses of an undimmed spirit. Taylor-Joy’s other work in Morgan and Split (both 2016) only reinforce this choice; even though Margaret Rule was no action hero, the combination of strength, calculation, and vulnerability in all three roles make her the ideal candidate.
The role of Cotton Mather, the frustratingly complex minister who was thirty years old at the time of Rule’s possession, is tricky to cast. Historians have struggled over the meaning of Mather’s character, alternately placing the blame for the witchcraft outbreak at his feet or wholly exonerating him from the accusations of his detractors. This performance would need to allow for the ambiguity of Mather’s position and would need to capture his overwhelming faith in his family’s view of Puritanism, his inability to shake doubts about his own salvation, his preening self-aggrandizement, and also his painful awareness of the follies of vanity and pride. If age and sex were no object, I’d like Patrick Stewart or Tilda Swinton for it. But perhaps James McAvoy (of many films, including Split) or Shaun Evans (of the PBS Mystery series, Endeavour) would be good choices.
The Page 99 Test: Vexed with Devils.
--Marshal Zeringue
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