word image
Portfolio

Reading log Witch Child - Celia Rees/Les­eportfol­io

18.594 Words / ~42 pages sternsternsternsternstern_0.5 Author Benedikt K. in Sep. 2010
<
>
Download
Genre/category

Portfolio
English Language

University, School

Gymnasium Laufen

Author / Copyright
Benedikt K. ©
Metadata
Price 5.00
Format: pdf
Size: 0.73 Mb
Without copy protection
Rating
sternsternsternsternstern_0.5
ID# 1902







Klasse 1 A

Witch Child


By Celia Rees


Reading Log


What do you think this book is about?

I think the book is about a girl. Maybe she is a witch. But I think she is a daughter of a witch or even a granddaughter of a witch. The book is not from our time, but from the past. The girl is about 16 years old. She is afraid of the haters of witches who want to burn her. Because of that she must flee. That is why she looks so sad on the cover picture. I hope the girl survives in this story.


Call for royal pardon for witches


About 2,400 people were accused of witchcraft and executed

Petitions calling for the pardon of those executed in the UK's witch trials are being handed to the UK and Scottish governments.

About 400 people in England and 2,000 in Scotland were executed following accusations of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The crime of being a witch was abolished by the 1735 Witchcraft Act.

A London firm began the campaign after Switzerland pardoned the last person executed as a witch in Western Europe.

Campaigners will hand the petitions to Justice Secretary Jack Straw and his Scottish counterpart Kenny MacAskill.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "The granting of a free pardon is extremely rare. It is for the courts to decide guilt and innocence.

"To receive a Royal Pardon the test is a high one.

"It is not enough that the conviction may be unsafe - the applicant must be technically and morally innocent."


'Legalised murder'

Costume retailer Angels said they moved the motion following the Swiss Parliament's official pardon to Anna Goeldi, who in 1782 was the last person to be executed as a witch in Western Europe.

Earlier this year campaigners submitted a petition to the Scottish Parliament calling for the last woman convicted under the Witchcraft Act to be pardoned.

Helen Duncan spent nine months in Holloway prison after being found guilty at a trial in 1944.

Angels launched the latest petition with historian John Callow, who said the executions were "nothing less than legalised murder" as they targeted vulnerable people.


History: The story is set during the English revolution against absolutism, middle 17th century.


Who was the king?

During the civil war there were conflicts between James son, Charles I and the parliament (with Oliver Cromwell). After King Charles I was executed, Oliver Cromwell became the leader of England in 1653. He was called the “Lord Protector”. In those times, which the story tells about, Oliver Cromwell had just died and his son had become ruler. The people (like Annie in the story) knew his rule wouldn’t last for long and that there would be a King very soon again.

This was in fact the case: After Oliver Cromwell came Charles II (a successor of Charles I), followed by came James II…


Who were the puritans?

The puritans were followers of Calvinism (à They were Christians) who wanted to break away from the Catholics in England. They were religious groups advocating for more purity of worship. From 1620 the Puritans started to sail to North America, hoping for a better life and being able to follow their own religion.


Political situation

17th century England was troubled by the same kinds of problems as the rest of Europe political, economic (Rapid inflation brought on by the influx of New World gold, loss of real wages, etc.), and social tension made worse by religious division. The English parliament, which should have been an instrument for peaceful change, often only made things worse.

Even competent rulers and officials had trouble governing the country. But surprisingly , by the end of the 17th century the English found a lasting solution to the problems that confronted them.


Table of contents


  1. Celia Rees
  2. beginning
  3. Journey 1: - Summary

- New Characters

- Questions

- Puritans

  1. Journey 2: - Questions
  2. New World: - Summary

- New Characters

- Supplements about New World and Salem

  1. Journey 3: Wildness - Summary

- New Characters

- Questions

- Supplements about Indians

  1. Settlement part 1 - Summary

- New Characters

- Questions

  1. Settlement part 2 - Summary

- Questions

  1. Witness - Summary

- Testimony

10.Vocabulary

11.Book Reviews


1.     Celia Rees

Celia Rees’s biography

I was born and brought up in Solihull, in the West Midlands. My father was Headmaster of a Junior School, my mother stayed at home, looking after me and my older brother, Roy. We lived in an ordinary semi detached house, but it had a big garden and was near a park which led on to fields and woods. This was the landscape of my childhood. I spent most of my spare time playing there with my friends.

Download Reading log Witch Child - Celia Rees/Les­eportfol­io
• Click on download for the complete and text
• This is a sharing plattform for papers
Upload your paper and receive this one for free
• Or you can buy simply this text

It seldom occurred to me to write stories then, but there is much more to writing than putting words down on a page. Impressions, observations, enthusiasms feed into our thoughts and linger in the memory; they do not have to be written down straight away.

My friends and I acted out our stories in games, our imaginations fired by the books and comics, TV programmes and films. I have returned to my childhood for inspiration many times: directly in Truth or Dare and The Bailey Game, less obviously in other books, although my love of pirates would eventually surface again. and I have re-visited my teen interest in the gothic, ghosts and the supernatural in The Vanished, Soul Taker, Ghost Chamber, The Trap in Time Trilogy and an adolescent reading of Bram Stoker’s Dracula led to Blood Sinister.

I studied History and Politics at Warwick University, and was particularly interested in American History. I remember thinking in a seminar how strange and terrifying it must have been for the first settlers, not knowing that this thread of speculation would one day re-appear and become Witch Child and Sorceress.

I had been a teacher for over ten years, teaching English in Coventry secondary schools, before I began to write. Teaching provided plenty of inspiration and reasons for writing, but all writers need encouragement, someone to say, ‛You can do this! That’s good!’ I was studying for a Master’s Degree at Birmingham University and one of the tutors asked us to write something, as we would ask students in school.

He liked what I wrote and said so. I went back to school and began to write with my students. That’s when I knew what I wanted to do. I would write for teenagers, books that they would want to read, almost adult in style and content, but with people like them at the centre. At about this time, a friend and fellow teacher told me a true story about a group of her students who had got mixed up in a murder hunt.

The subject was perfect and this became my first novel, Every Step You Take, published in 1993.

I have published many more books since then, becoming a full time writer in 1997. I live in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire with my husband, Terry. My daughter, Catrin, now lives and works in London.

The icons on this site are taken from a wire sculpture made by the artist Julia Griffiths-Jones. She calls the piece Stitch and Write and it is based on her reading of Witch Child, Sorceress and Pirates!. Julia and I have been friends for a long time and although we work in different media, we often draw inspiration from each other.

2.    beginning

The story is about a girl called Mary. She lives with her grandmother and a few animals in a small cottage on the forest edge. But dark men come and drag her grandmother away because people tell that she is a witch. They make some exams with her to show the people that she is a witch. With their decision to float her they can prove that the grandmother is a witch because she doesn’t die in this test.

That is why they hang her. At the hanging Mary is there. Her grandmother smiles to Mary and later to another woman. This woman takes Mary with her. They steps in a carriage. Then the grandmother dies. The woman is a young and beautiful woman. Mary and the woman don’t tall together.

3.     Journey 1


Summary


Part 1 (, Albert): Mary wakes up. She is sitting in a carriage; in front of her is the mysterious

woman that took her with her.

They arrive at an inn. They were awaited and when they get there they are

met with lots of respect.

They are shown down to a spacious room, obviously the best at the inn.

Food and drinks are brought them by the landlady and are left alone. The mysterious lady studies Mary and leaves her after a while, in the care of

Annie, the landlady.

Afterwards Annie strips Mary of all her clothes and burns them. She is

Bathed and scrubbed clean.

Tired off the entire weird day, Mary finally went to sleep little later.

The next day Annie looks after her again. She even gets new clothes. And

Some time later in the afternoon she sees the mysterious lady again.

She came here to tell her about her plans for the future. She had planed for her to escape to the new world to save her from persecution. To get there she had organized her a voyage in a ship of puritans. During the conversation with her, she even finds out that this lady she is talking to her mother!

Part 2 (Yanik, Lisa, Siya): Mary leaves the ship and goes to the place where the husband of her mother lives. I think maybe this is her father.

As she meets him, she hands the letter which she has been given. Then she sleeps there in a guesthouse and begins to write a letter. She becomes acquainted with Martha Everdale.

She stays there ill the ship is ready to go to America.


Characters Cédric, Pablo, Yves, Gabriel


Annie: Annie is a landlady. She isn’t very important for the story but she is very typical for her ole of the landlady. She is a big woman with little black eyes set like currants in a round bun of face.

She cooks and makes everything to help Mary. She is helpful and kind.


Noblewoman (Mary’s mother): we find out that the so-called noblewoman is actually Mary’s mother. We don’t know her name but she’s probably called Newbury like Mary. Her first name probably begins with “E” because when Mary leaves her, she gives Mary a ring with an engraved letter “E”. Another possible proof that she’s Mary mother, is that she has the same eyes.

She isn’t very funny


Mary: She is the granddaughter of the so-called witch. She was in deep love with her and is lost in various pains when her grandmother gets hanged. But she doesn’t have enough time for sorrow because she gets kidnapped at her grandmother execute. During the journey to the noblewoman’s home, she gets to know her a bit.

Though the woman doesn’t talk so much. Mary feels save around her home. Someday afterwards when the woman came back she sends Mary an a journey to America. Her first step brings her to a small port town whre she stays until the ship departs.


The Grandmother: She’s called Alice Nuttall. She took Mary in when she was a baby and raised her. It seems she was a healer and a pagan. She was accused aof being a witch and was hanged later. Before that, she was the nurse of the “noblewoman” (she was a young child) as she was younger. A bit later Alice helped her in a time of trouble, when no other could. She rendered her a great service. This is why the noblewoman was now so helpful to Mary.


Martha: She helped Mary out when Mary came to the port. She acts a little like a mother for Mary.


John Rivers: Leader of the groups


Reverend Johnson: preacher – already in the colonies, pastor

Elias Cornwell: nephew, preacher


Questions Stephanie, Richard


1.       Why do the puritans help her?

à The mother paid them

- They are Christians à they help orphan children to go out of her situations

2.       Why has the grandmother been charged of being a witch?

à She worked as a healer

à She was a net nurse

3.       Why was she/Mary abandoned by her mother at her birth?

à Maybe the mother wasn’t married at the time

4.       Why does Mary’s mother know the puritans?

à They were well known

à They lived in a particle way

5.       How did River know Mary’s name?

à The mother told him that Mary is coming

6.       What are Puritans?

à Look at the follow title

7.       Will Mary be happy in America?

à No

8.       Does she really want to go to America?

à She has to go. She doesn’t have the choise.


9.       Will the persecution end?

à No because there live also Europeans and they also hunt witches when they want.

10.   Why did the church hunt witches?

à Because they had knowledge of herbs and medicine, which could heal the people.


Puritans



A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was an associate of any number of religious groups advocating for more "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Church of Rome.

The word "Puritan" was originally an alternate term for "Cathar" and was a pejorative term used to characterize them as extremists similar to the Cathari of France. The Puritans sometimes cooperated with presbyterians, who put forth a number of proposals for "further reformation" in order to keep the Church of England more closely in line with the Reformed Churches on the Continent.


Background

The Puritans' movement can be traced back to Edward VI, although the term "Puritan" was not coined until the 1560s, when it appears as a term of abuse for those who proposed further reforms than those adopted by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, the Puritan movement involved both a political and a social component.

Politically, the movement attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to have Parliament pass legislation to replace episcopacy with presbyterianism, and to alter the 1559 Book of Common Prayer to remove elements considered odious by the Puritans. Socially, the Puritan movement called for a greater commitment to Jesus Christ for greater levels of personal holiness. By the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Puritans constituted a distinct social group within the Church of England who regarded themselves as the godly, and who held out little hope for their neighbours who remained attached to "popish superstitions" and worldliness.

However, most Puritans were non-Separating Puritans who remained within the Church of England, and only a small number of Puritans became Separating Puritans or Separatists who left the Church of England altogether. Although the Puritan movement was occasionally subjected to suppression by the bishops of the Church of England, in many places, individual ministers were able to omit disliked portions of the Book of Common Prayer and to be especially attentive to the needs of the godly.


Conflicts with Anglican Church

The Church of England as a whole was Calvinist, as seen in the 39 Articles, the Anglican Homilies, and in John Calvin's correspondence with Edward VI and Thomas Cranmer. The Puritan movement was distinctive from the rest of the church in theology more prescriptive than Calvinism, in legalism, theonomy, and especially – congregationalism. Charles I became king and was determined to eliminate the "excesses" of Puritanism from the Church of England.

Puritans opposed many of the traditions of the Church of England, notably the Book of Common Prayer, but also ceremonial rituals such as the use of priestly vestments (cap and gown) during services, the use of the Holy Cross during baptism, and kneeling during the sacrament. Puritans rejected anything that was reminiscent of the Pope, and many of the Roman Catholic rituals preserved by the Church of England were not only considered to be objectionable, but were believed to put one's immortal soul in peril.

While the Puritans under the rule of King James I of England attempted to make peaceful reform of the English church, James viewed their religious beliefs as little more than heresy, and their denial of the Divine Right of Kings as little more than treason. Nevertheless, the size of the Puritan population continued to grow under the reign of King James.

James I was succeeded by his son Charles I of England in 1625. In the year before becoming King, he married Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon of France, a zealous Roman Catholic. She was so extreme in her devotion to the Pope that she refused to attend the coronation of her husband, which took place in a non-Catholic cathedral. She certainly had no tolerance for Puritans.

At the same time, William Laud, at the time Bishop of London, was becoming increasingly powerful as an advisor to Charles. Laud also hated the Puritans and viewed them as a threat to the church. With the Queen and Laud among his closest advisors, Charles pursued policies to eliminate the religious practices of Puritans in England.

As a result, a large number of Puritans were motivated to leave for the American colonies, resulting in the Great Migration, the founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. The Puritan movement in England allied itself with the cause of "England's ancient liberties"; the unpopularity of Laud and the suppression of Puritanism was a major factor leading to the English Civil War, during which the Puritans formed the backbone of the parliamentarian forces.


Fragmentation:

The Puritan movement inside the Church began to fracture with the calling of the Westminster Assembly in 1643. Before that it had been associated with Presbyterians and others who sought further reforms in the Church of England; at the Westminster Assembly, it became necessary to work out the details. Doctrinally, the Assembly was able to agree to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and it provides a good overview of the Puritan theological position.

Some Puritans would have rejected portions of it, e.g. the Baptists rejected its teaching on infant baptism. The Westminster Divines were, however, bitterly divided over questions of church polity, and split into factions supporting moderate episcopacy, presbyterianism, congregationalism, and Erastianism.

It more accurately describes those who "dissented" from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Now outside the Church of England, the Dissenters established their own denominations in the 1660s and 1670s. The government initially attempted to suppress these organizations by the Clarendon Code. The Whigs argued that the Dissenters should be allowed to worship outside of the Church of England, and this position ultimately prevailed when the Toleration Act was passed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1689).

As a result, a number of denominations were legally organized in the 1690s. The term Nonconformist generally replaced the term "Dissenter" from the middle of the eighteenth century.


Terminology

Originally used to describe a third-century sect of strictly legalistic heretics, the word "Puritan" is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches (and religious groups within the Anglican Church) from the late 16th century to the present. Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves. It was a term of abuse that first surfaced in the 1560s. "Precisemen" and "Precisions" were other early antagonistic terms for Puritans who preferred to call themselves "the godly." The word "Puritan" thus always referred to a type of religious belief, rather than a particular religious sect.

The term Puritan was used by the group itself mainly in the 16th century, though it seems to have been used often and, in its earliest recorded instances, as a term of abuse. By the middle of the 17th century, the group had become so divided that "Puritan" was most often used by opponents and detractors of the group, rather than by the practitioners themselves.

As Patrick Collinson has noted, well before the founding of the New England settlement, “Puritanism had no content beyond what was attributed to it by its opponents.” The practitioners knew themselves as members of particular churches or movements, and not by the simple term.

Puritans who felt that the Reformation of the Church of England had not gone far enough but who remained within the Church of England advocating further reforms are known as non-separating Puritans. (The Non-Separating Puritans differed among themselves about how much further reformation was necessary.) Those who felt that the Church of England was so corrupt that true Christians should separate from it altogether are known as separating Puritans or simply as Separatists.

The term "puritan" is not normally used to describe any religious group after the 17th century, although several groups might be called "puritan" because their origins lay in the Puritan movement. For example, in the late seventeenth century, those Dissenters who had separated from the Church of England organized themselves into separate denominations (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists), particularly after the Act of Toleration of 1689 made it legal to worship outside the Church of England.

The non-separating Puritans who remained within the Church of England had by the early eighteenth century come to be known as the Low Church wing of the Church of England.

The term "puritan" might be used by analogy (usually unfavorably) to describe any group that shares a commitment to the Puritans' strong commitment to the purity of worship, of doctrine, or of personal or group morality.


Beliefs

The central tenet of Puritanism was God's supreme authority over human affairs, particularly in the church, and especially as expressed in the Bible. This view led them to seek both individual and corporate conformance to the teaching of the Bible. It led them to pursue both moral purity down to the smallest detail as well as ecclesiastical purity to the highest level.

An example is the different ways that men and women were made to express their conversion experiences. For full membership, the Puritan church insisted not only that its congregants lead godly lives and exhibit a clear understanding of the main tenets of their Christian faith, but they also must demonstrate that they had experienced true evidence of the workings of God’s grace in their souls.

Only those who gave a convincing account of such a conversion could be admitted to full church membership. Women were not permitted to speak in church after 1636 (although they were allowed to engage in religious discussions outside of it, in various women-only meetings), and thus could not narrate their conversions.

On the individual level, the Puritans emphasized that each person should be continually reformed by the grace of God to fight against indwelling sin and do what is right before God. A humble and obedient life would arise for every Christian. Puritan culture emphasized the need for self-examination and the strict accounting for one’s feelings as well as one’s deeds.

The Puritans tended to admire the early church fathers and quoted them liberally in their works. In addition to arming the Puritans to fight against later developments of the Roman Catholic tradition, these studies also led to the rediscovery of some ancient scruples. Chrysostom, a favorite of the Puritans, spoke eloquently against drama and other worldly endeavors, and the Puritans adopted his view when decrying what they saw as the decadent culture of England, famous at that time for its plays and bawdy London entertainments.

The Pilgrims (the separatist, congregationalist Puritans who went to North America) are likewise famous for banning from their New England colonies many secular entertainments, such as games of chance, maypoles, and drama, all of which were perceived as kinds of immorality.

At the level of the church body, the Puritans believed that the worship in the church ought to be strictly regulated by what is commanded in the Bible (known as the regulative principle of worship). The Puritans condemned as idolatry many worship practices regardless of the practices' antiquity or widespread adoption among Christians, which their opponents defended with tradition.

Another important distinction was the Puritan approach to church-state relations. They opposed the Anglican idea of the supremacy of the monarch in the church (Erastianism), and, following Calvin, they argued that the only head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ (not the Pope or the monarch). However, they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state.

The separating Congregationalists, a segment of the Puritan movement more radical than the Anglican Puritans, believed the Divine Right of Kings was heresy, a belief that became more pronounced during the reign of Charles I of England.

Other notable beliefs include:

  • An emphasis on private study of the Bible
  • A desire to see education and enlightenment for the masses (especially so they could read the Bible for themselves)
  • The priesthood of all believers
  • Simplicity in worship, the exclusion of vestments, images, candles, etc.
  • Did not celebrate traditional holidays which they believed to be in violation of the regulative principle of worship.
  • Believed the Sabbath was still obligatory for Christians, although they believed the Sabbath had been changed to Sunday
  • Some approved of the church hierarchy, but others sought to reform the episcopal churches on the presbyterian model. Some separatist Puritans were presbyterian, but most were congregationalists.

In addition to promoting lay education, Puritans wanted to have knowledgeable, educated pastors, who could read the Bible in its original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as ancient and modern church tradition and scholarly works, which were most commonly written in Latin. Most of their divines undertook rigorous studies at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge before seeking ordination.

References & Links

Swap your papers