The Bewitching of Anne Gunter

James Sharpe’s book The Bewitching of Anne Gunter is a very interesting story describing the bewitching of a woman.  First of all I must say that it is very interesting to see how prevalent the notion of Witchcraft was in Early Modern England society.  This woman, Anne Gunter, became very ill and the illness would eventually continue until the only explanation was that she was bewitched.  Anne does some very strange things such as vomiting pins.  However, during her trial before the king Anne states that it was her father that forced her to take these necessary actions to try and rid the witches she originally claimed that had bewitched her.  What is incredibly interesting about his book is that this a true story of an event that actually happened during this time period.  Her father seems to have been an incredible violent, selfish person that attempted to use Anne to help save him from his past violent actions.  She confesses to “faking” her trance when she accuses the women of bewitching her.  This seems to me as a very dysfunctional father daughter relationship that became so bad it made its way to a witchcraft trial before the king.  I must say that I feel bad for Anne because it seems as though she didn’t exactly have the best father and it seems that while he may have cared for her, he absolutely cared more about himself than he did for her.  I’d like to point out that it is pretty crazy to think that during this time period witchcraft trials would make it all the way before the king’s court and that there were people during this time period that were actual witch hunters.  This is a very sad account of a woman who was forced into being bewitched by her own father in front of all of England.  Once again I must say it is quite amazing how prevalent witchcraft and other crimes of this stature were in that time period.