Martha Carrier
The title character of the essay “The Trial of Martha Carrier” details the events of the charges of witchcraft brought against Martha in Salem in the summer of 1692. Martha pleads not guilty to an indictment of Bewitching which included, among other things, complaints made against her physical assaults including biting and choking. Seems like a fair deal: the devil had after all promised to make nothing less than the Queen of Hell.
Elizabeth
“Elizabeth in her Holy Retirement: An Essay to a Pious Woman for Her Lying In” is not really a character per se so much as that more abstract “Pious Woman” to whom the essay is directed. When one considers the sheer volume of subjects to which Mather put his literary skills to use contemplating, that alone is enough warrant him respect. One may well disagree with much of what he wrote and thought, but as a man of interest, he was a formidable author. Elizabeth, or the abstract Pious Woman, is that new young mother who is considering not breast-feeding her child. Mather has one bit of instruction to them: do it yourself rather than leaving the job to a wet nurse.
Jeremiah Fenwick
Fenwick is a man whose death occasioned the writing of “An Essay for the Cure of Ungoverned Anger.” Fenwick, it seems is a man whose anger spurred him to unwisely take an axe and repeatedly strike blows upon the head of an annoying neighbor. Thus is Fenwick an exemplar deluxe of acting out with governing one’s anger. What of the cure? Fenwick is executed for this thing so let that be an example to everyone else. Got it? Good, then you are cured.
Sir Isaac Newton
Mather did not just about witchcraft any more than he wrote about religious topics. He was well-versed in sciences and gives lie to the perception that religious leaders at every point along the way were always anti-science and dedicated to putting biblical explanations above facts. Newton—as the universally recognized most brilliant scientific mind in the history of civilization at the time Mather was writing—pops up in more than just a couple of his works. “An Essay on Comets, Their Nature, Their Laws of Motions, etc.” is notable for being one of the few texts written by anyone at the time to include a line like “Sir Isaac Newton, from whom 'tis a difficult thing to dissent in any thing.” He then goes on to suggest that Newton is wrong in assuming that comets are “solid compact, fixed and durable” which, of course, we now know they are not.
