When exploring the timing and course of events at Salem, historians have often ignored assumptions about gender - maleness and femaleness - embedded within Puritan cosmology. The author of this work examines how gender systems cut across religious belief, both during and after the trials, showing the proscription of women's "sinful natures" and men's "natural sins". She argues that men saw their sin as specific ungodly actions, easily overcome, while women interpreted their sin as inherent in their very natures, far less easily resisted.