The Struggles of Margaret Livingstone Essay

Submitted By saaarah_delrey
Words: 1427
Pages: 6

Sarah Foster January 1692:
Margaret Livingstone scrubbed the floors of the pitiful corner of the house she could even call hers. Her master, Mr. Thomas Putnam Jr. had given her the smallest, most exposed part of the house in which she was expected to dress, sleep, and do her business; however she hardly ever used the curtain enclosed space for anything other than sleeping, as there was a shed out back that offered a bit more privacy. The dirt was crusted onto the already rotting floors that Mrs. Putnam refused to pay any mind to. She didn’t see the need in doing so because the floors in her bedroom were in pristine condition, and she felt they had more important things to spend their hard earned money on like more agricultural equipment to continue the innovation her husband’s ancestors had started years earlier or financial aid for her children whom she hoped would become entrepreneurs at young ages.
Margaret pondered these things and she became increasingly livid as each moment passed. She began muttering to herself about how she couldn’t stand the superficial family she was being forced to work for. They were much better than the former family she’d been with, but they were still far from satisfactory. Her indenture with the former family was supposed to last 8 years but they traded her to the Putnam family after two years. She had only been with the Putnam’s for about 5 months now, but Margaret already dreaded waking up in the morning. The parents were painstakingly conceited, and the children were even worse. They refused to be denied of what they wanted, and the worst of them all was Ann.
She was only twelve years old, but she was as evil and conniving as someone who had been practicing for years and years. Margaret watched from the shadows and tried to avoid the wrath of the word twisting skills the clever young girl used to get her brothers in trouble with on a daily basis.

More recently, Ann had been with her friends, cousins, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams and the three of them were with the Parris’s servant Tituba doing some kind of fortune telling, then, the girls decided to start acting as if they were possessed and blame it on witchcraft.
Those little girls and the Putnam family are starting to cause mass hysteria in the town of
Salem, and it’s starting to get out of hand. As Margaret was thinking of all these things, she became stressed without realizing it, she began scrubbing with more force. The more anger and anxiety she felt, the harder she started scrubbing the floor with the worn sponge she’d brought with her as a memory from her real home. She rarely used the sponge with the fear that being caught with it would result in its confiscation. When she worked at the other family’s house, she used it to clean day in and day out as a reminder of her mother and the memories they’d shared before her father died when she was 16, and she was forced to serve her time waiting on the fortunate in order to earn the freedom to bring her mother and little sisters to the colonies.
While she used the sponge for months, the children belonging to her other master noticed her liking for the unfamiliar square of cloth began to question her about the sponge and its cleanliness because, even then, the simply sewn canvas material was faded in color, stained with dirt, and beginning to fray. Knowing if she continued to use it, Margaret tucked the old piece of her life into the bottom of her sack, but she didn’t do so without holding it close to her heart and saying a prayer for her family. This flashback left a tear rolling down
Margaret’s cheek, but nonetheless she was still angry, so she scrubbed harder, trying to hold back the sobs that were to come if she could not distract herself. Being so emotional,
Margaret became careless with her old sponge which now had only the slightest hint of its original color, which was only visible if you squinted your eyes.

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