Woman of the Month: Mary Sibley

Mary Sibley from Salem

In many ways this show is trashy and exploitative, but I have to say I never expected it to provide such an interesting character as Mary Sibley. Since the end of Merlin I've been trailing most of the actors from show to show, and Janet Montgomery has managed to land quite a juicy role with this project. In the show’s prologue Mary is a young woman in love with John Alden, only to find herself pregnant and unmarried in an 18th century Puritan community. Big no-no. In order to get rid of the child, she goes with her servant Tituba to the forest where a strange ritual takes place – one that leaves her womb empty.

Picking up again several years later, Mary more or less presides over Salem. Her husband is mute and wheel-chair bound, and she exercises considerable influence over the townspeople. All well and good, but it’s soon revealed that since we last saw her, Mary has become a powerful witch and leader to the coven hiding in the woods, as well as the mastermind behind the witch trials – all designed so that her people might accumulate enough bodies to perform their Grand Rite.

For a long time it's not entirely clear whether she’s the show’s protagonist or antagonist. Are we meant to be rooting for or against her? But the gaps in her transition from naïve girl to ruthless matriarch are gradually filled in as the show goes on, revealing a surprising level of complexity. Despite being the puppet-master pulling the strings of the witch hunt, she’s not beyond showing mercy or regret, and though her ultimate goal of ushering the devil back to earth is (obviously) something the audience can't get behind, her reasons for doing so make a twisted amount of sense.

She has a range of intriguing relationships with other characters – in fact, perhaps with every other character, making her the most important player on this particular chess-board. She has ideas of her own concerning the direction the coven should be taken, resulting in power struggles with other witches seeking to undermine or influence Mary towards their way of thinking. Both powerful and powerless, sympathetic and detestable, full of agency and yet swept along in events she cannot control, Mary is very much the centrepiece of Salem.