The Roles of Abigail Williams and Betty Parris - Research Paper Example

? The Accusing Girls in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible of the The Accusing Girls in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible Plays are an important means of influencing the society in which one lives. The importance of plays had gone up drastically in the twentieth century when various new forms of theatre came up in response to the new political formations that were in vogue in different parts of the world. The epic style of Bertolt Brecht which he describes in his work A short Organum for the Theatre, the Theatre of Cruelty, the Theatre of Oppression and others formed a movement that brought back a vitality to the stage that was missing from earlier forms of drama (Brecht 3). Redefining Aristotelian ideas about theatre, playwrights of the twentieth century talked of ideas and images that haunted them, often taking on the political class through their plays. Significant among these new writers was Arthur Miller. His play, The Crucible, talks about America that was increasingly intolerant towards differences within its society. The critique of this society and its political groups comes in a veiled manner, through a critique of the Salem Witch Trials that happened in the seventeenth century in Puritan America. This critique serves two purposes. Firstly, it saved Miller, to a certain extent, from the intolerant intellectual climate that he was writing about. On the other hand, it also served to highlight the cruelty of the same climate by equating it to one of the most horrific incidents in American history where innocent men and women were put to death because of the political needs of a certain class of people. This paper shall seek to analyze the characters of the two accusing girls within the play – Abigail Williams and Betty Parris. The motivations of these characters for accusing the other characters are not ideological or religious. They accuse other people of witchcraft for their own individual purposes. While this is not to say that accusing another person wrongly for religious purposes can be condoned, the absolute lack of any principles that guide the accusations is astounding. Miller focuses the attention of his readers and audience towards this hypocrisy that is present in the American society, something that he talks of as being present since the days of the Salem Witch trials since 1693 (Linder). This hypocrisy is borne out of a fear that does not let a person rest, according to the play. Abigail Williams seems to be a part of this fear and amidst talks of punishing witches, she seeks to seduce John Proctor. The hypocrisy of this ideological standpoint is revealed at those points where both Abigail and Proctor seek to conceal the details of their relationship. What Abigail seems to be seeking is merely sexual pleasure. However, a reluctance to accept this is accompanied by a desire to victimize other women as witches. Historically, the women who were victimized as witches were mainly persons of sexualities that were not sanctioned by the ultra-conservative Puritan church. They also belonged to that class of women who were unable, under the Puritan dispensation, to fulfill their educational ambitions (Blumberg). This can be seen in the references that characters make to women who read, in The Crucible. It is, thus, all the more tragic when women fail to support their initiative and condemn them as witches. This defines the predicament of people like Abigail Williams, Mary Warren and Betty Parris. Instead of displaying a certain kind of solidarity towards each other, they seek to victimize each other for their own short-term goals. The persons who gain from these accusations are those who seek to cheat others out of their land and set up their own farms, thus perpetuating patriarchal forms of living that would then make possible incidents such as the trials in the future. The events that Miller talks of in The Crucible are historically accurate to a certain extent. They are, however, also fictionalized to a large degree. This helps the transition that the play is able to make between reality and fiction, and the past and the present. The disclaimers that Miller provides do not lead to the political content of the play being diluted in any way. The allusions that the play intends to create between the events of the American past and the events of the McCarthy era lead to what commentators have pointed to as its contemporary relevance (McGill Jr. 258). The motivations of the accusing girls also lead the readers and the audience to the motivations of the playwright. Two of the greatest aims that Miller had as a playwright of the twentieth century were to break away from earlier traditions and introduce political considerations into plays and to exalt the status of the common man on the stage (Calarco 354). This can be seen in the character of Willy Loman in The Death of a Salesman and also in the character of Proctor. The aims of the accusing girls are also thus the aims of the common person. They are not lofty political aims. This is not so even in the case of Giles Corey, John Proctor, or any other of the male characters. Even events that are supposedly the effects of ideological changes are often the results of human greed and avarice, according to Miller. This recognition is made possible through an unsettling of naturalistic norms of theatre that had already been done to a certain extent by European playwrights. The position of women is an important aspect of the play under discussion in this paper. The fact that they have no agency leads them to being an important part of the machinery of the power structures that seek to accuse other women. In the dispensation that is described in the play, women have little agency and the only power that they can exert is through men – this explains the urge to accuse that is seen in women like Abigail Williams. The power that they can gain is through the men with whom they are associated. Abigail’s accusations may be thought to stem from the fact that she sees John Proctor as an asset through which she may gain a certain amount of power in the patriarchal society which she is a part of. This can then be read as a comment that Miller makes about the society of the United States of America during the McCarthy era. In this era, however, everyone who is not a part of the upper classes and does not support the government blindly is stripped of any form of power and is then at the mercy of the government. Even in this scenario, people seek to accuse each other in an attempt to gain a certain perverse kind of power that then feeds into the power of the state that victimizes citizens to increase its power. Through this play, Miller mocks the idea of progress that the modern state attempts to establish and suggests that it is as totalitarian as the regimes that existed in the seventeenth century. The historical events that happened during the seventeenth century have a lot to do with the horror that Miller seeks to instill in the readers and the audience of The Crucible. Many men and women were murdered and their land was confiscated by the Church. This remains one of the most potent metaphors that have been used to describe the subjugation that has been faced by women in the United States of America and in other parts of the world. The play seeks to criticize the patriarchal attitudes that led to the seventeenth century trials, subtly indicating the lack of change that has happened in the centuries in between. It also critiques the attitudes that people held during the era in which the play was produced. The anti-political and apolitical attitudes that people held during these times led to the power that the McCarthians were able to garner from a certain group of people. The mass hysteria that they were able to generate made supporters out of people who would not have been so in other situations. The fact that the characters in The Crucible are unable to think about the larger picture within which they operate proves that the mass hysteria that was created leads to people losing their ability to reason. This also leads to the question as to what progress means for different groups of people. The playwright in The Crucible speaks of progress as something that may or may not be possible. This idea is articulated also in Miller’s Resurrection Blues, a work that talks about the disillusionment that is felt regarding the role of a messiah (Mason 657). This can be seen in the despair that characterizes the actions of the women who accuse others of being witches. This existential angst in a play that is set in the seventeenth century in a time when Puritan ideology was at its height serves to make it a contemporary play for people in the twentieth century. The motives that drive the accusing girls are different but they all serve to tie together the action of the play and its agenda. Works Cited Blumberg, Jess. “A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials.” Smithsonian.com. Web. 22 Jul. 2012. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/historyarchaeology/briefsalem.html Brecht, Bertolt. “A short Organum for the Theatre.” Modern European Theatre. New Delhi: Worldview, 2007. Print. Calarco, Joseph N. “Production as Criticism: Miller’s "The Crucible."” Educational Theatre Journal 29(3) (1977). Web. 22 Jul. 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3206181 Linder, Douglas O. “An Account of Events in Salem.” Famous American Trials. Web. 22 Jul. 2012. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm Mason, Jeffrey D. “Arthur Miller’s Ironic Resurrection.” Theatre Journal. Web. 22 Jul. 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069335 McGill Jr., William J. “The Crucible of History: Arthur Miller’s John Proctor.” The New England Quarterly 54(2) (1981). Web. 22 Jul. 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/364974 Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print. Read More