“I was hanged for living alone / for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin, / tattered skirts, few buttons, / a weedy farm in my own name, / and a surefire cure for warts; / Oh yes, and breasts, / and a sweet pear hidden in my body. / Whenever there’s talk of demons / these come in handy.” –Margaret Atwood, “Half-hanged Mary”
Introduction
At the end of the year, I ask my students to tell me the top three things they enjoyed about my class and three things I can improve upon. Most commonly what is written on these informal surveys is that they love The Crucible. This play does have it all -- reading together in class (no solo reading at home), the scandal of an affair, accusations of witchcraft, a girl gang like no other, unfair trials, multiple layers of meaning, and finally, there are the probing questions that get asked by students reading through their modern lens. These questions inevitably turn into heated, healthy discussions of problematic characterization, connections to our current world, patriarchy, racism, and using fear as a means of control. They love this play. It gets them thinking, and for that reason, I will always include it in my curriculum.
When we start the play, the hardest idea that my students wrestle with and the hardest thing for me to teach is this Puritan way of life – what it was like to live during this time, and how the belief in witches came to be seen as a real threat. I often bring in clips from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and show them these funny Puritan valentines I found on Pinterest to help them understand the historical context. After my many years of teaching, I can say for certain that my students are visual creatures. When we read works that place them in a time of history far removed from the world they live in, I find that using artwork, illustrations, photographs, movie clips, and artifacts help students visualize and understand life in earlier times. This is the aim of the unit-- a visual curation of objects and artifacts to help my students truly grasp the historical context of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. This visual examination will also help my students understand the emotional intensity of Puritan cultural conformity, which generated a type of hysteria represented in the play. Through this study of the Puritan way of life and the images and rhetoric of witchcraft pamphlets circulating in the 16th/17th century, students will be able to clearly see the oppression, within the Puritan world, of those considered to be “others,” such as people of color, women and those who refused to conform to social norms.
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