Unit Content
Puritan Way of Life: Interior and Material Culture
At the beginning of the unit and before we start the play The Crucible, I want to look at photographs of houses from Puritan New England and the objects that would be inside of these houses. If I can offer my students this vision of setting for the play, it will be instrumental in their understanding of the characters, their motivations, and their understanding of the world. This lesson about historical context would take one to three class periods depending on a teacher’s school schedule.
Exterior Home and Physical Environment
Showing students what Puritan houses looked like from the outside will prove beneficial in students’ understanding of Salem, a setting that represents seriousness, darkness, and a hidden history, a firm structure of strict religious beliefs and patriarchal obedience, and a fear of the unknown. Using pictures of a Puritan home, like that of Rebecca Nurse’s Homestead, John Ward’s House in Salem or Buttolph-Williams House in Wethersfield, CT would be ideal for the introduction to a Puritan home. All three of these places have pictures easily found on the Internet. For my presentation to my students, I will use a combination of photographs taken in Wethersfield and photographs of Rebecca Nurse’s home. Looking at the exterior of these houses, students should be able to point out several features like small windows made with imperfect glass which would not afford to let much light in. After showing a close-up detail of a window, students can see that this imperfect glass may also distort images while looking out, reinforcing superstitions or fears Puritans may have of their environment. Students should point out that the house is made from wood. I will show them a picture of an interior wood detail. Have students wonder about this wood; get all their senses involved. Where would they get this wood? Who would chop it down and build the house? What does wood smell like, feel like, and sound like inside a dwelling?
These houses held up to four to ten people and were designed to show patriarchal control.2 In his essay “Witchcraft, Bodily Affliction, and Domestic Space in Seventeenth-Century New England,” Robert Blair St. George describes how “the exterior order of the house provided architectural proof of patriarchal discipline. With its window/eyes, door/mouth, roof/brain visible from the street, the human house provided a male model of society, but one that could incorporate within its gendered figure elements usually conceived as female.”3 There is an illustration of this concept of the house-body included in his essay that would be worth showing to students as well. He also discusses how one way the patriarchal society limited women socially, but gave them a little more authority, was “in the design of the…house itself. It was an architectural strategy that announced the sanctity of the nuclear family and so ordered space that the family's ‘head’ could maintain an idealized surveillance over the dependent members of his body.”4 He goes on to say that “the front of the house presented an image of order and control to the public.”5 The Puritan patriarchal control was literally built into the architecture of the home.
Even more interesting is how Blair St. George connects the exterior of the home to the Salem Witch accusations. He describes how a lot of the stories and accusations about witches in Salem would include an invasion of the house, which he argues is the invasion of the body. This suggests that these stories of witches invading houses are symbolic of the threatened patriarchy -- the accused women trying to conquer or “pierce” the image of control and patriarchy (the house-body).6 These witch stories are subconscious fears men of Salem had about independent women. This would be interesting to walk your students through and see if they can figure out what these witch invasion stories truly represent.
One more idea that might be useful to explore would be the surrounding wilderness – the unknown, the unexplored. Images of forests around Salem could be used here. This will be a critical opportunity to mention colonization, unstable and violent relations with displaced natives (something that Abigail alludes to when describing her parents’ death), and the very real fear of witches and the Devil. In her article about the young accusers in Salem, Isabelle Laskaris writes about how “one of the most frightening aspects of Puritan ideology was the belief the Devil could be hiding anywhere, and could descend on any individual at any given time.”7These fears would have affected the psyche of Puritan families and therefore Salem’s surrounding wilderness would be a breeding ground for anxieties about invasions, violence, and the supernatural.
Teachers can also show pictures of the body of water that Salem was nearby. Again, using photographs of this body of water (I will be using a picture of a port building still standing in Wethersfield which would be similar to Salem’s), a teacher can guide students to question where ships would be going to and from during this time. Students should eventually make the connections that many of the ships went to the Caribbean for importing and exporting capital, including slaves. This would bring a connection to Tituba, Reverend Parris’s slave who is the first to be accused.
Interior Home
For the interior of a Puritan home, I would focus on the inside rooms, kitchen hearth, the close quarters, the attic, the cellar, and other objects that would be commonly found in one of the interior rooms. Teachers can choose a variety of images found on museum websites or from simple Google searches. Many of the photos I will use will be from colonial Wethersfield and from Rebecca Nurse’s Homestead. As a teacher shows these photographs of the interior and of objects, it is imperative that they have their students use all their senses to wonder about life back in 1692.
Most Puritans lived in one-to-two-bedroom houses, where almost every room was used for sleeping and working.”8 This shows their modesty and appreciation of hard work. The main floor rooms were called the parlor and the hall. Inform students that “the ‘parlor’ was always the front room on one side of the entrance; it had the best bed, held the household's most valuable possessions, and was the room where the head of the household slept, occasionally dined, and met with guests.”9 What this means is this room was meant for the man of his house and to show off the fruits of his labor, although Puritans should not be too prideful in their material possessions as is exemplified by the character Reverend Parris in The Crucible. In her article about American Puritan homes, Diana Strazdes describes how “the front room on the other side of the entrance, the ‘hall’ …was the center of family life. It was the largest room of the house, the main working and cooking area, and the place where family meals were eaten. When a kitchen was built into the back of the house, a pantry and an additional bedroom of ten adjoined it.”10 The additional bedroom could be added on at a later date sometimes making the exterior of the house look a bit hodgepodge, but many Puritans were concerned less about aesthetics and more about functionality. The upper floors called the chambers housed spinning wheels and were used for storage like food or textiles.11 What should be emphasized from the interior rooms are the enclosed spaces and low ceilings and how close everyone would be together with very little privacy. What would it be like to be a young person living in this environment? This intimate environment would also mean that slaves and maid servants would be inextricable from everyday life. Students should wonder what types of feelings this would produce from all parties living in this space.
There are a number of items a teacher could focus on within the Puritan home. One item I will have students contemplate are candlesticks. I will show a photograph of a pair of silver candlesticks from 1686 from Edward S. Cooke, Jr. 's Inventing Boston: Design, Production, and Consumption. First, I will have students think about silver. Cooke writes how in 1690 paper money became used for monetary exchange and that “leading merchants and officials sought to use silver for personal objects to solidify their new status.”12 This will directly relate to a part of the play when Reverend Parris says he wants silver candlesticks for his church rather than be satisfied by the pewter ones. This disgusts Parris’s character foil John Proctor, and now students will realize that Parris’s fascination with this object was a sign of capitalism, profiting off the slave trade. This connects directly to Parris’s characterization of someone who only cares about his reputation and his money. The image of candlesticks also raises the question of illumination - darkness and fear of dark which is something students may have noticed when examining the exterior as well. This would again reemphasize a sense of insecurity that people of this time period would feel.
Showing images of the kitchen hearth and spinning wheels with wool and yarn would prove beneficial to have students wonder what it was like to be a woman in this time period. For example, I would show a picture of the kitchen hearth and ask students to look at each object and wonder what it was used for and have them wonder how much time would be spent in that space and who all would be working in the kitchen. What would be the temperature? What would be the concerns while in that space? Next, I will show a picture of the room that has a spinning wheel which suggests another set of responsibilities a woman would have. Another image could be of a crib, prompting students to think about how women of the time period were valued for their reproduction. What would happen if they stopped reproducing? How would that affect their value in this society? One concept students should grasp is that women did not have much free time and that their lives were to be lived in service to their husbands and to God. When thinking about the accusations made by Abigail and the girls, students should realize how hard it would be to “com[e] to a sense of self, in a society that allowed them very few legitimate ways of exploring or finding themselves,”13 and why accusing someone of witchcraft might be a way to feel heard and seen in a world where you are made to feel invisible.
Another object to concentrate on from the interior of a Puritan home is that of the main book housed there: The Bible. The Bible would be the book of ultimate truth for all Puritans and was a governing force for Puritan society and beliefs; Salem was a true theocracy. Looking at an image of a Bible on a set of dresser drawers, I will have students notice its size, rather large, and the fact there are no other books nearby. If this was the only source of knowledge for most homes, what does this mean for women and for men? What stories from The Bible would reinforce gender roles and patriarchal structure? It might be important to note that there was other printed material “from almanacs, scary stories, and little pamphlets with romantic advice, … religious instruction manuals, and …high tracts of philosophy and religion.”14 These tracts often included “extensive debates on the nature of God, the invisible world, the Devil, and their relationship to the visible happenings of nature and the actions of men and women.”15 These texts would reaffirm the very real belief of witches and superstitions and the importance of religion to stave off these invisible evils. Again, teachers should prompt students to wonder about who would read these texts and what beliefs would be strengthened by them.
The Image of Witch: Witchcraft Pamphlets
After studying and thinking about the exterior and interior of Puritan houses and the objects that reside there, students should better understand the historical context. The next class period, I will use witchcraft pamphlets from the 16th and 17th century to illustrate the misinformation and stereotypes created to incite fear in their readers and to maintain assurance that the readers will conform to society and to the Christian religion. Using the images from witchcraft pamphlets and excerpts of the stories told on these sensational reads, students will not only be able to see the real belief and fear in the supernatural, but also to connect to the accusations made in the play. These pamphlets were akin to gossip websites and TikTok for people of the 16th and 17th centuries. The pamphlets were widely disseminated across England, which caused “ideologies about witchcraft and witches [to] spread far beyond their immediate contexts virtually everywhere in England, appearing in several kinds of sources (and, if we include Salem, the geographical coverage is even wider).”16 This allows us to understand how the image of witch came over with Puritan settlers. Also, the pamphlets tell “about witch trials in which the pamphleteers give descriptions of the witches, physical and mental, their confessions, the complaints made by witnesses, and the arguments that the pamphleteers or the judge use as evidence pointing to the witches’ guilt.”17 Because of these legal details and descriptions, the pamphlets were seen as truth. These sensationalist reports of witches, their trials, and executions were also used as a means to keep people adhering to God's authority, promoting Christianity and conforming to society’s rules. In “Witches and the Devil in Early Modern Visual Culture,” Scott Eaton describes how “the idea of witchcraft made the authorities anxious as witches operated outside of the systems which maintained social order, namely patriarchy, the household, marriage, and the Church.”18 These pamphlets would not only act as warning to readers, but also advise them how to escape the trickery of the Devil and witches.19 Later after students get to Act III of The Crucible, students can also compare the inflammatory rhetoric used in these print sources with the rhetoric used in the actual court transcripts and the court scenes in the play.
These artifacts were also used to support the patriarchy and to demonize women, keeping them in their subservient position. In Eaton’s article, he describes how these pamphlets depicted a witch as “as an old disheveled woman, an evil hag with wrinkled skin, a long nose, a facial protrusion, and a cat for a pet…In early modern print cultures, image and text suggested that the deformed exterior of the witch’s body was a mirror for the twisted interior of the mind.”20 The language too plays a role in persuading the reader. In Eaton’s article he cites how witches are described in one pamphlet as “‘monstrous and hideous’ in her appearance and, likewise, in 1613, Elizabeth Device was described as an ‘odious witch...her left eye, standing lower than the other...so strangely deformed.’”21 Picking apart the visual and textual rhetoric of these pamphlets would be a rich learning experience for my students, and then they can also understand why the accusers went for the old, the disabled, and widowed. These pamphlets will show how women were a threat to the puritanical patriarchal society and thought of as being the weaker sex, subject to the Devil’s wiles, according to Puritan beliefs.
Because my students are visual, I will use two images from one pamphlet, highlighting parts of their text and important illustrations. This artifact contains illustrations that reinforce and perpetuate stereotypes of witches that have had lasting effects throughout history and continue to uphold structures of the patriarchy. Teachers can bring any witchcraft pamphlet from this time period but will find a link to the images described in the resources listed below.
A Rehearsall Both Straung and True: Pamphlet from 1579
According to the British Library, this pamphlet focuses on four women: Elizabeth Stiles, Mothers Dutton, Duell, and Margaret.22 The information found on these women was based on Stile’s confession in jail. The pamphlet describes how these women all had familiars, pets that were fed on the blood of their owners and did the Devil’s bidding, they performed many acts of maleficium, acts of harm on others, and the murders they committed. This salacious pamphlet also describes how these women know of a man named Father Rosimonde who is a shapeshifter.
On the cover, the woodcut illustration has two older women. The wrinkle faced, working class woman on the left is not smiling and her eyes appear to be looking out towards the viewer. One can only imagine that this was used to scare the people who encountered these pamphlets. This woman is definitely bigger in scale and almost seems to have more masculine features, suggesting an intimidation tactic used by the artist. In her right hand, she is gripping a devilish spirit with horns, sharp claws, forked wings, and what looks like a snake’s tale, but, at first glance, could be mistaken as a phallus. Here, many evil symbols are at work. Many of the symbols point to Satan, but teachers might want to point out to students that the phallic looking snakes tale serves two purposes. First, it represents the fall of Eve and secondly, the phallic image paired with the face of the horned demon could also represent Pan, the Greek god of the wild who is known for his sexual prowess. Eaton describes how “the sexual element so common in witchcraft iconography is primarily evidenced … through the witches’ nudity and the phallic imagery.”23 Obviously, there is no nudity in this illustration, but the phallic imagery cannot be ignored and most likely represents the lustful nature from descendants of Eve. In this woman’s left hand is an unknown object. Having students wonder what it could be will be a useful way to let them make educated guesses and would be low stakes since there is really no right answer. Some students may point out that it looks like a quill and that she is writing something down, as the bottom image looks like a scroll. This could be a decorative element, but also could be insinuating that women who know how to read and write are dangerous, reinforcing the patriarchal notion that women should stay in their subservient, illiterate lane. Others may see an animal of some sort - a bird maybe, alluding to the fact that she may have a familiar.
The woman on the right is older and working class as well, although does not have as many wrinkles as the other. She looks off to the distance and we are unsure if she is a witch as well or an unsuspecting God-fearing woman. She holds a basket that apparently contains fish as she has two fish in both hands. The uncertainty surrounding this figure may have students wonder if she is making a market exchange with someone outside the illustration or is she about to make a deal with the witch. Whatever the case may be, the demon held by the woman on the left looks like it is about to strike. This image not only evokes fear but acts as a warning for its viewers. Students should recognize the visual rhetoric being used for inciting fear.
A teacher could pair this image with the original text that is located before and after this image. Words like “hainous and horrible ac|tes” and “noto|rious” and “leude, malitious, and hurtfull” are all used to describe the 65 year-old Elizabeth Stiles.24 This would be a good opportunity to talk about the use of connotative adjectives in a persuasive text.
The second image to emphasize from this witchcraft pamphlet contains more stereotypes about witches, including information about their familiars.25 On the left, we see an old, poor woman with a hooked nose and a wart on the side of her face. She has a slight smile and her gaze is towards her animals on the right. These animals are presumably her familiars, referred to as “Spirite(s)” or “Feende(s)” in the text below the image. It would be known by people of this time that “familiars suckled blood from supernumerary teats on the witch’s body (resembling a nipple, mole, pimple, wart or keloid) in order to renew the diabolic pact.”26 In this illustration, the witch is feeding her familiars using a bowl and spoon. The text that accompanies the image says that the witch is feeding them with “blood whiche she cau|seth to issue from her owne flancke.''27 Another compelling feature to note is the size and number of the familiars. They are large in scale in relation to the old woman on the left, signifying their importance to her and the havoc they could potentially create in a pious community. Three animals are held in an open box, the number three being perversion of the Holy Trinity. There are two large toads with rather large claws who are lovingly gazing back at the woman, patiently waiting for their spoonful of blood. The other animal who is being fed with the spoon looks to be a cat, with sharp demonic features whose eye looks towards the viewer, suggesting that after it has been fed, it might come for the viewer next. The familiars are kept in a box which shows the woman’s dominance over them, a feared trait for a woman to have, and the box can represent the fact that she can hide her familiars away so no one can see, again reinforcing the invisible evil witches can perform on unsuspecting communities and individuals.
Another important feature to notice is the window in the background. This is centered in the illustration and draws the viewer’s attention away from what is happening in the foreground. The window functions in two different ways. First, this common home feature tells us she is indoors doing nefarious activities with her unsuspecting neighbors nearby. Secondly, the window serves as a symbol for sinister surveillance of her innocent neighbors – what she will do with that information – one can only imagine.
Lastly, it is important to know that this pamphlet illustration is to serve as propaganda for the upright, Christian woman who “was a good wife, mother and manager of her nuclear family within a patriarchy-based household.”28 The artist of this image “styled the witch as an anti-mother”29 as she feed[s] demonic child-like familiars blood, rather than milk.”30 This inverted image of mother was used as a scare tactic to keep women in line and to operate within the structure of religion and the patriarchy. Again, these pamphlets were used as a brainwashing device to persuade “readers [to be] aware of [witches’s] possible plots and guile (i.e. how, why, and when witches and Satan operate to harm), so that in the future if everyone joins hands in eradicating witches, the community will be safe.”31
Analysis of these pamphlets will show students the real and widespread belief in and fear of witches that came from across the Atlantic to Puritan New England. They will also show how colonial society sincerely believed that “women are morally and intellectually weaker than men.”32 thanks to books that preceded the witchcraft pamphlets like the Malleus Maleficarum and The Bible. Knowing and understanding these beliefs that Puritans held will then help students think about the motivations behind the young accusers from The Crucible.
There are many other witchcraft pamphlets to choose from. I would encourage teachers who want to spend more time on this visual and textual analysis to look at The Wonderfvll Discoverie of the Witch-craftes of Margraet and Phillip Flower, a pamphlet from 1619 which has another woman who is disfigured and walking with canes, surrounded by her familiars,33 which generates another stereotype that witches are ugly and disabled. Another pamphlet worth investigating from 1643, closer to the Salem Witch Trials date is called A Most Certain, Strange, and True Discovery of a Witch. This has an image of a witch flying over a river, giving us the flying witch image that has carried over to present characterizations of witchcraft.
Not only is it worth looking at the images but pairing it with some of the text from the pamphlet makes for a good study of the synthesis of image and text working together to persuade. When analyzing the text it will be important to point out the use of “us” and “our”34 which reinforce the us vs. them mentality and the use of alliterative adjectives that present binary thinking, highlighting the good of Christians (good, pure, holy) and the evil of witches (sinful, dirty, merciless).35 These linguistic techniques establish the power of persuasion that these pamphlets hold. With the study of these primary source artifacts students should be able to make the connection of how pamphlets can help us understand “one of the most important aspects of growing up as a young New England woman – a profoundly held Puritan belief which integrated a belief in a supernatural world.”36
After using objects that showcase Puritan way of life and dissecting the witchcraft pamphlets from the 16th and 17th centuries, students will have a greater understanding of the historical context of this play and be equipped with essential knowledge that will help them analyze characters and themes and, more importantly, ask the more crucial, probing questions about issues like gender, race, and social outcasts that Miller, intentionally or unintentionally, features in his iconic play.
Characters from The Crucible: The Exploration of the Other
After using objects that showcase Puritan way of life and dissecting the witchcraft pamphlets from the 16th and 17th centuries, students will have a greater understanding of historical context to begin this play. Students will now be able to draw parallels between Puritan New England and that of Miller’s world of 1950s McCarthyism which teachers should and usually do bring in before reading as well. This unit is not focused on that content, but there are many sources available to teachers to help with delivering that knowledge.
Although I am constantly telling my students to look for the author's purpose, it is just as good to have them question that purpose as well. The understanding of Puritan life and beliefs will be the key to questioning Miller’s interpretation of The Salem Witch Trials. Who is he blaming for the hysteria that ensues? Why is Tituba characterized the way she is? Why does he make John Proctor the hero? Why does he vilify Abigail? What 1950s social and cultural beliefs are hidden in the creation of these characters and dramatization of these events? By reading against the grain, looking at a few key characters can guide students to challenge the traditional reading of this play. This will not include all the characters you could do this with but does use characters that will reveal critical ideas about race and gender. This delinking/ deprogramming of conventional thought about the play will lead students to create a final product that will put resistant reading, “students analyze the dominant reading of a text and “resist” it by engaging in alternative readings,”37 into practice.
Tituba
Tituba is a character that captures students’ interest right away. She is the only character of color, enslaved, and the first to be accused. She is the character that sparks questions about Miller’s intent due to her characterization. When we first meet Tituba, students automatically point out how she is like a black caricature. They are taken aback by this dated, racist characterization. My students ask questions about whether or not Miller is perpetuating a racist narrative through this character, or is Miller critically commenting on the tendency to blame “the other” first? Jungyum Hwang’s article about Tituba argues that Miller is perpetuating a racist narrative by pointing out how “Miller draws Tituba’s characterization from the stereotype of the African American ‘mammy,’ and out of the accompanying attributes such as one-dimensionality and bestial instinctiveness.”38 The author continues to argue that “the play ultimately points the finger at Tituba’s foreignness as the root cause of America’s collective fear and fanaticism.”39 I’m not one hundred percent convinced of this as the author’s intent – to blame Tituba for the whole event, but it is worth having students explore and to think about as it seems to be a persistent image in our American culture. Miller does characterize and implicate Tituba as an orchestrator of events of folk magic in the forest. So again the question arises: is he presenting us with a racist perception of his time or critically commenting on looking to those considered outsiders by a community as a scapegoat? I would have students discuss these questions after Act I when we see Tituba get accused as this will generate critical analysis of race and author’s intention. The play’s characters spark meaningful conversation about important topics that exist today.
One piece of interesting information to bring to students as they discuss Miller's characterization of Tituba would be the true account of Tituba’s life as written in Elaine Breslaw’s Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. Breslaw points out that it was Betty and Abigail who decide to play with an egg to do some folk magic, akin to girls today playing with a magic 8 ball, common in this time period and not connected with the devil.40 After the girls started to act strange (presumably from the guilt and fear of their little folk magic experiment), Tituba was enlisted by a neighbor to make what is called a witch cake to help heal the girls with more white magic/ folk magic.41 She was a slave and not in a position to say no to a white woman and she was worried about her charge Betty. It was then after Parris found out about the witch cake that Tituba was blamed and which she promptly denied being involved with the devil.42 Navigating the world of slave and master, she realized it would be in her best interest in saving her life to tell Parris what he wanted to hear. Miller does portray this idea in his dialogue. Using the original transcripts of Tituba’s confessions and accusations at the end of Breslaw’s book would prove useful for students to read. As an extension to the unit, teachers could use these transcripts as a way to compare primary source documents with the fiction that was inspired by them. This will be another way teachers can bring artifact analysis in the classroom. Mentioned earlier, some have argued that Tituba is a racist caricature created by Miller. To compare the original confession to Miller’s fictional dialogue would be useful to delve into this idea and to get a better understanding of Tituba and Miller’s characterization of her.
Abigail and the Girls
Using their modern lens, another set of challenging questions students ask is about the young female accusers turning on everyone, especially other women, and vilification of Abigail. One question students often ask is: why? Why are these girls hopping on the accusation bandwagon? Other questions on their motivations to accuse others arise as well. First, it will be important for students to think about how women were treated during this time period. They can bring in information that they learned through the Puritan way of life objects and witchcraft pamphlets here. In the dissertation “The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692: Constructing the Female as Irrational Other,” Helen Hughes writes, “Ultimately, accused or condemned women’s most accessible means of appropriating a voice came in confessions. If one would not confess, one's voice was in distinct danger of going unheard.”43 This “‘no-win position of women’ seems crucial to a discursive analysis of Salem petitions and transcripts since ‘they [women] were inferior and yet dangerous, disgusting and yet powerful, and it was their bodies that chiefly made them so.’”44 Not having a voice, being constantly looked at as less than by society, and experiencing the contradictions because of gender would make women feel isolated and devalued. Laskaris mentions how these young girls for the first time in their lives were not being controlled by men and were taking on an important, active role in the courtroom. She writes, “These instances simply do not fit neatly into the typically prescribed narrative of female actors working as tools for the patriarchal elite. In fact, they stand as examples of female agency driving the action in the courtroom by emphasizing their own perspective.”45 As mentioned before when exploring the Puritan way of life, these young girls did not have a sense of agency. They finally had a voice and were being listened to by men in power. Attention was turned to them as they were the experts in the room– something Puritan women never experienced, especially young girls. This coupled with the very real belief of witches is the cause for the accusation outbreak.46
Miller does suggest some other motivations for why some girls became accusers: Ruth Putnam was accusing people whose land her father wanted, Abigail wanted to marry John Proctor and take Elizabeth’s place, Mary Warren was bullied by the other girls. All of these seem likely possible causes for the bandwagon accusations, however, Laskaris suggests that “through these narratives, young women expressed a sense of self by highlighting and mediating their own strength and agency.”47 In other words, the narratives created through these accusations, not only gave these girls a voice, they got to show off their strength of fighting off temptation from the Devil and they “positioned themselves in believable antithesis to their tormentors.”48 The girls’ accusations seem to be a power move, moving them up the chain of command, and a means of confirming their strength and goodness, casting off the belief that women are the weaker sex. Thinking about the The Crucible “girl gang” in this way will allow for unique illuminations of characters and a non-traditional way to analyze the girls’ accusations and motivations.
Next, Abigail is a character that my students love to hate; she is the other woman. John Proctor, a man in his 30s, and Abigail, 17 years-old, have an affair which is slowly revealed in the first Act of The Crucible. Once students figure this out, they are, at first, scandalized by this fact and typically, blame her for being the other woman. However, over time, students start questioning if Abigail is really to blame. They start wondering if she was the true aggressor of this situation; she could be the victim – John preying on young Abigail and of community gossip that casts a shadow on her reputation. At the beginning of the play, students see John Proctor inappropriately flirt with Abigail and we know women are talking about her in the village through the conversation Abigail has with Reverend Parris. Students ask why this is; Why is John Proctor not blamed for this? Why is he seen as the village hero and Abigail is seen as the village whore? Students should recognize that Abigail clings to this new role of lead accuser because again this brings her voice, power, and respect – something she never had in Salem. She also does this to rise above “the woman as temptress” stereotype that this Puritan society believes in so ardently.
This is where reading against the grain will work in the classroom and where teachers can bring in those ideas from witchcraft pamphlets: women are always the ones who get demonized and blamed for the ills of the world. Again, students should consider the author's purpose. Is Miller trying to point out the tendency to blame women or is he inadvertently perpetuating the female as witch and temptress stereotype that was prominent in Miller’s time of the 1950s. Hwang asserts that “Miller blames Abigail and Elizabeth, representing the two androcentric female stereotypes of femme fatales and cold wives, for manipulating and stunting his supposedly ‘natural’ male sexuality, leading to ‘the Fall of a good man.’”49 This is an interesting read of these characters and again is where students typically go with their thoughts about Abigail and Elizabeth. Hwang continues to point out “Abigail is depicted as the core evil, whom both Proctor and Elizabeth unanimously condemn as a ‘whore’ set to destroy their marriage; and Elizabeth, although portrayed as honest and virtuous, is a frigid wife, who readily blames herself for her husband’s sexual misadventure.”50 Proctor is lifted up as the hero of the play as Miller “grant[s] him the voice to speak up against the collective madness around him”-- his voice rising above Abigail’s, “displac[ing] Proctor’s guilt onto [her].”51 It is women who are to blame for this hysteria in society, not the logical, rational world of men. This reinforces women being used as scapegoats in a puritanical, patriarchal world, which is not unlike ours today.
By questioning these creations of characters and dramatizing of personalities that actually existed during The Salem Witch Trials, students will be able to question whether or not Miller was subconsciously or consciously perpetuating stereotypes on race and gender – ideas that were carried over from the colonization of America, ideas that worked their way through Miller’s time of the 1950s, and ideas that continue to exist today. Reading against the grain and analyzing and questioning characterization as a means of discussing critical issues, like race and gender, is something students should always do when encountering a literary or visual work. They can appreciate the work from a traditional read but why not use literature or works of art to explore, question, think critically about issues that seem to permeate and thread through time. The Crucible is a timeless play – it deals with issues of scapegoating and fear and demonization of an enemy, typically due to race, religion, gender – something that is seen time after time in our history. This play can be used as a vehicle to understand historical context through objects and artifacts and to try and understand why the Puritan world, the world of Mccarthyism, and the world of today still rely on these same techniques to maintain the status quo.
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