Female Characters Of Women 's ' The Crucible '

The Crucible follows the journey of a witch hunt and the various characters’ experiences during this intense period of fear. A group of young girls, led by Abigail Williams, takes the center stage in the village to antagonize the entire community with their pointed fingers. They are supposedly bewitched and accuse different women to be witches. Abigail is the main antagonist of the story and creates the most impact and damage to Salem. She is an extremely selfish and self-centered character, who possess the ability to manipulate anyone who gets in her way.

Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”, shows the important events in the Salem Witch Trials. Fear and emotion runs throughout the whole play. The two women who stand out the most is Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor.

The main quality admired and expected of women in The Crucible is submissiveness. It is clear from the play that Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, was largely a patriarchal society. Power in the hands of women was looked down on and even feared. Any leverage that women had was gained solely through manipulation. If the men suspected a woman of interacting with the Devil, she was expected to submit to their authority and confess her crime. If she rebelled and refused to confess, she was sentenced to death, no questions asked. However, the same was also true for men, though they were much more seldom found guilty of witchcraft.

During the 1650s in Salem, Massachusetts, there were many beliefs about women perpetuated by society. They were considered to be impulsive, selfish and subservient. Women were pressured into conforming to these social standards. This is shown numerous times in Arthur Miller’s play, the Crucible. However, despite these social pressures, there were a number of instances where women we shown to have more power than men. The action of female characters were influenced by the beliefs, stereotypes and expectations promoted in their society.

Puritan women’s role were not the same as they are now. Although puritan women had a limited role in society Abigail, Elizabeth and Tituba were characters who displayed progressive attitude. People in the time didn't think the same about when as people do now .

Imagine never being able to speak in public or talk to a man other than your husband. This is how the women of Salem had to act and live during the 1600s, they were deprived of any social power in the public eye. However, during the year 1692 the Salem witch trials occurred allowing powerless women to finally develop a social standing. In the play, “The Crucible”, written by Arthur Miller, the witch trials empowered powerless women by allowing the female gender to develop a voice, bestowing social power within themselves, instilling fear in others.

There are various ways you can portray women throughout, The Crucible. Women are raised with high expectations, morals, and majority are raised in a Christian household. Although there’s the other types of women that are the complete opposite. In The Crucible, women are viewed in many different ways based on their actions and behavior. In Margaret Atwood’s poem, “Half-Hanged Mary,” she views women the same way. The author in The Crucible, Arthur Miller, uses very important women to characterize the certain roles of women. The author of the poem, “Half-Hanged Mary,” also uses a woman to portray the roles of how women were treated in the poem, as well as the story, The Crucible. Both of these authors, Margaret and Arthur, compare the similar roles of women based on their well being and moral upbringings.

The roles in which women play in the drama are very significant due to the fact that they are able to shape the story and give an idea of the nature of one of the strangest events which we call the witch trials. In the play, women are depicted as weak creatures who are expected to submit to men, and whose only access to power is through dishonest means which we see a lot through certain characters. No women in the Crucible possesses extreme power and with the lying and dishonest females having the most power through despicable acts, only means for the truthful, pure-hearted, and family orientated women to be the least powerful. More specifically, women from the drama who fit into these archetypes are Mary Warren,

Abigail Williams, in my opinion, is the most evil character in the story The Crucible. She uses manipulative methods to achieve what she desires. First she gets involved in an affair with John Proctor and then she gets involved in witchcraft. Not only this but she then proceeds to spread the blame to others. By doing so, she is putting people's lives in danger and she is starting a chain of accusations. Now we have lots of people accused of witchcraft, and some of them are going to die even though they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

Gender roles in this play reflect the traditional ones that predominated in 1950s America. Men speak for women, control them, and mostly dictate what they wear and where they go. What is masculine and what is manly is clearly defined and when someone deviates from that, such as Rodolpho, they are subject to mocking, curiosity, and/or outright hostility.

Influence does not equal social or political position, in fact, some of the most common people are the most influential. Rather than being determined by external factors, such as rank, influence is determined by intrinsic characteristics. Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a clear example of this, since Miller sets her as a common, powerless wife in a hostile town full of people with rank and power, but her character sets her apart from this setting. From a superficial point of view, she might appear as another example of powerless women in Puritan society, and it seems that her purpose is to pass through the play surreptitiously. However, she has a much greater purpose than this. The way that women are portrayed in Miller’s play gives the reader no reason to believe that Elizabeth Proctor would deviate

Society commonly tells us to be ourselves or to just be unique, but if we do that and it's not the way we are “supposed” to look or feel then we are pushed to the side with everyone else that decided to step out of the box. In all three of the stories we read, they all have that one common theme, that the people and environment around us greatly determines the way we dress, think, and act. The women and men in The Crucible were all expected to be very pure and to follow the bible, although that was not the case. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester's’ daughter Pearl is shunned from the rest of the townspeople because of the clothes Hester dresses her in. Lenny in Of Mice and Men was taken advantage of because he could not fully grasp the concept of what everyone else

Feminism is most commonly defined as movements, ideologies, and social beliefs with goals to establish and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. A feminist would be described as someone who is a supporter of feminism. The earliest traces of a feminist movement throughout the world can be traced back to the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Although some may argue that equality of the sexes has yet to be achieved, women have more rights than they did in the past, especially during the seventeenth century. Arthur Miller wrote the play called “The Crucible” in 1953 but the play was set during the 1690’s in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During this time period, the women’s rights movement was not a thing and women had very little rights. The people who had full rights at this time were the white men. They were superior to women and the women had to do what was asked of them. Women were confined to a patriarchal system that kept them from holding any individualistic importance An essential part of this play was the existence of feminism because the girls of the play were important characters throughout. This was contrary what was normal during this time because were most often in the shadows and the opinions of women generally were not listened to. Arthur Miller’s decision to incorporate feminism in the play carries a lot of significance because the entire play revolves around the feminist young girls of the story. In doing

In “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller uses the characters Abigail and the three girls as feminists to gain power. “American laws wanted to move women closer to equality through an Equal Rights Amendment that would ban governments discrimination based on sexes”. “Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes.” He portrayed this by women having the power in a positive and negative way. In the town of Salem, women were given less amount of power, with their ability to have judgments upon other women and men as being witches and wizards. There was no need of evidence to prove if a person was a witch or not. This power was given to Abigail and the girls implying larger comments on the negative effect of women holding power. Although there were good things and bad things about women having power, Elizabeth Proctor lost power over her husband because John Proctor is the head of the house, but “she is submissive to him.” Elizabeth is not secured within her relationship with John Proctor because he had an affair with Abigail Williams. Elizabeth is upset and deeply hurt, and constantly reminding John Proctor that she is still hurt because he cheated on her. Society’s view a husband having more power than the woman. Elizabeth began to have the position of a stereotypical wife. She doesn’t lose power, but suppresses her power and holds her power privately. Society view women to be weak, not intelligent, so they deserve to have less power, and

Female deceit in The Crucible is presented in the character of Abigail Williams, a young woman who falls in love with the protagonist of the play, John Proctor. Upon realisation that she will not be able to win John with lust, she turns her motives to destroy his wife, Elizabeth. Abigail’s desire to acquire John is shown in her manipulation of the court and this leads to many unfair deaths by hanging and various names left tarnished all because of Abigail’s lust for one man. In ‘A doll’s house’ female deceit is presented within the character of Nora her deceit radiates throughout the play and is recognised from the very beginning as she and her husband, Torvald, are quarrelling about who eat a portion of macaroons. The fact the audience observes her eat the macarons on stage shows how Ibsen uses dramatic irony to let the audience know of their marriage situation. The Crucible was profoundly inspired by claims of the Arthur Miller’s Marxist roots by the McCarthyism regime. It is known that Miller’s time being accused of something he never did and watching the members of the public believe whatever the people who issued’ justice’ told them deeply influenced his decision to write a play based upon the acts that happened in Salem in 1692