Hathorne and Danforth
Miller has presented Abigail as a stubborn and selfish girl in that she’d hurt anyone and jeopardise the well beings of her fellow Puritans for a little more power and respect within Salem by accusing anyone of being seen with the Devil. She has been presented to the audience by Miller to confront her respected elders with no fear and lead her peers into following her lies and by doing this Miller shapes her lies throughout the play so that she gains the rewarding and expected treatment from certain elders such as Danforth and especially Proctor.
In Act One she snaps (with a flash of anger) and says to Proctor ‘How dare you call me child! ‘ which influences the audience into thinking she isn’t a seventeen year old girl and therefore makes us respond to Abigail the way she wants Danforth and Proctor to, with respect and appreciation for her views throughout the play. Miller reveals to the audience from the beginning of the play of Proctor’s and Abigail’s ended affair.
However, Miller has presented Elizabeth to still be Proctor’s wife and this shows the audience that her ever loving and forgiving attitude and character reflects on her Puritan lifestyle and beliefs.
‘As you will, I would have it. I want you living John. That’s sure’. In doing this, Miller has shaped his audience’s responses to Elizabeth to be of respect and admiration, quite the opposite of the audience’s response to her husband’s ex-lover, Abigail.
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Throughout the play, various significant actions of each character, especially Elizabeth and Abigail, intensify to build a climax. Yet the way Arthur Miller presents these actions reflects strongly on how the audience responds to each character. Towards the end of Act One Miller presents to the audience just how deceitful and selfish Abigail can be.
Once Tituba has accused Goody Good of being seen with the Devil, ‘And I look-and there was Goody Good’ and is praised for coming forward and no longer oppressed in the eyes of Hale, Abigail immediately joins in with the accusations ‘I want to open myself’ Abigail says after Hale declares all the names of people seen interacting with the Devil must be given. Miller presents Abigail to be power hungry in her actions as she continuously reels off a list of names that she had apparently seen worshiping the Devil.
This slight action of even the smallest lie to begin with has dramatic effects as Miller presents Abigail to be the leader of the girls and almost automatically Betty joins in with the name calling. From this one significant action of Abigail accusing innocent girls to Hale, the whole village will run into mayhem. However, that lie was miniscule in comparison to her accusation of Mary Warren’s spirit haunting and attempting to attack her in the court room in the form of a yellow bird. The first stage direction: (Abigail, with a weird, chilling cry, screams up to the ceiling.
Shows the audience what a good pretender she is and how influential and controlling her lies are to her peers. At this action she instantly grabs Danforth’s attention and fear. She knows that he believes her and her power hunger makes her want to make this belief stronger. Miller makes it clear from his stage directions Abigail is lying, yet again, to the court: (to the ceiling, in a genuine conversation with the “bird, as though trying to talk it out of attacking her). Miller makes all actions of Abigail very dramatic to reflect the rate at which tension is building up in the court room and to mesmerize her fellow characters.
The audience, however are far from convinced Miller’s presentation of Abigail’s devious ways as are Proctor and Hale. This is shown when Hale exclaims, indicating Abigail and the girls ‘You cannot believe them! ‘ and the gullibility of Danforth only intensifies their rage at the way the situation is turning out. Miller shows his audience how the impact of just one lie has a domino effect on the rest of the village: ‘That entire contention of the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through the children? ‘. And this works because of the context of suspicion in the society of Salem in the 1690s.
The audience’s response to Abigail’s first lie is frustration and anger as she has gained so much power without any substantial proof of her accusations and their response to her second lie is of disbelief as to how a judge of the court can still be so gullible to a child’s word, when even the Reverend doesn’t believe her. Miller makes Abigail lie so that she can gain power within the community, yet when Miller makes Elizabeth lie in Act Three for the first time in her life, she manages to lose power within the community both for her and for Proctor.
Proctor confesses with enormity to the court of his affair with Abigail, ‘I have known her, sir’. The stage directions indicate just how effective this confession is (trembling, his life collapsing around him). Proctor told the court the truth as his final strategy to convince the court of his wife’s innocence and that Abigail is lying to kill Elizabeth, but unfortunately this action backfires on Proctor as Abigail refuses to support his confession.
This could be the point in the play where Danforth becomes aware of Abigail’s lies but his integrity has an impact on him that he cannot voice his opinion as it would damage his reputation the court. For this reason, Elizabeth is summoned to the court room where she is to answer the judges as to whether or not her husband committed the crime of lechery. Elizabeth, unaware of her husband’s previous confession lies for the first time ever in her life.
This is shown in her approach to the lie in the stage direction (in a crisis of indecision she cannot speak) and says that the reason she dismissed Abigail from her household was because ‘she dissatisfied me’. She then later denies that her husband is a lecher and this unfortunate action has an enormous dramatic turn as well. The court automatically believe Abigail’s lie that Elizabeth has been interacting with the Devil and Proctor is left in despair, following the array of Abigail’s power, as he is unable to defend his wife anymore due to her lie.
If Elizabeth told the truth, like her character would have under normal circumstances, Abigail’s lies would have been questioned by the court. Yet, as her husband swore to the court that his wife is an honest woman who has never uttered an untrue word before in her life, the court think that Elizabeth is telling the truth when claiming her husband is not a lecher. This one significant claim unfortunately diminishes Proctor’s final strategy to save his wife as Abigail still has an immense amount of power within Salem.
On the contrary to the response the audience has to Abigail’s lie, Miller presents Elizabeth’s significant lie to be selfless yet weak. She was not able to gain the same amount of power that Abigail had through her various lies and the audience pities both Elizabeth and Proctor for the consequences of her action. Yet, Arthur Miller does create the same sense of frustration amongst his audience by cleverly using the tool of dramatic irony as Elizabeth was unaware to tell the truth to the judges to save her husband and herself from losing power in the court and in the community of Salem.
Another key action that Elizabeth underwent that had a resultant dramatic effect on the audiences’ response towards her was in Act Four when she selflessly did not urge Proctor to lie and confess to the court to free himself from death nor to admit the truth and save his name. This highlights Elizabeth’s gentleness as she obviously didn’t want her husband to hang but knew only he could make the right decision to redeem himself from his sins. She confides to John: ‘John, it come to naught that I should forgive you, if you’ll not forgive yourself.
(Now he turns away a little in great agony)It is not my soul, John, it is yours. (it is difficult to say and she is on the verge of tears) only be sure of this, for I know it now: Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it. ‘ In giving Elizabeth no power to control her husband’s decision, Miller has shaped his audiences’ response to her to be of pity and sympathy. The audience tries to empathise with her agony of giving her husband free choice and resultantly watching helplessly as he chooses to hang rather than live with a shameful name.
Abigail’s apparent growth of power throughout the play is destroyed in Act Four, when as consequences to her previous actions Miller presents her to have no other alternative but to flee from Salem and the tragic mess she had caused. Miller has Abigail steal all of her Uncle’s money at the end of the play so that she can vanish from the destroyed town that was once her home. Parris says to the court: ‘There is news, sir, my niece, I believe, has vanished. ‘ To which Danforth replies in a state of shock and disbelief ‘vanished! ‘.
Here, Abigail has been presented by Miller to be deceitful and selfish again and contradicts one of the Puritan beliefs, to never steal which originates from the Ten Commandments. The last action that Miller has presented Abigail to do has no resultant dramatic effect on the play as no characters are affected by it. Yet, it has a significant effect on the way Miller shapes the audience’s responses towards Abigail in that it can see that her character traits are so different from Elizabeth in the way that her crave for power will never disappear.
Not only does Miller portray the personality of each character to shape his audience’s response to them, but he also presents their relationships with other characters within ‘The Crucible’ to impact upon his audience’s response too. Each of Abigail’s personality traits: deceit, pretence, desperation, aggression, controlling and threatening are shown by Miller to his audience mainly through her relationships with three significant characters: Proctor, Danforth and her peers. From the beginning of the court cases in Salem, Abigail has a strong bond with both of the judges, Hathorne and Danforth, as they are the two main victims of her control.
The accusations of witchery within the town have started because of one girl, Abigail, and for this reason as well as the tense and suspicious attitudes of the inhabitants of Salem the two judges have no other option but to place all aspects of their faith in the seventeen year old girl. However, as the play proceeds and the accusations increase it is presented to the audience that Danforth begins to lose trust in Abigail and doubts what she is saying is true and this could determine the fate of their relationship. If Danforth does lose faith in Abigail, she will lose all the power she has in Salem at that precise moment.
In Act Three, especially, the stage directions shown by Miller present to the audience the doubts within their relationship. Danforth says :(weakening):’Child, I do not mistrust you’ and as the scene goes on more stage directions follow which illustrate the decline of trust within the relationship(blanched in horror), (Danforth seems unsteady), (Danforth cannot speak). Miller has presented to the audience the fact that Danforth’s integrity is on the line with every one of Abigail’s lies he believes. The court has hung so many people as a result of the accusations and each of these taken lives lie on Danforth’s and Hathorne’s conscience.
Act Three highlights a possible turning point in the Abigail’s and Danforth’s relationship as Danforth begins to realise that, maybe, Abigail could be misleading the court with her accusations, yet his concerns of her accusations and their relationship could damage his reputation if they came out into public. Miller presents each of the many character traits Abigail has to different characters she interacts with in ‘The Crucible’. From the start of the play Abigail is idolised by the rest of the girls, perhaps through envy or fear as to how much power she gains within Salem in such a short space of time.
In Act Three, Abigail claims to become cold in the court room, and stares at Mary Warren as if to accuse her of making her feel this way and almost immediately after Abigail makes this accusation Mercy Lewis follows by saying:’ Your Honour, I freeze! ‘, who is shortly followed by Susanna Walcott’s allege of freezing too. And later on in the scene when Abigail claims to see Mary Warren’s spirit in the form of a bird in the ceiling, instantly Mercy Lewis shouts ‘It’s on the beam! ‘ Susanna Walcott follows again by saying ‘Her claws, she’s stretching her claws!
‘ Miller uses Abigail’s power of leadership she has over her peers to not only show hr power to lead and bully, but also to illustrate the effect of hysteria in such a small community. This is shown again to the audience, when in Act One, Miller presents Abigail to start reeling off the accusations of witchery in Salem. ‘I want to open myself’ Abigail claims to Hale. Betty later follows with the accusations:’ I saw George Jacobs with the Devil! I saw Goody Howe with the Devil! ‘ these accusations continue until Miller lets the curtain fall at the end of the act.
Hathorne and Danforth. (2017, Oct 29). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-hathorne-and-danforth/
