Abigail Williams in The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Crucible is a powerful and disturbing drama based on a true event

from American history: The Salem Witch Trials of 1692. It shows how

weak the human beings really are, and how greediness and a want for

personal gain and power can become dangerous, out of control and can

stretch human beings to their limits. A similar thing to the Salem

Witch Trials happened again in the 1950’s in the USA, when the

Americans felt threatened by communism, and anyone suspected of

left-wing (communist) views was arrested for taking part in

‘Un-American Activities’.

People in the 1600’s believed that if you didn’t go to church every

week to worship God, then you must have been worshipping the devil.

There was no half-way point. The accusations of witchcraft and

dealing with the Devil in Salem were all started off by a group of

girls who were caught dancing in the woods. Dancing and partying was

forbidden under the strict rules of the theocracy that existed in the

town. There was one girl in particular who really tried to stir up

trouble, a seventeen-year-old girl called Abigail Williams. From her

first appearance in the play, we already know that she is special in

some way because in the very first scene direction where we first meet

Abigail, Arthur Miller tells us that she is:

“…a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity

for dissembling…”

From this point onwards, Abigail’s superiority over older, more

respectable people is clearly shown. She has cleverly perfected the

skill of adjusting her mood and attitude to whatever the current

situation calls for. At the beginning of act one, she appears worried

and concerned for Betty Parris, but as the scene progresses, her

uncle, Reverend Samuel Parris becomes more and more interested in what

the girls were doing in the woods. So, Abigail starts to get angry

and starts to speak to her uncle as if he were her son, shouting at

him, ordering him around, telling him what to do and giving him

advice. But her uncle and his friends carry on questioning her, and

she feels like he is cornering her into confessing. She knows that if

she admits it or is found out she will be whipped and possibly hung,

and she will do anything to stay alive, so she starts accusing other,

innocent people of witchcraft instead. The other girls in the room

(Betty Parris, Tituba [the Parris’s slave-girl] and Mary Warren [the

Proctor’s slave]) follow her lead. This means that they already

recognise her as being superior and a leader for them. They start

accusing every person that comes into their heads: -.