Content Synopsis

The play is set during the Salem witchcraft trials in Massachusetts in the spring of 1692. Act I opens in the house of Reverend Samuel Parris, where Parris’s ten-year-old daughter Betty, is ill and unresponsive. A woman from the village delivers the message that the doctor cannot find any illness and that Parris should “look to unnatural things” for the cause of Betty’s condition (9). Parris is unwilling to acknowledge this as a possibility. His position in the town is uncertain because of factions that oppose him and having a child possessed by the devil would seriously harm his reputation. He then has a discussion with his seventeen-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, which reveals that he has happened upon the girls dancing in the forest the night before with Tituba, their slave from Barbados. Parris then turns his interrogation to the subject of her dismissal as a servant to the Proctors.” He says that he has heard that Elizabeth will not come to church because she “will not sit so close to something soiled” (12). Abigail responds that Elizabeth Proctor is a “lying, cold, sniveling woman” (12). She maintains that her name is “white,” meaning that her reputation is untarnished (12). In the house, below, a crowd of people awaits news of Betty.

The Putnams come in and Ann Putnam tells Parris that her daughter Ruth is also sick and that Betty had been seen flying over the village. They are both convinced the children are victims of witchcraft. Parris cautions them against jumping to conclusions but also tells them he’s summoned Reverend John Hale, who “has much experience in all demonic arts” (14). Mrs. Putnam admits that she’s sent her daughter Ruth to ask Tituba to speak to the dead in order to find out why her seven other children died. When asked, Abigail admits that Ruth and Tituba were indeed “conjuring spirits” (16). When the adults leave, Abigail is left in the room with Betty as well as two servant girls, Mary Warren and Mercy Lewis. Mary Warren, who is the Proctors’ servant, pleads with Abigail that they must tell “the truth”; that they had just been dancing in the woods. If convicted of witchcraft, they’ll be hung, she fears (18). Betty wakes up and tries to “fly” out the window. She accuses Abigail of drinking blood in order to kill Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail threatens the girls with murder if they tell the truth and screams at Betty to stop her act. Betty falls still again.

In the midst of all this, John Proctor, a farmer in his thirties, arrives. He orders Mary Warren, his servant, to go back home. Warren and Mercy Lewis leave. Proctor rebuffs Abigail’s advances on him, revealing in their dialogue that they’ve had an affair. Proctor insists, “I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again” (23). Abigail accuses Elizabeth of gossiping about her. The sound of voices singing a psalm causes Betty to wail, which brings back Reverend Parris. He sends for the doctor. Rebecca Nurse, an elderly, respected woman in the village, comes in and gently proclaims Betty’s “sickness” a childish act. Proctor questions Parris’s arrogance in calling on Reverend Hale without consulting members of the church. Putnam, who obviously disagrees with Proctor, points out that Proctor rarely comes to church. Proctor reveals his true feelings about Parris, that he stays away because he “hardly ever mention[s] God any more” since he is always preaching “hellfire and bloody damnation” (29, 28). Proctor and Parris argue about the minister’s salary and his firewood until Rebecca urges them to make peace. Proctor moves to leave, but not before getting into a friendly quarrel with Giles Corey. Giles Corey is a man in his eighties who makes liberal use of the justice system, having already been to court six times that year for perceived assaults on himself and his property. Proctor asks Corey to help him bring his lumber home. Putnam then demands to know where he’s gotten it from; revealing another source of friction in the village: a dispute between Putnam and Proctor over land rights.

Reverend John Hale arrives laden with books. He hears out the concerns of the villagers, but insists they must be objective. He examines Betty, then questions Abigail about the dancing. Tituba is brought in and instantly Abigail “confesses” that Tituba had made her and Betty drink blood. Tituba insists that it is chicken blood, that she has not conjured the devil and that she loves Betty. Abigail accuses Tituba of making her laugh in church and of bringing her nightmares. The men threaten Tituba into “confessing” that she’d seen two women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, with the devil. Abigail makes a show of confession, too, and asserts that she’s seen others with the devil. Betty joins in with more accusations as the act closes.

The setting for Act II is the Proctor house, eight days later. Elizabeth Proctor urges her husband to go tell the sheriff, Cheever, about his adulterous affair in order to expose Abigail as a fraud. Court proceedings against the accused witches are well under way. While Proctor is mulling this over, Mary Warren returns from court, where she is one of the group of “victims.” She gives Elizabeth a poppet—a doll—she’s made while she was in court as a witness. Mr. Hale arrives and questions them about their religious faith. When asked to recite the Ten Commandments, Proctor forgets the commandment prohibiting adultery. Proctor then tells Hale that Abigail had told him they’d been surprised in the woods by Parris. Hale is not completely convinced she is a fraud since Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn have all confessed to witchcraft. Giles Corey and Francis Nurse arrive to announce that their wives have been arrested for witchcraft. Cheever arrives and finds the poppet from Mary. When he finds a needle stuck in the poppet in the same place where a needle had been drawn out of Abigail earlier that night, he charges Elizabeth with witchcraft. Despite Mary’s testimony that she’d made the poppet and put the needle there herself, Elizabeth is taken away. Proctor is defiant and enraged. After everyone leaves, Proctor convinces Mary to testify in court.

An additional scene in Act II was added in a later production of the play. In this scene, Proctor and Abigail meet in the woods at night. It is thirty-six days since Elizabeth has been arrested. Proctor warns Abigail that if she will not withdraw her accusations against his wife, he will expose their affair. Abigail persists in the deluded belief that Proctor will marry her when Elizabeth is dead and refuses.

Act III takes place in the Salem meeting house, in the vestry outside of the court room. Martha Corey is on trial. Giles Corey, Francis Nurse, John Proctor, and Mary Warren interrupt the proceedings. They assemble in the vestry with Deputy Governor Danforth, Sheriff Cheever, Reverend Parris, and Reverend Hale. Proctor pushes Mary Warren to confess that her fits have all been an act, and that all the girls who are supposed witchcraft victims are acting. Danforth is suspicious, having not doubted the girls at all up until now. Instead he accuses Proctor of witchcraft and of trying to undermine his court. They then receive news that Elizabeth is pregnant, which means that, if found guilty, she will not be hanged until after the baby is born. Danforth asks Proctor if he will now drop the charge that the girls are frauds. Proctor refuses. He, with Giles Corey and Francis Nurse, then presents a petition attesting to their wives’ innocence. They are shocked when Danforth demands that the signatories be called in for questioning.

Danforth calls for a recess and summons the girls. He questions Abigail about Mary Warren’s accusations. Abigail maintains her innocence. Proctor then tells Danforth about the dancing in the woods. Parris admits to seeing them. Danforth then demands that Mary pretend she is being attacked by a witch, but she cannot do it. When Danforth turns back to questioning Abigail, she goes into one of her fits, claiming to feel a cold wind blowing through her. The other girls follow her lead. Proctor cries out that Abigail is a “whore” (110). He confesses that he has committed adultery with her. Abigail denies it. Elizabeth is then summoned to back up Proctor’s confession. When questioned, however, she is evasive and says she had thought Proctor “fancied” Abigail and therefore she fired her, but attests that he did not commit adultery (113). Proctor cries out that he has confessed, and pleads with Danforth to see that she is trying to protect him. Hale speaks up on Proctor’s behalf, saying that he’s always been suspicious of Abigail.

At this point, Abigail starts in on one of her fits, followed by the other girls. They claim to see Mary Warren’s spirit in the form of a bird trying to attack them. Then they start mimicking everything Mary says, until Mary breaks down and accuses Proctor of bewitching her. Danforth calls for John Proctor to be arrested. Giles Corey is also arrested, for contempt. Reverend Hale announces he’s quitting the court and storms out.

Act IV takes place in the fall in a jail cell, just before dawn. Danforth, Hathorne and Parris meet to discuss the status of the people who have been found guilty of witchcraft. John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey are about to be hanged. When Parris tells them that Abigail and Mercy have run off with money stolen from him, they become very worried. They talk of the town turning against the court now that so many have been accused and arrested. Reverend Hale enters. He has been working among the accused, pleading with them to confess so that they will live. Danforth refuses to hear any pleas for pardon or postponement; twelve have already been executed and seven are set to hang that day. They decide to talk to Proctor in hopes he will confess and set an example for others. Elizabeth is brought to them, too, in order to help convince him. Elizabeth, however, will not tell Proctor what to do. Proctor desperately wants her approval. He decides that he will confess, saying he is not a saint. When they ask him to write and sign the confession, he is again distraught and falters. He doubts himself even more when Rebecca Nurse is brought forth to see his confession. He proceeds with the confession, but refuses to name any accomplices. Hale and Parris urge Danforth to accept the confession. Danforth gives him the statement to sign. He signs it, then rips it up. He protests that Danforth’s word that he has confessed should be enough. Proctor cries out that he cannot sign away his good name; Danforth then refuses to accept the confession. Proctor accepts that he will hang, but he is now at peace that he has done the right thing. He and Rebecca Nurse are taken away to be hanged and the play ends.

In the epilogue, “Echoes down the Corridor,” Miller writes that Parris was voted out of office shortly after the trials; Abigail was rumored to be a prostitute in Boston; and twenty years later, the government awarded compensation to the families of the wrongfully convicted. The congregation also rescinded their excommunications. Elizabeth Proctor remarried four years later. “To all intents and purposes,” he finishes, “the power of theocracy in Massachusetts was broken” (146).

Historical Context

There are two different historical time periods that are relevant to readings of “The Crucible.” The first is the actual setting of the play, Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The second is the time when the play was written and first performed, in the early 1950s in the United States.

The community of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 was composed mainly of Puritans. Puritanism was founded as a reform movement in response to the Elizabethan church in England, around 1560. The Puritans believed “that the Scriptures did not sanction the setting up of bishops and churches by the state. The aim of the early Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright was to purify the church (hence their name), not to separate from it” (McCarthy). However, by 1567 the Puritans were worshiping secretly in their own church. Political failure led to their persecution in the early 1600s, and many Puritans fled to Europe and America. Those who remained eventually rose to power after the English civil war in the mid-1600s. In 1661, during the Restoration, Puritans were cast out of the Church of England.

In New England, the Puritans held great influence in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Gradually their power was worn away by the opening up of frontier settlements in and beyond New England. As a colony of England, Massachusetts was governed by a charter negotiated with the English government. A new charter enacted in 1692 changed its governing system from a theocracy to a political, secular state, and dropped religious requirements for voting rights.

For centuries Christians in Europe and New England believed they were at war with witches, who they defined as servants of Satan. The belief “reached epic proportions in Europe during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries” (Richardson 4). Laws attempted to deter threats to Christianity by witchcraft and condoned the persecution of witches in France, England, and Germany. In Germany especially, “many thousands lost their lives between 1550 and 1650”; thus, “the subject of witchcraft was a universal topic in the 1600s, and Puritan New England and Salem shared these deeply felt moral and religious concerns” (Richardson 5).

While there were several isolated witchcraft cases tried prior to 1692 in New England, only the Salem trials boasted such a large number of accused and condemned witches. Nineteen of the thirty-six witch executions in America under the early colonial laws occurred in Salem in 1692. The accusers were mostly young girls who were seized with strange fits and complaints of biting and pricking by invisible spirits. Some scholars believe these girls were dabbling in “black magic” experiments, perhaps with the guidance of Tituba, a slave from Barbados. Others have attributed their symptoms to physical causes, including ergot poisoning (a fungus in the wheat used to make bread) and an encephalitis outbreak (see Laurie Winn Carlson, “A Fever in Salem” [Chicago, 1999]). Richardson also notes that episodes of witchcraft on both continents coincide with periods of social and political unrest. Recently, a connection has been made between the witchcraft “hysteria” and the French-Indian wars occurring just north of Massachusetts in Maine, as some of the victims (also the accusers), were refugees from these wars, and some of the accused were suspected traitors (see Norton, “In the Devil’s Snare”). Whatever the cause, it is almost certain that some witchcraft accusations were the result of economic and social strife that already existed in Salem Village, a less prosperous, agrarian community just outside of the prosperous shipping community of Salem Town. For example, Rebecca Nurse, one of the convicted who refused to confess, was accused by Ann Putnam, Sr., whose family had boundary disputes with the Nurse family, of causing the death of fourteen of Putnam’s family and friends.

Betty Parris, the nine-year-old daughter of the new Village minister, and his niece, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams were the first accusers. Tituba has been brought to Salem by Parris, who formerly lived in Barbados. Unable to find a physical cause for their fits of hysteria, the doctor suggests Satanic influence. At the time this was not unheard of; “[u]nexplainable behavior, diseases, and misfortunes; commonly believed to be the result of spiritual forces at work in the world” (Richardson 7). Reverend Parris called for help from other local ministers, and the community had a public day of fasting and prayer. In addition to Betty and Abigail, eleven other women and girls were stricken with symptoms of hysteria, including loss of speech, sight, and hearing; muscle spasms; trancelike states; choking; and visions which they claimed pinched, pricked, and otherwise injured them. Encouraged to identify the spirits who supposedly attacked them, they named Tituba, Sarah Good, a poor woman with the reputation of “a nagging shrew,” and Sarah Osborne (or Osburn, or Osburne), a prosperous widow who was the subject of gossip (Richardson 8). The three women were arrested on February 29, 1692 and sent to a Boston jail to await trial. Shortly thereafter, Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Bridget Bishop, and the five-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, Dorcas, were accused and arrested.

The first court of Oyer and Terminer (“to hear and determine”) convened for the first time on June 2. The delay in trial was the result of the loss of the Massachusetts charter as an independent commonwealth in 1684. The new charter was finally granted in May 1692. During the time without a charter, no legislative actions could proceed. Meanwhile, the jails had rapidly filled with accused witches while the Governor awaited the charter. The first interrogation resulted in the first execution by hanging, of Bridget Bishop. Twenty-seven more convictions followed between June and September. Nineteen of the convicted were hanged, including John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey, all real historical people who also appear in Miller’s play. Giles Corey refused to stand trial and was pressed to death by stones. Three others died in prison. The others escaped, confessed and were released, or were released due to pregnancy. One of these last was Elizabeth Proctor.

In his introduction to his “Collected Plays” (1957), Miller explains that the play came out of the question that arose for him when he discovered, upon looking at the records of the trials, that Abigail Williams had been a servant for the Proctors for a short time and that she resisted accusing John Proctor but not Elizabeth. In order to explain this, he invented their affair and accordingly changed their ages, making Abigail older and John Proctor younger.

In October 1692 Reverend Increase Mather, the president of Harvard College and the colony’s ambassador to England who negotiated their new charter, led a group of ministers in urging the Massachusetts legislature to no longer consider “spectral evidence” in cases of witchcraft. “Spectral evidence” was “either an ‘apparition’ of the accused person attempting to cause some injury to the victim or the ‘specter’ of a dead person who appeared in a vision and attributed his or her death to the accused.” (Richardson 11). Mather also recommended the use of credible witnesses and the rejection of public tests where the afflicted went into fits when the accused were brought before the court. He questioned the testimony of fights between two parties and of “mischief” such as damage to crops and livestock attributed to the accused. In January 1693, forty-nine of the accused were released from prison on the basis of insufficient evidence; the three remaining accused were freed and later pardoned by Governor Phips. In January 1696, twelve of the previously “afflicted” repented of their participation in the trials, signing a statement of contrition. In 1697 Judge Samuel Sewall publicly repented his role in the trials. Reverend Parris resigned from his ministry, which had been challenged for most of the time he was in Salem, in 1697. In 1711, twenty-one of the survivors and families of the accused were granted a reversal of their attainders, which was the legal loss of their civil rights, and received financial compensation for debts incurred from the trials. As recently as 1957, the General Court passed a Resolve which cleared the names of all the accused.

Joseph McCarthy, a United States Republican senator from Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957, was “undistinguished and obscure” until 1950, when he made a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he claimed to know the names of Communists in the State Department (“McCarthy”). After Republicans won control of the Senate in 1953, McCarthy became chairman of the Senate permanent investigations subcommittee and “used his position to exploit the public’s fear of Communism,” represented by what was seen as the U.S.’s chief enemy throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union (“McCarthy”). In public hearings, McCarthy led the committee through numerous attacks on supposed Communists, at times using unidentified informants, and encouraged those accused to list names of others involved in communist activities. The left-leaning entertainment industry was especially vulnerable, and scores of careers were destroyed through “blacklisting.” Miller himself came before the Congressional committee in 1957.

McCarthy’s power began to wane when, in 1954, the army responded to charges made on their own personnel by accusing McCarthy “of seeking by improper means to obtain preferential treatment for a former consultant to the subcommittee” (“McCarthy”). Though McCarthy, his Chief counsel, and an aide were cleared of the charges, the Senate censured McCarthy for unethical and insulting activities conducted during the course of his trial. His influence continued to diminish after the Democrats again took control in 1955. McCarthy’s legacy of unbridled accusations gave rise to the term “McCarthyism,” “which denotes similar assaults characterized by sensationalists tactics and unsubstantiated accusations” (“McCarthy”).

The parallels between the Salem witchcraft trials and the McCarthy hearings have been discussed and questioned by various critics at length. Some early critics saw the play as a “false analogy” because “there were no witches but there were communists” (Bigsby 172). Miller has countered that to say that there were no witches is “dangerous”; but, “beyond that, it was the procedures practiced in both 1692 and the 1950s which interested him, the coercive power of the state, its rallying of a popular support based on fear” (Bigsby 172). Christopher Bigsby further notes that “The Crucible” has gone on to be Miller’s most produced play and has struck a chord with audiences all over the world, thus addressing “the particularities of new injustices” and therefore transcending that particular period in history (172).

Societal Context

Gender and class played important roles in the Salem witchcraft trials. The Puritan community of Salem placed heavy restrictions on women’s roles and freedoms in the seventeenth century. As elsewhere, women were seen as men’s property and were not entitled to voting and other rights. Historically, eighty percent of the accused witches in colonial America were women. The percentages are even higher for the persecution of witches in Europe, where women accounted for over ninety percent of “witches” who were executed. That women were historically accused more often than men was directly related to the belief that women were more vulnerable to temptation and sin than men. (See Religious Context).

Economic inequality also clearly played a role. In “Devil in the Shape of a Woman,” an analysis of witchcraft in colonial New England, Carol Karlsen makes a connection between the inheritance system and the numbers of accused and convicted witches. Often, those accused challenged the status quo where women could not generally own or inherit property. The exceptions to these restrictions were when she was widowed and no other male relative could inherit. Many of those convicted had no male relative and, additionally, no legitimate intermediary in the eyes of the court to help them with their case. Miller implicitly makes the observation in “The Crucible” that at least some accusations were based on land rights, as he explains feuds among the Proctors, Coreys, Nurses, and Putnams, however he falls short of making any connection between these feuds and gender.

Abigail, who begins the play strenuously objecting to the charges of witchcraft, unwittingly stumbles upon a strategy for revenge as well as power. Abigail tries to destroy the marriage between the Proctors by accusing Elizabeth of witchcraft. Though undoubtedly she wants John Proctor for herself, she also seeks revenge for being fired from her job. She implies that Elizabeth has gossiped about her and because of that she is unable to find work elsewhere. As a young woman servant in colonial New England, whose own immediate family was killed by Indians, Abigail had few avenues of power open to her. The depiction of the women in the play seems to mimic the enduring representations of women as either angel or whore; in this construct, Elizabeth is the angel and Abigail, the whore. Neither character is developed much beyond this polarity, since the focus of the play is on John Proctor.

According to Terry Otten, feminist critic Wendy Schissel sees Miller’s unsympathetic portrayal of Abigail as a temptress as proof of misogyny. Furthermore, Schissel accuses Miller of “‘blaming the victim’” since Abigail’s youth technically makes her a victim of rape (Otten 70). However, Otten argues the heart of the play is John Proctor’s struggle over his own guilt in the adulterous affair; Miller “in fact uses Abigail to expose, not conceal or excuse Proctor’s guilt, and he uses Elizabeth to reinforce rather than exonerate Proctor’s culpability” (70–71). In the play, Proctor falls from grace because of his sin of adultery. While certainly Proctor’s sin is his own weakness in entering into an affair with Abigail, he does take full responsibility for it. It is only when Abigail becomes a ringleader of accusers that Proctor begins to see her as loathsome.

Religious Context

Puritans based their theology on Calvinism, stressing predestination and public worship based in Scripture. This meant that they also believed that the state should not be responsible for setting up bishops and churches. New England Puritans “maintained the Calvinist distinction between the elect and the damned in their theory of the church, in which membership consisted only of the regenerate minority who publicly confessed their experience of conversion” (“Puritanism”). They believed ardently in original sin, which could only be expiated through hard work, self-discipline, and self-examination. Sins ranging from blasphemy to gambling to adultery were all penal offenses. Women’s roles were severely circumscribed and “any wife who refused obedience to her husband was likely to be punished” (Barstow 79).

While the belief in witchcraft as understood to be consisting of the worship in pagan gods and of magical spells prefigures Christianity, it is Christianity that came to see witches as representing an evil force in the world, to be exterminated at all costs. Feminist scholars see the large-scale persecution of witches, who were mostly women, as symptomatic of the misogyny inherent in medieval Christian beliefs. Because women menstruate and bear children, and were seen to be incapable of higher intellectual thought, they were thought to be more vulnerable to temptation by the devil. According to the medieval Christian worldview, a witch “was considered to be one who had agreed to serve the devil by performing evil acts in the world. Supposedly, witches would make a contract with Satan by signing in his book, and would thereafter have amazing powers to fly through the air, perform great feats of strength, change appearance, and cause misfortune or death to their victims” (Richardson 4–5). They were thought to work alone or with animal companions, called familiars, and often held witches’ Sabbaths, “depraved festival[s] of devil-worshipping ceremonies, feasting, and sorcery,” at night in groups or covens (Richardson 5). Witches were believed to be the intermediaries through which the devil exerted his power. The Puritans of New England in the late 1600s believed that witches could assume the form of someone known to the afflicted and appear to them in visions or dreams, in which they could do harm. It was also believed that the devil could not assume the form of an innocent person and therefore anyone who appeared in such visions were assumed to have contracted with the devil; however this is one belief that came into question in the course of the Salem trials. Furthermore, any unexplained diseases or behavior was often attributed to witchcraft.

While later scholars would dismiss the Salem witchcraft trials and the overall phenomenon that one scholar has termed the “witchcraze” as hysteria based on the erroneous belief in non-existent witches, others claim “witch” as a term connecting one to a pagan belief system that predates Christianity. Contemporary witches, or pagans, define their religion as one based on a pantheistic belief in gods and goddesses intimately connected to nature. While Christians might see their worship as service to the devil, contemporary pagans reject the construction of the devil altogether, putting their beliefs into a wholly separate system that rejects duality. Journalist Margot Adler, in her history of paganism [?], notes that “pagan” comes from the Latin word for country dweller, and that the stigma attached to the word is “the end result of centuries of political struggles during which the major prophetic religions, notably Christianity, won a victory over the older polytheistic religions” (Adler 9). Adler further observes that “the old Witches were often the wise people of the village, skilled in healing and the practical arts” (11). Contemporary scholars, recognizing this enduring tradition, now suggest that at least some of the persecuted in Europe and America during the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries were “real” witches, or at least practiced simple forms of “witchcraft” including the preparation of herbal remedies and attending women in childbirth.

Scientific & Technological Context

Reverend Hale, the “expert” that Reverend Parris brings in, exhibits a rhetoric and manner that speaks of “scientific” objectivity; he insists that “[w]e cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise” (38). The irony for a contemporary audience is, of course, that the belief that someone can be possessed by a devil or a witch is precisely, to most in the twentieth century, preposterous and superstitious in itself.

The medical doctor represents science as we now understand it today. However, in deference to his own limitations, the doctor’s failure to diagnose a physical cause for Betty’s illness leads Parris and others to accusations of witchcraft. Indeed, the doctor himself suggests this. At this time in history, doctors attributed any physical or psychological symptoms they could not otherwise explain to the work of the devil.

It should also be noted that some scholars connect the persecution of witches to the practice of midwifery. Midwives were women healers who helped at births as well as performed the role of general healer. Indeed, doctors saw the attendance on women in childbirth as beneath them and it was only later in history that they began to take over this work. As doctors began to specialize and develop technology such as forceps, they also claimed childbirth as within their sphere and consequently drove most midwives out of business. While this phenomenon would not be seen until the nineteenth century, the seeds for this movement were being planted at this time. Certainly midwives were especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft; on one hand they held special knowledge of women’s bodies and the mysteries of pregnancy, including preventing it; on the other, their work naturally put them into contact with miscarriages and infant deaths that some may have hoped to find explained through charges of witchcraft. The connection of witchcraft to midwifery can be seen in “The Crucible.” Ann Putnam, who has lost seven babies, is one of the few adults to make charges of witchcraft. Her daughter Ruth, one of the young accusers, is her only surviving child. The person they charge, Rebecca Nurse, has been Ann Putnam’s midwife.

Biographical Context

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in New York City, the son of Jewish parents. Miller was never particularly religious, but he did “declare his commitment to a Jewish culture” (Bigsby 3). His first play was produced at the University of Michigan in 1936. Miller gathered material for a book of reportage in Army camps during World War II. He won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for All My Sons, produced and published in 1947. His most famous play, “Death of a Salesman,” was produced and published in 1949, and won the Pulitzer Prize. “The Crucible” was first performed in 1953. While its initial reception was not wholly enthusiastic, it has been one of Miller’s most widely produced plays.

Three years after the first performance of “The Crucible,” Miller appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but refused to name other so-called communists. He was prosecuted and convicted in 1957 for contempt of Congress; the conviction was reversed the following year. According to Terry Otten, Miller had “briefly flirted with communist ideology” before writing his play; more importantly, he saw “The Crucible” as a response to “the growing anticommunist sentiment in the United States” (64). Otten rejects any description of the play as “quasi-Marxist,” however, observing that Miller did not embrace Marxism “to any significant degree” and as having crafted a play about an “individual caught in the historical moment” (64–5).

Miller wrote in his autobiography that the inspiration for “The Crucible” had roots in an interest in the Salem trials that emerged while he was in college. Then, by chance, he read Marion Starkey’s “The Devil in Massachusetts.” He was interested in the subject not only for its parallel to the McCarthy hearings, but also to “something deeper—that same strain of American Puritanism that runs across American literature” (Otten 62). Miller felt “strangely at home” with the people of Salem, connecting “‘the same fierce idealism, devotion to God, tendency to legislate reductiveness’ and ‘longings for the pure and intellectually elegant argument’ he found in Jewish heritage” (Otten 62).

“The Crucible” was made into a successful film in 1996 and has been performed all over the world. Miller died in 2005 at the age of eighty-nine and is regarded as one of America’s greatest playwrights.

Works Cited