However, women found a way to have power anyways, even with non traditional methods. A witch is a person close to God and being close to God is being in a place of high power. So, when rumors of women practicing witchcraft begin to circulate, the town’s biggest fear begins to arise and they quickly tried to put a stop to it, henceforth, the witch trials commenced. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, women are able to take power from their society through various means other than gaining leadership. The ways in which women are able to achieve power include Abigail Williams’ use of dishonesty and manipulation that prompts the witch trials as well as Rebecca Nurse’s refusal of a confession that defies the conventional paradigms of the society.
Female power in Macbeth The three witches Apart from Lady Macbeth, who is the most relevant character related to gender and power issues, the three witches are instrumental in starting the action that leads to so much tragedy. In the manner of Lady Macbeth, they try to break gender barriers, and they are represented as evil for two reasons. On the one hand, when Christianity was established witches were associated with the devil. On the other hand, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth with King James I in mind, and he wrote a book on wizardry. Many of the ideas that the king expressed to the public were included in Macbeth, such as predicting the future.
On the surface, Abigail is may seem to be one-dimensional in her lack of remorse or empathy yet it comes to be understood later in the play that there underlying forces that drive Abigail to take the actions that she does. When things start to go not the way Abigail had planned, she manages to flip the situation into a positive for her and manages to gain a position of power. This allows her to be the most powerful person in the town of Salem, without people even realizing it. In Arthur Miller 's The Crucible, Abigail Williams is manipulative and deceptive and uses her power that she gained through exploitation to spread death and destruction wherever she goes and rationalizes it because of the trauma she has faced. At the beginning of the play, the audience is made to be sorry for Abigail because she is an orphan without support from family members and is portrayed to just looking out for her cousin.
Hale’s opinion during the beginning half of his time in Salem was that there were in facts witches loose in Salem, and anyone could be a suspect. This conclusion was proven wrong. One way this was demonstrated is when Abigail blames Elizabeth Proctor for putting a needle in her side. Mary Warren told Hale that she put the needle there and Abigail saw her do it. Once he realises the girls had been lying his opinion becomes the truth, which is proven as truth as the play finishes.
Witches are secret enemies within, who look the same as everyone else until they are exposed, and this need to uncover hidden malice is what distinguishes witch-hunting from other forms of communal persecution. Once identified, witches are either brought back into the body politic through a process of confession and expiation, or expelled completely. Either way, the magical cause of misfortune is removed and the social balance restored. (Armstrong 224) This explanation covers all the bases. How witch hunts come about (through enemies or threats), the process of a witch hunt (trials of a sort), the conclusion (the removal of the accused), and finally, the end goal of returning to normal.
Those who would admit to being a witch would go to jail, but for those who denied having interaction with the devil would have been trialed and hung, so really, anyway you put it it’s a lose-lose situation. Things like politics, religion, imaginations, and fear of people were just some of the main factors of what aided people into believing that Satan was upon the town of Salem. They believed that the humans were with devil and doing as he said which in turn gave them the power to harm others. One girl named Tituba was trying to save herself by confessing to witchcraft. She didn’t just confess but she also accused many other women about being witches and she said that they all were in the “hands of Satan”.
Power in our society nowadays is very misgiven and abused. When people have power they tend to use it for their own benefit and to manipulate people into believing them. In the play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692 in order to show his audience how easy it was to be accused and hung for witchcraft. In the Crucible a group of young girls were caught dancing in the woods and in order to not receive a punishment they lied saying they got witched. The girls blamed many people of the town of being witches and caused conflict all over the village.
The study therefore concludes that the kind of treatment given to alleged witches are against their human rights and brings shame to the person alleged to be a witch. The study concludes that alleged witches are forced to created witch camps by the chiefs and elders of the communities when the alleged witch is being accused, fetish priests sometime make such pronouncements and in some cases by their relatives and they are also confronted with physical torture, mental problems, and financial problems. 5.3 Recommendations The study found that witchcraft is identified by using supernatural powers, through the exhibition of extreme anti-social behavior patterns and sudden misfortunes and mysterious deaths hence the study concludes that witchcraft exist and has been overwhelmingly supported by respondents. The study recommended that, harmless measures should be adopted by stakeholders like chiefs, fetish priests and families to effectively deal with purported supernatural power possessed by an
When Betty says “You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor” (Miller 19), the reader can clearly determine that Abigail will take any measure to accomplish her selfish goals. This is as Abigail is trying to intimidate the other girls into not saying anything. “She is the consummate seductress; the witchcraft hysteria in the play originates in her carnal lust for Proctor” (Schissel 3).
She accuses or witnesses how innocent after innocent is sentenced to death or to a long time in prison. She managed to infiltrate herself into the justice system and convince the court of her lies, and then the court forces the people to either accuse neighbours or friends or to risk being hanged. Mass hysteria takes on the village, changing the social landscape completely, destroying friendships, families and taking human lives. Abigail just sits by through all of that, being more motivated by seeing her plans succeed and she enjoys the power her lies obtain her. This exemplifies that Abigail does not have love or simple lust, she is not just a bad person, but that she has pathological obsession and is living in her own mind, still thinking that John will come back to her and that would be the ultimate fulfillment of her