Comparing The Real Abigail Williams In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller said in an interview once, “ I took creative license with her character to make the connection between sexuality and politics more dramatic,” (Shmoop). This is one of the reasons Arthur Miller made Abigail Williams in The Crucible so different compared to the real Abigail. Abigail Williams was an 11 year -old girl who lived in Salem and worked for the Proctor family, John and Elizabeth, before the time of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Before the trails even started, Abigail and her cousin, Betty Parris, got into fortune telling their future like whom they would marry and what their social status would be. After a while they got the other girls in town to start playing their fortune telling game and soon the adults saw it as

Abigail says to Proctor in Act I, “Oh, I marvel how such a strong man may let such a sickly wife be-,” then John cuts her off and says “You will speak nothin’ of Elizabeth!” (1270). In this Abigail is showing her anger to John about how he is now staying committed to his wife and trying his best to keep Abigail out of his life. When asked why Arthur Miller asked why he decided to make Abigail and John have an affair, he said he “…Could find no good reason why Abigail distinguished so vehemently between the guilt of a husband and a wife. So I took creative license with her character to make the connection between sexuality and politics more dramatic,” (Shmoop). This made the reader want to keep reading and find out the outcome of

In real life she was really an 11 year old girl, but in The Crucible she was 17 years old. In the play Miller portrays Abigail as an older teen “Abigail Williams, seventeen, enters-a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling,” (1262). Miller probably did this to add more drama to the play, with Abigail being 17 and Proctor was in his 30s he was able to write in their affair whereas if her kept the ages similar to real life the difference would’ve been to large so a big part of the play would’ve been lost. On his play, Miller stated, “...(He) was convinced John Proctor had a relationship with Williams. I based the entire play on this idea,” (Hoyden About Town). Going with what was recently stated he had to change the ages of Abigail Williams and John Proctor to make their affair more realistic and less creepy compared to originally having it be between an 11 year old and a man in his 60s. The ages impacted the play overall because since they were closer in age that made them able to have an affair, if they would have never had an affair then Abigail wouldn’t be “in love” with John so she wouldn’t be jealous of Elizabeth. This would’ve somewhat have stopped the trial from even starting so she wouldn’t have drank chicken blood to get the whole witchcraft accusing started and causing them, Abigail and the girls, to accuse many innocent people of it, and eventually killing