Women In The Crucible

In what ways are women abused and discriminated against inside literature and throughout history? In many patriarchal societies, men have held authority over women due to gender. This power imbalance between men and women sometimes led to unjust treatment of women; men exert their authority over many women in the play, The Crucible. In The Crucible¸ male characters intimidate women to achieve specific outcomes and mark their superiority.
Elizabeth Proctor, the protagonist’s wife, shows the standard for Salem women as she is submissive and does not defy her husband or the traditional role as a housekeeper. Elizabeth counts herself as “plain”, which exemplifies her character’s stereotype as a housewife (Miller 137). Puritan beliefs held that women served their husbands, which Elizabeth strives to do (Miller 50). At one point in the play, she finds herself unable to prevent a servant from leaving the home, which leads to her husband having to “hold back a full condemnation of her” (Miller 52). Elizabeth would be punished for this failure if she were any other woman with any other husband, but John shows an example of a better man in Salem, which only proves to show how misogynist Salem society is. Although not treated as poorly as some of the other women in The Crucible, Elizabeth stays within a certain behavioral pattern of

Though she is portrayed as meek, even more so than Elizabeth, she attempts to stand up for herself throughout the play. However, this only leads to her being mistreated by John, Abigail, and various others. At one point she has to choose between listening to John, who had previously grabbed her by the throat (Miller 80) or Abigail and the rest of the girls who bullied her into silence (Miller 18-19). Mary exemplifies the reasons why women typically did not stand up for themselves, especially against men who were their most common