The characters of Abigail and Elizabeth Essays

The characters of Abigail and Elizabeth Essays The characters of Abigail and Elizabeth Essay The characters of Abigail and Elizabeth Essay How does Miller convey the characters of Abigail and Elizabeth and shape our responses to them? Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams are both characters central to Millers play. However, they are crafted to be total contrasts to each other both in character and in what Miller wants to show through them. what does he want to show? add a sentence here to connect to the rest Miller presents Elizabeth as the very religious and consequently very honest wife of John Proctor. QUOTE? Many people including her husband have an unwavering belief in her honesty. When John is in court he says That woman will never lie, Mr Danforth. She is conveyed in the play as having a strong loyalty to her husband whom she obviously loves a great deal. A proof of her love for John is seen when she is suffering a moral dilemma in court. John is more important to her than religion and therefore she tells a lie for him. Elizabeth also allows him to make his own choice of whether to confess, even though she wants him to live as she realises he could not live with himself if he confessed. She sticks to her principles throughout the play. For example she never admits to believing in witches, even when she herself is arrested. She says, If you think I am one then there are none. Through Elizabeth, Miller is trying to convey the importance of personal integrity. Elizabeth creates a great sense of morality for the audience and it is only when her character begins to degenerate in the middle of the play that she starts to lose some of her steadfastness. It is, however people like Elizabeth and Proctor in the end who use their integrity to eventually bring the situation under control. QUOTE SOMEWHERE IN THIS Miller shows Abigail on the other hand as having no regard for religion. The Puritan religion would have forbidden many of the things she does like dancing and shouting. QUOTE Her role in the play is as a servant girl, the niece of Parris, who has had an affair with John Proctor her former employee. She is conveyed as deceitful and manipulative. Millers first description of her character in the stage directions is as having an endless capacity for dissembling. Arthur Miller is warning us that nothing she does or says can be trusted. Abigails character does not really change through the play and she remains rather static. Millers main purpose in creating her was to start the drama and keep it moving. She starts the plot by introducing the idea of witchcraft to the townspeople and keeps it moving by constantly accusing more women and using her manipulative powers once again to play upon the fears of the townspeople. QUOTE In starting the drama she is not really the actual cause of the disaster, but simply, the spark to set off the bomb that had been waiting to go off in Salem. In such a small, strict community even trivial matters are stretched out of proportion to create a diversion from the monotony of daily life. Abigail played upon this property in beginning the drama. She also used the natural superstitions of the people of that time in Salem whose typical reaction to anything out of place was to blame it on witchcraft or demons. The presentation of the position of Abigail and Elizabeth in Salem is very different. The form of society of Salem was a theocracy which meant that the town was ruled by religion. Since Elizabeth is a religious woman and at the beginning of the play she is married to one of the most important men in the village, she herself is a respected and honourable member of the town. To completely contrast with Abigail, Arthur Miller has created the character of Abigail to have no apparent regard for religion. As a servant girl she is neither respected nor given much attention. Therefore Abigail has virtually no status at all. NO POWER- THEMES She is obviously not approved of or trusted by the other villagers either as she has remained without a job after her dismissal from the Proctor household. Her Uncle, Parris, raised this point. And yet it has troubled me called for your service. The villages also link her name with evil in gossip that her Uncle also questions her about. Your name in the town- is it entirely white? This gives Abigail motive for her behaviour as she wishes to become more important, gain respect and have people care for her. Her more sinister motive is revenge as she wishes to take Elizabeths place, as she believes that John belongs to her. Her hate of Elizabeth is established very early on in the play with Bettys allegation You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor. At the beginning of the play, however, we are not convinced that she will succeed. Later on, though there are moments where the audience feels that it is inevitable that Abigail will achieve her goal. Overall the two women are, as in most aspects, at the extremes of the scale. At the beginning of the play Elizabeth is one of the most significant women and Abigail one of the least significant. While Elizabeths position falls drastically in the middle of the play, Abigail gains esteem. At the very end of the play Elizabeth regains some of her lost respect and the revelation of Abigails true character banishes her lower than her former position in society.