Feminist Approach to Witchcraft; Case Study: Miller's the Crucible
Title: Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading
Author(s): Wendy Schissel
Publication Details: Modern Drama 37.3 (Fall 1994): p461-473.
Source: Drama Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type: Critical essay
Bookmark: Bookmark this Document
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Title
Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading
[(essay date fall 1994) In the following essay, Schissel offers a feminist reading of The Crucible, in an effort to deconstruct "the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death."]
Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a disturbing work, not only because of the obvious moral dilemma that is irresolutely solved by John Proctor's death, but also because of the treatment that Abigail and Elizabeth receive at Miller's hands and at the hands of critics. In forty years of criticism very little has been said about the ways in which The Crucible reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales and cold and unforgiving wives in order to assert apparently universal virtues. It is a morality play based upon a questionable androcentric morality. Like Proctor, The Crucible "[roars] down" Elizabeth, making her concede a fault which is not hers but of Miller's making: "It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery,"1 she admits in her final meeting with her husband. Critics have seen John as a "tragically heroic common man,"2 humanly tempted, "a just man in a universe gone mad,"3 but they have never given Elizabeth similar consideration, nor have they deconstructed the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death. As a feminist reader of the 1990s, I am troubled by the unrecognized fallout from the existential humanism that Miller and his critics have held dear. The Crucible
Author(s): Wendy Schissel
Publication Details: Modern Drama 37.3 (Fall 1994): p461-473.
Source: Drama Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type: Critical essay
Bookmark: Bookmark this Document
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Title
Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading
[(essay date fall 1994) In the following essay, Schissel offers a feminist reading of The Crucible, in an effort to deconstruct "the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death."]
Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a disturbing work, not only because of the obvious moral dilemma that is irresolutely solved by John Proctor's death, but also because of the treatment that Abigail and Elizabeth receive at Miller's hands and at the hands of critics. In forty years of criticism very little has been said about the ways in which The Crucible reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales and cold and unforgiving wives in order to assert apparently universal virtues. It is a morality play based upon a questionable androcentric morality. Like Proctor, The Crucible "[roars] down" Elizabeth, making her concede a fault which is not hers but of Miller's making: "It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery,"1 she admits in her final meeting with her husband. Critics have seen John as a "tragically heroic common man,"2 humanly tempted, "a just man in a universe gone mad,"3 but they have never given Elizabeth similar consideration, nor have they deconstructed the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death. As a feminist reader of the 1990s, I am troubled by the unrecognized fallout from the existential humanism that Miller and his critics have held dear. The Crucible
Cited: by Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness, expanded edition (Philadelphia, 1992), 42. 8. Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford, 1987), 30-31. 12. From Hawkins 's review of the play in File on Miller, ed. Christopher Bigsby (London, 1988), 30. 13. Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller (New York, 1967), 60, 63. 15. Bernard Dukore, "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible": Text and Performance (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London, 1989), 50. 16. Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which Is Not One," New French Feminisms: An Anthology, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Amherst, 1980), 101. 28. Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller, revised edition (Boston, 1980), 40, emphasis added. 31. Aritha Van Herk, In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) (Edmonton, 1991), 14. 32. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Harmondsworth, 1984), 160.