Preview

The Crucible Abigail's Behavior

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
501 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Crucible Abigail's Behavior
In the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Abigail Williams' behavior is not without reason; her mental instability is to blame for her actions. For example, she saw her parents murdered as a child and this seems to have lead to her being mentally unstable. John Proctor, a much older man, also basically sexually abused her. And her being raised by Reverend Parris, the paranoid, power-hungry man, is sure to be messing Abigail up in some way or another. As a young girl, Abigail witnessed both her mother and father murdered by Native Americans. Surely witnessing such a violent act had some effect on Abigail's mental health. The following quote is of Abigail threatening the other girls to keep quiet about what happened in the woods.
"Let either
…show more content…
Her bullying and manipulative attitude can be blamed on the murder of her parents. Early in the play, it is established that Abigail and John Proctor have had an affair, this being the reason Goody Proctor fired Abigail and also why Abigail starts the whole fiasco in order to get of Good Proctor so she and John can be together. Why Abigail thinks calling witchery on massive amounts of people will allow her and John to be together is beyond the understanding of the writer of this essay. But for some reason, she thinks this is a good idea and proceeds to aid in the accusation and death of 19 innocent people. One who is mentally stable would surely not take such extreme actions. Another point is that Reverend Parris, her uncle, has been raising Abigail. This man is paranoid, and more concerned with his reputation that the health of his own daughter. Reverend Parris doesn't seem to be the kind of man who would raise a fit child, seeing how said child grew up to think that having an affair with a married man more than twice her age, and whom is also her boss, is acceptable. Abigail Williams was raised by an idiot and it certainly

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Throughout The Crucible, it is known that Abigail longs for John. She believes that he loves her as well and attempts to get him to proclaim his love. Abigail’s relationship with Elizabeth is one of hatred. Abigail tries several times throughout the play to get rid of Elizabeth. She believes that, if she can get Elizabeth out of the way, then she can have John all to herself. Since Abigail is an orphan, she lives with her uncle, Reverend Parris. He has a dislike for children and has a strong, authoritative figure over Abigail. His main concern is that his reputation in the town won’t ever be a bad one. Abigail and Betty live in the same house and seem pretty close. They were both in the woods, after which Betty took…

    • 133 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Crucible, we know that Abigail Williams is obsessed with John Proctor’s love, which motivates her to go down a villainous path. She is vindictive and a compulsive liar, which allows her to have power in the Salem Witch Trials. Here, we can apply the typical character traits of female villains.The romance element is very important to Abigail’s villainy. Abigail's behaviour in the trials is provoked by her past affair with John Proctor as well as her feelings towards Elizabeth. In this situation, Proctor is supposedly responsible for Abigail’s evil nature. The aftermath of this relationship led to the revenge attribute, in which Abigail and the other girls begin accusing people of witchcraft as a way of hopefully eliminating Elizabeth…

    • 248 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, the antagonist, Abigail Williams’ actions in the play should not be justified because she fought to get her way without caring about who she hurt. Orphaned as a young child, Abigail had no presence of love and nurture in her early years. Her traumatic experiences throughout her life have influenced her to become a treacherous young girl. Throughout the play her lies and accusations have caused multiple people pain, and they have suffered due to the lack of her maturity. Unfortunately, there was only one person who Abigail really cared for, and that was John Proctor.…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, Abigail’s flaws of lust, dishonesty, and temper led her to be the most responsible for the tragedy of witch-hunt in Salem. I chose Abigail because I believed that she was the reason this whole thing started and, if it wasn’t for her lustful thoughts, ability to lie without being caught, and her quick-temper fits all of this could have been…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People are products of their environment and Abigail’s environment had shaped her into an emotional, unstable young girl. Consider this, her parents’ death created her need for attention and love, a need that John Proctor met for her. Consequently, when he betrayed her, she was driven into a temporary insanity. In the beginning she had no intent to involve witchcraft, but instead wanted everything to go back to normal, avoid conflict. But when she saw there was no escape from her actions, she embraced it so she would not be to blame, using it as a scapegoat for her actions that were frowned upon by the strict Puritan society. With this intention, one lie built upon another, each lie told in an attempt to accomplish some hidden agenda, despite the consequences others would face for her mistakes. One lie to explain her behavior, another to kill Goody Proctor, a third to stop Marry Warren from telling the truth, etc. Therefore, when all her lies came crashing down around her and her credibility was questioned, she felt there was no other choice but to face her reality and flee before she was hung herself. Victimized by her own immature choices that she felt were forced upon her, Abigail was driven by her own lack of self-love and desperate need for attention created by her parent’s death and those within the…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abigail has many issues that she tries to solve using manipulation. She controls others in an attempt to feel like she is in control of her life.. Throughout the story, she attempts to manipulate John Proctor. She keeps failing, as shown in Act 1 lines 409-410, where she says “You come five miles to see a silly girl fly? I know you better.”(Miller 197) After Abigail said that, Proctor replied by telling her to forget about it. Since Proctor would not fall for her tricks, Abigail decided to move on to other people.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She will do absolutely anything to make herself look believable. When John Proctor is arguing about his wife going to jail, Abigail makes a threat:. “Abb’’ll change lechery on you Mr. proctor” (miller 427-426). She is trying to prove the point that she is not afraid to make the entire town hate John, if it means Elizabeth will be gone. Proctor wants to prevent Abigail from gaining more power than she had, so he could not sit back and watch his innocent wife get blamed for something that she didn’t even do, he had to come clean so Abigail’s plan would fail. Once John came clean a lot of people started to realize what Abigail was doing the judges did not want the town to believe that they have been hanging people for no good reasons, so they wanted John to sign the confession saying that he was involved with witchcraft but John did not want his good name to be useless like a car without gas. By John not confessing, he allowed for more people to realize what terrible things were taking place. Three innocent, trustworthy people, Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, and John Proctor, were hanged over this, and the townspeople knew this needed to…

    • 952 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abigail Williams, a teenage girl who started the whole scare about witches in Salem, blamed everyone else for her witchcraft practices and ultimately caused many of her village members to be wrongly executed. She took advantage of the judges trust to frame people for her actions. Abigail Williams was once caught performing a ritual dance in the forest, and to save herself she blamed her so called friends. Abigail began doing witchcraft to fight for John Proctor's love, and she wanted to get rid of Elizabeth who was Proctor’s wife. “You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!”(The Crucible, Act One 13). Abigail is known for being mischievous, and selfish. She was definitely not possessed,…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    She holds the flaws of jealousy, spitefulness and mendacity. Abigail Williams is intensely jealous of Elizabeth Proctor because she is in love with her husband John Proctor. Abigail would stay up every night just to wait and see if John Proctor would be coming home to her. She also has a lot of anger and hate built up against Elizabeth that she wants to get rid of. By trying to do this she says some pretty harsh words about Elizabeth to her husband in hopes that he would come back to her in the long run. When it came to the situation of dancing in the woods, Abigail was not truthful in the first place but later on then admitted what had really happened. It could be inferred that Abigail played a big role in some of the events that happened in Salem, Massachusetts in…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abigail is very selfish, she had an affair with Mr. John Proctor even though he is married. She states that she only wants john for herself. She also told john they could run away together, to be alone. Abigail is so selfish she causes most of the destruction in Salem. Although throughout the play, she gets worse, as the trials keep going on. Abigail was so desperate to get back John she drank this blood charm so Elizabeth, John’s wife would…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In life, we often come into contact with many different types of people, good and evil. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he shows us how the good can result and how the one rotten apple can spoil a whole bunch. Abigail Williams is the niece of the town’s preacher, Reverend Parris. She was also a servant for John and Elizabeth Proctor. After an affair with John, she was then kicked out by Elizabeth. Since the affair, Abigail still has feelings for John and she will do anything to get him back. She tries to take down Elizabeth and ends up causing chaos in the whole town of Salem. We see in the play how Elizabeth’s honesty and true desire to uphold her Cchristian values work out for her while Abigail just ends up having a rough…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John sees Abigail’s deluded state, and, determined to end Abigail’s influence over the court at any cost, warns her that…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abigail Williams is known for lying about her affair with John Proctor, but at what cost? To clear everything up, Abigail Williams is a character in the play called “The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller. Within the play’s first scene, Abigail is caught “dancing” in the forest by Reverend Parris, causing her cousin, Betty, to faint. As the scene continues, Rev. Parris starts to question Abigail about what she and Betty were doing, and she lies, saying that they were dancing for sport; the action that night resulted in her going to court to testify her innocence. Abigail, instead of answering questions about her night in the woods, starts to stretch the truth to the court about John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, being a witch. She even goes as far as to drink blood as a charm to kill Elizabeth, and plant incriminating evidence against her. As we read the play, we can get a better understanding as to why Abigail went so far to cover up her affair with John Proctor. She wanted her name to be associated with strong and respectable, although why would a person go to such lengths just for a name?…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play about the Salem Witch Trials in the year 1692. Arthur Miller himself was one of the many people put before the congressional committee during the red scare and hunt for communists in the 1950’s. From that experience he brought to light the direct parallels and relationships between these two events in history. One of the characters he portrayed in his play was Abigail Williams. She was a young girl who provoked the search of witches to clear her own name after getting caught dancing in the woods. Abigail needed to find a scapegoat to blame for her acts and she uses her credibility, jealousy, and selfishness to change the village of Salem to a place of wrongful accusations and back stabbings.…

    • 1509 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Is it possible that Abigail acts so brutally towards her peers because of her exposure to such ruthless nature during her childhood? Miller drops an interesting detail on Abigail’s life when she states “I have seen Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night…” This is intriguing…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays