The Crucible Essay: Sarah And Tituba

Aware of the potency of Sarah Good, Tituba, and many of the other accused witches, the accusers in the Salem court feign hysteria (Tunc Web, Miller PAGE NUMBER. The display of pain is an attempt to create the impression that the Sarah and Tituba are infecting the “normal” girls (Tunc Web). Such hysteria allows Abigail to avoid allegations when she accuses Tituba and others of serving the Devil (Tunc Web, Miller 1154). ( According to Tanfer Tunc, in the seventeenth-century, the women accused of witchcraft were those who deviated from their gender roles (Tunc Web). Such women included Sarah Good, an adulterer, and Tituba, a conductor of spiritual proceedings (Tunc Web). Witchcraft accusations were based on the belief that women were carnal and, thus likely to engender malicious deeds (Tunc Web).
However, Proctor refuses to yield, LONG QUOTE FORMAT? “‘Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name’’’ (Miller 1232). Such tormenting reveals how the accused were tortured until a confession was wrenched out or the accused was consigned to death (Gunn Web). The primary objects of the tortuous witch-hunts were the unconventional women of seventeenth-century America (Gunn Web). The deadly witch-hunts began in Europe as a result of religious conflicts between the Catholics and the Protestants that had accumulated from the 1400s through the 1600s (Gunn Web). The Puritans sprouted from this history of religious turmoil and brought the witch-hunts to Salem, Massachusetts, where a famous case in which Abigail Williams accused Tituba of witchcraft, and the only way to avoid an accusation was to become an accuser (Gunn