Who Is Abigail Williams In The Crucible

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?
If you didn’t have a good name, then that would mean being isolated or becoming an outcast; the citizens would want nothing to do with you, even someone like Elizabeth telling the truth about Abigail to other townspeople can sully her name. This is evident in Abigail's conversation with Proctor, claiming that Elizabeth is “a cold, sniveling woman” for “blackening my name in the village!” and “telling lies about me” (I.204). You can clearly see here that Abigail is worried about how people will form an opinion of her after Elizabeth's remarks. People are now going to think that Goody Abigail may not be as wholesome as everyone once though she