Abigail Williams Villain Essay

Brianna Martinez

Mar 22, 2023

Ms. Ebner

Block 3 Was Abigail Williams really the villain? The Salem witch trials were a dark stain on America’s past with dark people at the root of it. Many women and a few men were murdered due to baseless accusations of witchcraft. Due to humans’ fascination with the morbid, it has inspired multiple literary works like The Crucible. The play, which author Arthur Miller wrote, is a dramatized version of the trials and centers on one of the falsely accused victims, John Proctor. All the characters in the story are based on real-life people that were involved in the event like Reverend Parris, Reverend Hale, Giles Corey, Rebecca Nurse, and most importantly Abigail Williams. Abigail is portrayed to be a villain

All that Miller tells is that they brutally died and how that may have impacted her. In Act 1, Abigail is lashing out at the other girls and threatens them into silence about the truth of why they were actually dancing in the woods. In her fury, she goes on to say “..I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!”(Miller,148). The reader gets background information on Abigail and that she saw her parents get brutally murdered when she was younger. One could infer that her threatening the other girls with doing the same to them was a reclamation of power for her since she was totally helpless when her parents got killed. At this point in her life, she has nothing to lose and wants attention and influence from anywhere she can get it. All these factors led to a pent-up rage and search for power inside young Abigail and it was all unleashed during the events of the Salem Witch

One of the many examples of this happening is in Act 3 when Judge Danforth asked Abigail to confirm Mary Warren and John Proctor’s claims that she and the other girls had been lying the entire time. She lies and says she didn’t but then she goes on to say this in the middle of her speech, “Let you beware, Mr. Danforth. Think you to be so mighty that the power of Hell may not turn your wits? Beware of it! There is—Suddenly, from an accusatory attitude, her face turns, looking into the air above—it is frilly frightened.”(Miller,1307). At this time, she is given an opportunity to come clean about her actions but instead threatens the judge and accuses Mary Warren of witchcraft for going against her because she wants to keep her power for as long as possible. Even if she had already decided to wrongly accuse people to gain power in her community, she should’ve come clean when given the chance. This is what makes her a