Abigail In The Crucible

How does Arthur Miller represent Abigail in the crucible?

Arthur Miller represents Abigail in many different ways in the crucible, using her to show both how bent and cruel the government is, and to demonstrate how one little opportunity to gain power can cause many problems for all others. The main way he does this is through Abigail’s image and feelings he uses her attitude to tell the story in it’s own way.

Firstly, he shows her to be a sweet and innocent girl, yet sneaky and unnoticed. Possibly to represent how weak and almost insignificant woman were at the time, and how they would look for ways to gain power or to avoid problems that they caused, while seeming harmless. We see this in the first few pages of the play, where she says

Miller stars to show the relationship between Proctor and Abigail, setting the tone for the motives which Abigail will begin to have both publicly and privately. Miller begins to show why Abigail does what she was about to do. He does this by sieving out little details about Proctor 's relationship with Abigail, as she says “Give me a word, John. A soft word.” to which Proctor replies “No, no, Abby. That’s done with.” suggesting that Abigail is trying to relight fires of a dying passion or maybe just trying to stir Proctor up. Not only that but later in the conversation she brings up Elizabeth Proctor, saying “Oh, I marvel how such a strong man may let such a sickly wife be-” to which she is interrupted by a flaming Proctor saying “You’ll speak nothin’ of Elizabeth!”. The reason why Miller chooses to bring up Elizabeth in that situation is probably to show that there is a “wedge” between Elizabeth and John, and that wedge would stop at nothing to separate the two, which is why she uses her power to control the townspeople into believing in whitcraft and using this to contort everyone to believe Elizabeth is a witch through many hearings in court she begins to make a name for herself as a “witness of