Similarities Between The Lavender Scare And The Crucible

While the Salem Witch Trials, the topic of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, is one of the more famous examples of American witch hunts, many other witch hunts were equally as terrible, such as the Lavender Scare. The Crucible is a historical drama that begins with Reverend Parris finding his daughter, Betty, his niece, Abigail, and several other girls dancing in the forest. When Betty becomes very sick afterward, the townspeople begin to look to witchcraft as the answer, and Abigail begins accusing people of witchcraft. Similarly, The Lavender Scare involved the prosecution of queer people due to the short-sightedness of Americans from 1945-1960s. People during this time believed that members of the LGBTQ+ community could spread their homosexuality

The Lavender Scare was a time when members of the LGBTQ+ community were prosecuted for being who they were. During this time there was also an increase in the belief that homosexuals were inherently bad and needed to be arrested. The inherent dislike of queer people spread throughout the country, and members of the LGBTQ+ community were at the very least being surveyed, but many were arrested. This is similar to the way the people of Salem behave in The Crucible. When John Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth, are talking about the accusations, Elizabeth says that there have been fourteen people arrested for witchcraft. When their maid, Mary Warren, comes back to the house, John and Mary have a conversation. When Mary says that there are now thirty-nine people arrested for witchcraft the panic that has consumed Salem becomes apparent. Twenty-five people were arrested in a very short amount of time, and this shows that Abigail Williams and the other girls are accusing anyone they can. Hysteria plays a large part in witch hunts, especially when the basis of those hunts are based on assumptions, like the Lavender Scare, and nonsensical accusations, like in The

In the context of the Lavender Scare, people who were assumed to be queer were prosecuted by the government, and not just the people they were surrounded by. During the Lavender Scare, people were unfairly judged by who they were, and, because of the stigma that was created around homosexuality, were involuntarily pushed out of society and separated from the environment they were comfortable in and the people they were comfortable being around. This is similar to what happened to the people accused of witchcraft in The Crucible. In the play, anyone who was accused of witchcraft was arrested and even if they were acquitted they were still seen as a bad person by the community. However, the stigma associated with that person did not end after they were executed. This quote highlights the idea that when someone was hung for witchcraft, their land would not be given to their family, even if they had been given the land in the person’s will. Their land would be given to the government, which would most likely be sold to someone new. This situation is similar to that of the Lavender Scare because in both situations something important to the accused person, and in some cases important to living, is being taken away from them. This effectively put the accused into a bubble and made them seem different from the rest of society, which is a very common thread