The Crucible 'And Year Of Wonders'

Both Miller and Brooks explore the idea that the setting of the texts, whether it is environmental or social, plays an important role in the dynamics of the characters and the events that take place. The Crucible and Year Of Wonders are set in very isolated locations. With Eyam’s “closet city [lying] twice as far” and Salam being “at the end of the wilderness” and cut off from the rest of the world as described by Miller. With both the texts being set in an early 1600’s Puritan community, it accounts for a society whose decisions and rules are based purely off of religious beliefs. Religion plays a crucial role in the town of Salam, and any characters who go against these beliefs are prosecuted It is said that this is to “keep the community

Anna describes how “dark and light…only one of two natures; godly and right, or Satanic and evil” which shows the audience that in that society. Along with these Puritan beliefs, female social roles within both texts hold these morals, and women in these Puritan societies have pretty strict and set roles in these communities. For instance in the Crucible, Proctor exclaims to Elizabeth “you will judge me no more” which indicates to Elizabeth that she has no right to stand up for herself, yet still defends him and denies that he committed adultery in court. This demonstrates that women still have to be respectful of their husband are scared to speak badly of them. Similarly in Year Of Wonders, “Men doffed their caps, and women curtsied, just as [they’d] always done simply because that was all they had always done” showing that this was just the norm for the society. Characters such as Elinor defied these norms however, as “there was something in her that could not see the distinctions that the world made between weak and strong, between women and men, laborer and lord” and she still went and did things that she and women were deemed unable and wrong to