She not only acted as a tyrant but she pulled other people into her mess. Abigail Williams is the main reason behind the Salem witch hunt. She is the one who broke the rules of the church and brought all the girls and Tituba into the woods. Once the “Blame Game” started, she could have ended the hysteria. Instead, she continued her false accusations.
Abigail had an affair with John Proctor so she gives reveal his wifes name Elizabeth as one of the witches so she can be put to death with the other accused and Abigail can have John Proctor all to herself. Abagial uses the girls to go against Mary and pretends in court that Mary Proctors servant has afflicted them with her spirit. Abigails deceit causes a lot of people to turn against each other and not know who to trust. She causes John Proctor to
When Abigail was talking to Proctor she says “She is telling lies to about me! She is a cold sniveling woman, and you bend to her!”(Page 15, act one) she is basically showing her jealousy towards his wife. This stirred up the witch trials because Abigail wanted to be with Proctor and she would do just about anything. The fact that John proctor realizes all of his flaws and confesses to all of his sins is another reason why he can be considered a tragic hero. When Proctor had to go to the court to get his wife out of being accused of upholding witchcraft he eventually confess to his sins he committed.
Abigail and the girls pretend Mary is bewitching them again which make Mary breakdown and accuse john of being a witch. After being tried as a witch and told he was going to get hanged he has a chance to confess and live but he chooses to die and keep his name. As a result of the lies and the affair between john and Abigail there were a lot of innocent people killed and hurt even those who they claimed they loved. Abigail and Elizabeth are two very different characters but have some similarities. Both Abigail and Elizabeth show determination in order to get what they want, and they are both strong
She is responsible for the deaths of those innocent puritans who died during the witch-hunt because of three reasons: First she is jealous. Second She is a malicious, vengeful girl. Third she is an unabashed liar who charges witchcraft against those who oppose her. Abigail Williams was a jealousy person. John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth used to employ Abigail, until Elizabeth found out the affair and threw Abigail out.
Miller manifests this ideology through the application of literary and stage techniques. A key character in the play which demonstrates this ideology is Abigail Williams. Her unscrupulous nature promotes the use of propaganda to shift suspicion among people and to manipulate by the power of hysteria. From the beginning of the play Abigail enforces power of speech stirring hysteria to devoid any towards her. Continuously throughout the text she performs acts of deception which tragically condemn others to death just to cover her lies.
Being compared to the devil in a novel set in a heavily catholic country shows that she is evil, and the subtitle ‘The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan’ supports this. The fact that she is a ‘famous curtizan’ supports the idea that she is to blame for the events in the novel, as it is her promiscuity that causes the murders of so many, sparked by jealously in Brachiano. Vittoria is immediately at a disadvantage in the novel and entering the trial however. She is not even given the grace of being the centre of focus in the subtitle, added on at the end almost as if her presence is an afterthought by Webster. This shows how she is handicapped by the fact that she is a woman, in a society controlled by men.
The course of enacting revenge is symbolically signified through the fervour of allegations of witchcraft, which destroys all judgment and creates a sense of belonging with the members of the community that have been involved in monstrous actions, such as killing babies and communicating with the devil. Miller, having been blamed of being a communist along with many of his friends, is critical of this hysteria. Despite some of his characters’ legitimate fear of witchcraft, the fervour surrounding their accusations leads to innocent people being accused of wrongdoing to satisfy vengeful grudges and create a sense of belonging. Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft in order to seek revenge, as Elizabeth acknowledges when she says, Abigail ‘thinks to kill me, then to take my place’. This shows Abigails desire to belong not only to proctor but also within the community, by taking Elizabeth’s position.
The Madness that is Abigail Williams: Her Intentions in The Crucible “How hard it is when pretense falls! But it falls, it falls!” With these chilling and ominous words, Abigail’s twisted sense of revenge rings hollow in Arthur Miller’s terrifying play, The Crucible. A masterpiece of its time, The Crucible brings forth the true horrors man is capable of: deception and vengefulness. No character presents these values as well as Abigail, whose lust and heartbreak for John Proctor results in a homicidal goose chase. Because of her hate towards Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, Abigail creates demented tales, directed at abolishing the “problem.” Though Abigail’s wild canards seem quite obtuse in civilization today, at the time her acts fell to justification.
So now we’ll talk about affairs and how people get revenge. In The Crucible, Mr. Proctor had an affair with a young lady. It made John look bad, so he started to ignore Abigail by telling her to leave and that he was mad at her. When she wouldn’t leave he pushed her away. For revenge she accused John’s wife, Liz, of being a witch.