How Are Women Portrayed In The Crucible

In The Crucible, women are portrayed in different ways which can be seen through the three main women in the story. The women range from being good people to being the complete opposite. In the Crucible, Arthur Miller creates a balance between the personalities of the women to show that he is not a feminist but also to show he doesn’t condemn women for all of their sins. Miller created these three main women named Abigail Williams, Rebecca Nurse, and Elizabeth Proctor. They show how differently women could be portrayed in The Crucible. The first main woman in The Crucible was Abigail Williams. Abigail Williams was not a very good person. She is a manipulative liar and will do anything to take the blame off of herself. Throughout the play, she kept on making up lies to the point where nobody had …show more content…
She is one of the most faithful women in the play, and she is the complete opposite of Abigail Williams. Elizabeth is also John Proctor’s wife. In the play, even though her husband admitted to having an affair with Abigail, she still treated him with respect and she lied for him when she was asked by the court if he committed adultery. In court, Elizabeth was called in to determine if Abigail told the truth about the affair and Danforth asked Elizabeth, "To your own knowledge, has John Proctor ever committed the crime of lechery? (pg. 113), and Elizabeth replied, "No, sir." (pg. 113). Elizabeth was never a liar, but she felt she had to lie to protect her husband. She simply took blame for what had happened even though she was not involved and that it was her that drove John to having an affair since she was ill. Arthur Miller portrays Elizabeth Proctor as a strong and moral woman that also has her faults. She’s not perfect, but she keeps her emotions inside and blames herself even when she has not done anything wrong which shows she just has a big heart if she’s willing to take the blame for