CLASSICS REVISITED
Crucible of fear
RAVI VYAS
Without alienation there can be no politics.
Interview with Marxism Today, January 1988
To be sure I had counted myself a radical since my days in college and had tried and failed to read Das Kapital; but the Marxist formulations had certainly given shape to my views on politics — fundamentally that to understand a political phenomenon you had to look for the money. (Which is why businessmen understand Marxism better than anybody.)
The Crucible in History and Other Essays
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to rouse the passions of the audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
Collected Plays, Introduction, 1958 edition
A lot of my work goes to the centre of where we belong — if there is any root to life — because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for long, Dislocation, may be, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is permanent...Drama must represent a well-defined expression of profound social needs.
Fear, like love, that is so difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears.
Arthur Miller Essays: Echoes Down the Corridor
OVER the last 60 years, Arthur Miller (1915-2005) wrote several dozen plays, novels, short stories, essays and Hollywood screen plays whose central concerns are expressed in the above extracts from his writings and interviews. But for all his tremendous output, he was famous for three things: his 1949 masterpiece, "Death of a Salesman" which won him the Pulitzer Prize and will remain one of the finest critiques of unfettered capitalism; his refusal to rat on his communist friends before the House of Un-American Activities which meant "to be a traitor" and that spun off into another great play, "The Crucible"; and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. "Salesman" has been worked over time and time again, "All My Sons" (1947) and "After the Fall" (1964) were concerned with the conflicts within the nuclear family, about responsibility and why people destroy themselves the way they do. But it was "The Crucible" that was overtly the most political, a candid reflection on the post-war climate of suspicion and paranoia that destroyed lives and reputations in the McCarthy era.
In his Massey lecture, "The Crucible in History" at Harvard in 1999, Miller said, "it would probably not have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some outstanding correspondences with the calamity in the Americas of the late 40s and early 50s." It was a strange climate of fear that was generated, all the more because the country was not under any "external threat and nobody seemed to take seriously any menace from the American communist party that could hardly elect a dog-catcher...The surreality of it all never left me. We were living in an art form, a metaphor that had no long history but had suddenly, incredibly enough, gripped the country. In today's terms, the country had been delivered into the hands of a radical Right, a ministry of free-floating apprehension ...sometimes directed toward foreigners, Jews, Catholics, fluoridated water, aliens in space, masturbation, homosexuality, or the Internal Revenue Department."
Witch-hunts, old and new
"The Crucible" takes the Salem witch-hunts as an allegory for the 1950s McCarthyism of which Miller had personal experience. The story begins with Reverend Parris praying over his mysteriously ill daughter, Betty, when a niece, Abigail Williams, enters. "Strikingly beautiful", she brings a suggestion from Betty's puzzled doctor that Parris "look into unnatural things" as the cause of the illness. "The rumour of witchcraft," says Abigail "is all about."
Abigail is partly to blame for the superstitious rumours. She and Betty were in the woods dancing (which was forbidden to Puritans) when Parris discovered them. Superstition ripens into alarm when some people from town come into the sickroom talking about "witches flying over the barn and fearing for their daughter who has suddenly been struck dumb." They sense "the Devil's touch...forked and hoofed," and Parris decides to call in Reverend Hale, a specialist in the demonic arts. Some voices are raised against the growing suspicions that witches had infiltrated Salem and witchcraft was "posh", but they are in a minority.
Reverend Hale, the witchcraft authority, says some of the "phenomena" needed to be investigated. He says he would consult his reference books where "all the invisible world (is) caught, defined and calculated. There we see all your familiar spirits-your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day." The Reverend goes on to suggest that if Betty was "truly in the Devil's grip we may have to rip and tear to get her free." And when Abigail Williams blurts out that the Caribbean maid Tituba called for the Devil, he asks whether in the woods there had been "a sudden cold wind" or "a trembling below the ground." This is a witch-hunt and any excuse is good enough to keep the prosecution going.
Act II, a week later. John Proctor is at home with his wife. Although the conversation is polite, there is a tension in the air. Elizabeth recognises John's efforts to please her, but there is "a sense of separation" between the two. She tells him that the witch trials had begun. "There were fourteen people in the jail now, and they'll be tried," and if they don't confess to witchcraft, "the court has the power to hang them." The only proof required is for Abigail and her girls to "scream and howl and fall down to the floor" at the sight of anyone who has been accused of consorting with the Devil.
Growing distrust
Elizabeth reminds her husband of what he had said — that Abigail herself told him that the witch stories were pure "posh". Such an admission would discredit Abigail and Elizabeth insists that John "must tell them it is a fraud". John agrees, though it will be his word against Abigail's because "she told it to me in a room alone". This indication that he had seen the girl privately renews Elizabeth's distrust of him. John can't take it any longer: "You will not judge me more, Elizabeth...I have forgot Abigail. You forget nothin' and forgive nothin'... still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart."
Nobody trusts any one, not even husband and wife!
Meanwhile, the maid, Mary Warren, has returned from Salem to inform them that there are now 39 women in prison and one of them is going to be hanged merely for saying that she knew the Ten Commandments when she didn't; and another let off for "confessing" to a conspiracy with the Devil. Suddenly, Reverend Hale is at the door, come to observe "the Christian character of this house", because he tells Proctor there is "a softness in your accord", in other words, the evidence is fudged.
Then, "as a test", the Reverend asks Proctor to recite the Ten Commandments. He remembers only nine, repressing the proscription against adultery. As the unimpressed minister is leaving, a frightened Elizabeth knows that she is really the one under suspicion and urges her husband to prove to Hale that Abigail Williams' witch stories are false. Proctor skirts the issue and when Elizabeth says frankly that despite the biblical references to witches, she cannot believe in them, her arrest is all but assured.
The only way ahead
The final act begins in the prison. So many people have been arrested by now that "orphans are wandering from home to home, abandoned cattle bellow on the high roads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere". Twelve women have already been hanged and Reverend Hale is urging the other prisoners to save themselves by confessing to witchcraft. He makes a final effort to save John Proctor, asking Elizabeth to meet her husband privately, pleading,
"Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg, you, woman, to prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God's judgement in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride."
The moral of the play is clear: Paranoia feeds upon paranoia, farce is always a step away from tragedy, and compromise is the only way to go on living.
The Crucible, Arthur Miller, first published 1953, Reprint Edition in Penguin Classics, £4.50.
The Crucible in History and Other Essays, Arthur Miller, Methuen, £10.
Arthur Miller, A Life, Martin Gottfried, Faber, £18.
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