Salem Witch Trials

– The Crucible Essay, Research Paper

Because I’ve been working with the materials of the Salem Witch Trails of 1692 for so long, many people have asked me if I’ve seen the play or film The Crucible, and what I think of it. Miller created works of art, inspired by the actual events for the artistic/political purposes Miller intended: first produced on Broadway on January 22, 1953, it was in response to the panic caused by irrational fear of Communism during the Cold War which ultimately resulted in the anti-Communist hearings by Senator Joseph McCarthy which started on Feb. 3, 1953.* In Miller’s tales (there are slight differences, which I won’t bother to get into unless it’s a major difference), a lovelorn teenager is spurned by the married man she loves, and in her revenge, she fans a whole community into a blood-lust frenzy. This is simply not history. The real story is far more complex, dramatic, and interesting — and well worth exploring. This page, however, is only dedicated to separating the fact from the fiction in Miller’s work.

Most popular understandings of the tale include their own inaccuracies — for instance, that the witches were burned to death. People condemned as witches in New England were not burned, but hanged, and in the aftermath of the events in Salem, it was generally agreed that none of them had actually been witches at all. Some modern versions cast the story as something that has to do with intolerance of difference, that the accused were really just oddballs that the community tacitly approved getting rid of, but most of the people who were accused, convicted and executed in Salem were remarkable by their very adherence to community norms. In the 1970s, a theory was put forth that the afflicted had suffered from hallucinations from eating moldy rye wheat — ergotism — and although that theory has generally been refuted, its life continues in the popular explanation of the events. (A recent biological theory which seems to hold up, however, is that the afflicted suffered from encephalitis lethargica.) Lastly, Rev. Parris’s slave woman, Tituba, is usually assumed to have been of Black African descent, but recent research indicates she was Amerindian, probably South American Arawak, always being referred to in the documents of the period as “an Indian woman.” Had she been African or Black, she would have been so described.

As for Miller’s tellings of the tale, I am always distracted by the wide variety of minor historical inaccuracies when I am exposed to his play or movie. Call me picky, but I’m not a dolt: I know about artistic license and Miller’s freedom to use the material any way he chooses to, so please don’t bother lecturing me about it. This page is part of a site about the history of 17th Century Colonial New England *index.shtml*, not about literature, theater, or Arthur Miller, even though you may have landed smack dab in the middle of the site thanks to a search engine hit for information about Miller.

One reason I am providing this page is because 1) actors contact me about making their portrayals of characters in the play “more accurate” — when that is impossible without drastically altering Miller’s work because the characters in his play are simply not the real people who lived, even though they may share names and basic fates, and 2) students are given assignments in their English classes to find out more about what really happened. Before you even think of writing to ask me a question, please read through my list of frequently-asked questions *myfaq.shtml*.

Here’s my list of historical inaccuracies in the play/screenplay:

Betty Parris’s mother was not dead, but very much alive at the time. She died in 1696, four years after the events. Betty was shuttled off to live in Salem Town with Stephen Sewall’s family (Stephen was the brother of Judge Samuel Sewall) soon after the hysteria broke and she did not participate in most of the proceedings.

The Parris family also included two other children — an older brother, Thomas (b. 1681), and a younger sister, Susannah (b. 1687) — not just Betty and her cousin Abigail.

Miller admits in the introduction to the play that he boosted Abigail Williams’ age to 17 even though the real girl was only 11, but he never mentions that John Proctor was 60 and Elizabeth, 41, was his third wife. Proctor was not a farmer but a tavern keeper. Living with them was their daughter aged 15, their son who was 17, and John’s 33-year-old son from his first marriage. Everyone in the family was eventually accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth Proctor was indeed pregnant, during the trial, and did have a temporary stay of execution after convicted, which ultimately spared her life because it extended past the end of the period that the executions were taking place.

The first two girls to become afflicted with Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, not Ann Putnam, and they had violent, physical fits, not a sleep that they could not wake from.

There never was any wild dancing rite in the woods led by Tituba, and certainly Rev. Parris never stumbled upon them. Some of the local girls had attempted to divine the occupations of their future husbands with an egg in a glass — crystal-ball style. Tituba and her husband, John Indian (absent in Miller’s telling), were asked by a neighbor, Mary Sibley, to bake a special “witch cake,” — made of rye and the girls