DIPLOMARBEIT / DIPLOMA THESIS Titel der Diplomarbeit / Title of the Diploma Thesis “„They are the witches!‟: Fatal female relationships in Arthur Miller‟s The Crucible and Ann Petry‟s Tituba of Salem Village” verfasst von / submitted by Claudia Stefanie Illmeyer angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. phil.) Wien, 2017 / Vienna, 2017 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 190 344 299 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch degree programme as it appears on UF Psychologie und Philosophie the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Alexandra Ganser-Blumenau Witchcraft was hung in history; But history and I Find all the witchcraft that we need Around us every day. (Emily Dickinson 290) Table of contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. Historical Background ............................................................................................................ 4 2.1. Female Life in Puritan New England .............................................................................. 4 2.2. Puritan beliefs in witchcraft and female witches ........................................................... 11 2.3. The historical Salem witchcraft trials ............................................................................ 17 2.4. Female agency in the trials ............................................................................................ 21 3. The Crucible (1953) ............................................................................................................. 26 3.1. Historical context: McCarthyism or the Second Red Scare .......................................... 26 3.2. Plot ................................................................................................................................. 28 3.3. The female characters and their actions ........................................................................ 30 3.3.1. Abigail Williams ..................................................................................................... 30 3.3.2. Elizabeth Proctor ..................................................................................................... 34 3.3.3. Mary Warren ........................................................................................................... 36 3.3.4. Tituba ...................................................................................................................... 38 3.4. Women‟s fatal relationships .......................................................................................... 41 3.4.1. Seeking revenge: Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor ..................................... 41 3.4.2. The adolescent girls: Abigail Williams and Mary Warren ..................................... 47 3.4.3. Scapegoating „the other‟: Abigail Williams and Tituba ......................................... 53 4. Tituba of Salem Village (1964) ............................................................................................ 59 4.1. The Author in her historical context: The Civil Rights Movement ............................... 59 4.2. Plot ................................................................................................................................. 61 4.3. The female characters and their actions ........................................................................ 64 4.3.1. Tituba Indian ........................................................................................................... 64 4.3.2. Abigail Williams ..................................................................................................... 67 4.3.3. Mercy Lewis ........................................................................................................... 69 4.3.4. Mary Warren ........................................................................................................... 71 4.3.5. Goody Good ............................................................................................................ 72 4.3.6. Gammar Osburne .................................................................................................... 73 4.4. Women‟s fatal relationships .......................................................................................... 74 4.4.1. The orphan and the slave: Abigail Williams and Tituba Indian ............................. 74 4.4.2. The bound girl and the slave: Mercy Lewis and Tituba Indian .............................. 79 4.4.3. Women on the margins: Goody Good, Gammar Osburne, and the girls ................ 83 5. Comparative Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 88 6. References ............................................................................................................................ 93 7. English abstract .................................................................................................................... 97 8. German abstract .................................................................................................................... 97 1. Introduction Witch-hunting often took on a dramatic scale in seventeenth-century New England: innocent people were conspired against and discredited; their accusers, though, escaped any form of punishment. Those accused of witchcraft-related activities fell under suspicion for a variety of different behaviors ranging from speech acts to voodoo practices. As affirmed by many historians such as Carol F. Karlsen, John Demos, and Marilyn J. Westerkamp, women were the main targets of witchcraft allegations, prosecutions, and executions. Yet their accusers were not, as might be assumed when thinking of witch-hunts in the light of misogyny, men but most often women. Hence, open to question is why women turned against members of their own sex, and whether women‟s fatal relationships are to blame for the commencement of the Salem witchcraft trials in seventeenth-century New England. Although the epitome of New World‟s witch-hunting history has been subject to myriad studies from both a historical and a literary viewpoint, the proposed questions have only received little attention. Women‟s ill-fated relationships, as Lucienne Roubin proposes, can be located in the so-called “feminine space” (qtd. in Garrett 465), an area where women operate on their own – apart from male control. In this particular space, women practice activities that are stereotypically linked with their sex. Quarrels and disputes between the women emerge from the specific problems they encounter within their area. In seventeenth-century New England, and most likely elsewhere where alleged witches were prosecuted, women‟s ill-fated relationships promoted some women to turn against members of their own sex: they fed gossip, officially leveled witchcraft charges, blamed their accuser, and/or attended executions. However, accusing other females of having succumbed to the Devil‟s temptations presented by far the worst of these actions. The allegations followed a clear pattern in most of the cases: the women got to know each other; a certain incident triggered their conflict, and prompted one of the parties to press charges. Leveling these accusations provided a relatively safe method to ruin one‟s enemy since the presumed witch‟s malicious actions were usually given credence in the court proceedings. Furthermore, Puritan theology reinforced the believers‟ faith in the existence of Satan and his minions, the witches. Women‟s readiness to speak out against members of their own sex stems from the belief system they lived in: oppressed by Puritans‟ strict, all- male hierarchies, they faced a life of subordination from their births onwards. Hence, witchcraft allegations, as proven during the Salem witchcraft trials, aided women in rising 1 to temporary status and power in a society that reproved them for their weakness, and thus they greatly supported the tradition of witch-hunting. However, decisions about the defendants‟ verdicts were reached by those yielding the power in Puritan New England‟s theocratic societies – men. Therefore, the misogynist viewpoint to the hanging of witches is valid. Nevertheless, women‟s involvement in leading members of their own sex to the gallows, as proposed by Carol F. Karlsen, Elizabeth Reis, or Wendy Schissel, is equally important. In the literary works chosen for this thesis – Arthur Miller‟s The Crucible (1953) and Ann Petry‟s Tituba of Salem Village (1964) – women are found to accuse other women of satanic conspiracy and thus trigger their prosecutions. At the core of both texts lie the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, yet Miller‟s and Petry‟s writings differ considerably since they were each influenced by their time‟s present events – McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement. Hence, the female characters and the women‟s relationships were constructed in the light of both historical contexts. In detail, the analyses of both the play and the novel pursue to provide answers to the succeeding research questions: How do the literary texts construct the different female characters? How do both historical contexts – McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement – add to the characters‟ depictions? What triggers the women‟s failed relationships