17th Century Colonial New England with special emphasis on The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 Arthur Miller’s The Crucible Fact & Fiction (or Picky, Picky, Picky . .) by Margo Burns Because I’ve been working with the materials of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 for so long, many people have asked me if I’ve seen the film The Crucible, and what I think of it. Miller’s play and screenplay are works of art, inspired by the actual events for the artistic/political purposes Miller intended: a response to the anti- Communist hearings by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s. In Miller’s tale, 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 not history. The real story is far more complex – and more interesting. Popular tellings of the tale include their own inaccuracies – for instance, that the witches were burned to death. The condemned were not burned, but hanged, and in the aftermath of the events, 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 were remarkable by their very adherence to community norms. In the 1970’s 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 events. Lastly, Reverend Parris’ slave woman, Tituba, is usually assumed to have been of Black African descent, but she an 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 telling of the tale, I was distracted by a wide variety of historical inaccuracies (Call me picky!). Here are some of the most glaring to me: • Betty Parris’ 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 (born 1681) and a younger sister, Susannah (born 1687) – not just Betty and her cousin Abigail. • Miller admits 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. He was not a farmer but a tavernkeeper. 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. • 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 Reverend 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’ urine, fed to a dog – European white magiv to ascertain which witch was afflicting the girls. • The Putnams’ daughter was not named Ruth, but Ann, like her mother, probably changed so the audience wouldn’t confuse the mother and the daughter. • Ann/Ruth was not the only Putnam child out of eight to survive infancy. In 1692, the Putnams had six living children: Ann being the eldest, down to 1-year-old Timothy. Ann (the mother) and her sister, however, did lose a fair number of infants, and the Nurse family lost remarkably few for the time. • Reverend Parris claims to Giles Corey that he is a “graduate of Harvard” – he did not in fact graduate from Harvard, although he had attended for awhile. • The judges in The Crucible are Samuel Sewall, Thomas Danforth and John Hathorne. Sewall was one of the original judges, and did have the reservations portrayed in the play, but Danforth was the Deputy Governor, not a judge. Hathorne, John Corwin, and William Stoughton were the magistrates who carried the investigations. Depositions were taken in the meeting house and in Ingersoll’s Tavern, but the trials were held in Salem Town, with a jury. • Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, John Proctor on August 19, and Martha Corey on September 22 – not all on the same day on the same gallows. And the only person executed who recited the Lord’s Prayer on the gallows was Reverend George Burroughs – which caused quite a stir since it was generally believed at the time that a witch could not say the Lord’s Prayer without making a mistake. They also would not have been hanged while praying, since the condemned were always allowed their last words and prayers. • Reverend Hale would not have signed any “death warrants,” as he claims to have signed 17 in the play. That was not for the clergy, but the judiciary. • The elderly George Jacobs was not accused of sending his spirit in through the window to lie on the Putnam’s daughter – in fact, it was usually quite the opposite case: women such as Bridget Bishop were accused of sending their spirits into men’s bedrooms to lie on them. In that period, women were perceived as lusty, sexual creatures whose allure men must guard against! • The hysteria did not die out “as more and more people refused to save themselves by giving false confessions,” as the epilogue of the movie states. The opposite was true: more and more people gave false confessions to save themselves as it became apparent that confession could save one from the noose. What ended the trials was the intervention of Governor William Phips, who had been off in Maine fighting the Indians in King William’s War. There were over two hundred people in prison when the general reprieve was given, but they were not released until they paid their prison fees. Neither did the tide turn when Abigail Williams accused Reverend Hale’s wife, as the movie claims – although the “afflicted” did start accusing a lot more people far and wide to the point of absurdity, including various notable people around Massachusetts whom they had never laid eyes on, including the famous hero Captain John Alden. • Abigail Williams probably couldn’t have laid her hands on 31 pounds in Samuel Parris’ house, to run away with John Proctor. When Parris’ annual salary was contracted at 66 pounds, only a third of which was paid in money – the rest was paid in foodstuffs and other supplies. • Certain key people in the real events appear nowhere in Millier’s play: John Indian, Reverend Nicholas Noyes, Judge Williams Stoughton, Sarah Cloyce, and most notably, Cotton Mather. • Giles Corey was not executed for refusing to name a witness. He was accused of witchcraft, and refused to enter a plea, which held up the proceedings, since the law of the time required that the accused enter a plea. He was pressed to death with stones, but the method was used to try to force him to enter a plea so that his trial could proceed. Corey probably realized that if he was tried at all, he would be executed, and his children would be disinherited. • “The afflicted” was not just a group of a dozen teenage girls – there were men and adult women who were also “afflicted,” including John Indian, Ann Putnam (the mother) and Sarah Bibber. • There’s a tiny scene in The Crucible movie about a goat getting into someone’s garden and tempers flaring – the actual history is that three years before the witchcraft accusations, a neighbor’s pigs got into the Nurse’s family fields, and Rebecca Nurse flew off the handle, yelling at him about it. Soon thereafter, the neighbor had an apparent stroke and died within a few months. This was seen as evidence in 1692 of Rebecca Nurse’s witchcraft. Questions to answer – this is an assignment you will turn in for credit. 1. Does it matter to you that Miller’s work of art is not entirely accurate historically? 2. Does knowing historical facts about the Salem trials change your perception of the basic story in any way? 3. Does it bother you that Tituba is usually misidentified as “black” or “African” in most history books, not as “Indian” – which is how she is identified in all of the primary sources by all the people who actually knew her? Why? 4. As a result of reading Miller’s play, are you more interested in what actually happened in Salem in 1692 or what actually happened during McCarthyism in the 1950’s? Why? 5. Accusations of sexual-abuse against child-care providers are now sometimes referred to as “witch hunts.” How do you feel about Miller’s perspective when applied to these kinds of situations? 6.