Puritan Women’s Value of Piety Contradictory in the Crucible

The Crucible presents women on a narrow spectrum reflecting the socialization of the prude New England and the cult of true charwo homohood. Many of the plays central conflicts exist because of limitations on the rights of women, and their low status in society. The status of the Puritan white male allows the infringement of womens heavy human rights to be overlooked by the public. The role of women and the theme of misogyny or distrust of women is an tinge theme in The Crucible.According to the elevateds of the cult of true womanhood, women were supposed to embody perfect virtue in four cardinal aspects piety, purity, submission, and domesticity. Piety maintained that a woman is more ghost bid and spiritual than a man. Yet, in Millers play women were more susceptible to loathsomeness. Eves corruption, in Puritan eyes, extended to all women, and justified marginalization them at heart social avenues. In The Crucible, the type of femininity is presented within the traditiona l role of subservience, lack of voice, and suffering.The two female characters, Elizabeth keep an eye on and Tituba, both subordinate to their husbands and master, respectively, and in the religious life of both home and church. The fate of both characters Elizabeth Proctors loss of her husband, and Titubas operation as a witch, provides a standing critique of the Puritan ideal of women being superior in embodying the Puritan religiosity juxtaposing the subordination of their sexual activity. The virtue of piety affirms that a woman is naturally religious. Consequently, it is a womans job to raise her children to be good Christians and keep her husband on a passing play and narrow path.Wives ar fully responsible if their husbands disobey the commandments, especially adultery. In The Crucible, this idea is reaffirmed with the character Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth is the ideal Puritan woman as she exemplified the principles of the piety, submissiveness, and purity. throughout t he play, she proves to be moral, cold, and determined. As commode states in Act 2, Oh, Elizabeth, your umpire would freeze beer (Miller 53) Yet, the cult of true womanhood requires her to be predisposed to conceal the gentler emotions, time her manners are calm and cold, rather than free and impulsive.Abigail, the mistress, represents the opposite. She is young, attractive and brings forth a zest of life. A zest that Elizabeth lacks. John Proctor conveys this when he seasons the pot of stew Elizabeth is cooking. Within Act II, scene one opens with John Proctor walking into the kitchen. His wife is absent but there is stew cooking. He lifts the ladle from the pot, tastes it, and adds a exceed of salt. The significance of this short scene may justify his affair with Abigail and a contradiction of Puritan society. Elizabeth embodies the ideal of a Puritan woman, but her Puritan husband does not desire it.After she has spent a hardly a(prenominal) months alone in prison, Elizabeth comes to this realization she was a cold wife, and it was because she did not show love to her husband that her unification suffered. She comes to believe that it is her coldness that led to his affair with Abigail. Additionally, it is with this situation that builds up to her telling a lie to nevertheless her husbands re regulariseation. In her life, sir, she have never lied. There are them that cannot sing, and them that cannot weep my wife cannot lie. I have nonrecreational much to develop it (Miller 103). John Proctor states that his wife, Elizabeth wont tell a lie.However, she lies in an attempt to take over his life. And as such, lying to save a family members life or reputation is justified. Throughout the play, Elizabeth is depicted as being one without sin. It is a scene in Act 3 she lies in court, saying that John and Abigails affair never happened. This is supposedly the only time she has ever lied in her life. Though she lies in an attempt to protect her husband, it actually results in his death. She is accosted in Act 4 to express her husband in giving the delusive confession of being a witch. exclusively she refuses. Hale disagrees with this.He says It is fictitious law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is Gods most precious gift no principle, however glorious, may justify the pickings of it . . . it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life past for pride (Miller 122). Hale implies that Johns death is a waste of life and Gods most precious gift. Thus Hales reasoning with Elizabeth is to let her come to terms with her responsibility with her husbands sin and let her be accountable for the affects of her decision in not lying again to protect him from the gallows.Besides gender inequality, racism was extremely prevalent in Puritan society. As such, the character Tituba is not only control by her race, but also by her gender. She was the first person to be accused and confess to witchcraft in the vill age. At first she denied that she had any involvement with witchcraft, but was then quickly coerced into confessing to having spoken with the Devil. Tituba provides the next confession He say Mr. Parris must be kill Mr. Parris no goodly man, Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle man, and he bid me rise out of my bed and cut your throat They gasp.But I tell him No I dont hate that man. I dont want kill that man. But he say, You work for me, Tituba, and I make you free I give you pretty dress to wear, and put you way up in the air, and you gone fly back to Barbados And I say, You lie, Devil, you lie And then he come one stormy night to me and he say, Look I have white batch belong to me. And I look and there was Goody Good (Miller 44). In the selected quote she lies and provides a false confession of witchcraft as well as the name of another witch in township to hopefully save herself from being subjected to the gallows.Though Tituba admits her supposed sin, she is not given a fr ee pass like the others who confessed. Instead, she is condemned to death. The fact that she was convicted at all shows that the Puritan society is inherently prejudice. In The Crucible, Titibua is depicted as an collateral object within an elite discourse of religious freedom and slavery. The Puritan society was obsessed with charge up a veneer of religious piety and proper moral conduct. The plays linguistic context of the woods in the opening scene represents the epitome of an uncontrollable wildness.It is there where she held power and peril while she engages in incantations in the woods. Being an alien makes her more likely to be in cohorts with the Christian Devil. to begin with being brought to Massachusetts, Tituba never considered her singing, dancing, and spell casting as evil. Such practices were spiritual and descended from her African roots. Her spirituality had no connections to ideals of absolute good or evil. This is shown in Act Four, when Tituba tells to her ja iler mockingly Oh, it be no sine in Barbados.Devil, him be pleasure-man in Barbados, him be singin and dancin in Barbados. Its you folks you riles him up round here it be in like manner cold round here for that Old Boy. He freeze his soul in Massachusetts, but in Barbados he just as sweet (Miller 113). The irony of the ill treatment of Titubas religious outsider status is the fact Puritans migrated to the New World to flee religious persecution. They sought to express their faith freely, yet equally boasted great suspicion to others who were different.And as such, it can be inferred that Millers belief is that despite the Puritans self-proclamation of individualism, they exude as much intolerance as the European powers that set out to control them. The Puritans failed to learn from the persecution of their ancestors. The persecution of Tituba and her heathen religious practices reflect this conflict. In The Crucible, it was viewed that women were more likely to enlist in the D evils service than was a man, and women were considered lustful by nature as seen with the character Abigail. Ironically, Puritan women are prized for having a higher smell of religiosity.Almost all the accused who were imprisoned and executed for the crime of witchcraft were women who were social outcasts or predominant in the community. Tituba was a social outcast as she was a slave and Black woman. Elizabeth Proctor was a double-dyed(a) woman but was marred by her husbands affair with their house servant. The villages problem with Titubas different religious beliefs and expressions reflects the hypocrisy of Puritan intolerance, and John Proctors engagement in adultery highlights an inconsistency with the Puritan ideal of its women.