Hysteria, Witches, and Women: A Feminist Reading of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

Abstract

[Abstract] The object of study of this end-of-degree project is Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, written in 1952. My main goals are three: to analyze the depiction of women and female sexuality in the play through the figure of the witch, to explore the representation of hysteria and its relation to women, and to demonstrate that it is possible to make a feminist reading of The Crucible. Throughout my analyses, I will also uncover the connections between what it means to be a woman, a hysteric, and a witch, three concepts that have been of interest to Gender and Feminist Studies. The methodology required the close reading of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the consultation of dictionaries—e.g. Cambridge English Dictionary, Thessaurus.com—, and the study of academic works that would support my hypothesis—feminist readings of Miller’s play (e.g. Tunc), studies about hysteria and women’s mental health (e.g. Showalter), etc. Some of the key concepts addressed in this project belong to the field of Gender Studies, such as patriarchy, binary oppositions, and patriarchal and female subjectivities. The latter is particularly relevant due to the possibility it offers to radically change the perception of literature. Therefore, the study of the play from the subjectivity of the female characters allows the reader to understand the way patriarchy uses binary oppositions to place women under the categories of either good or evil. The classification of women into one of the above-mentioned domains is problematic if analyzed from a feminist perspective because it results in either their idealization or their demonization according to patriarchal, capitalistic, and religious values. This undergraduate thesis elucidates that the stereotypes of the witch and the hysteric in literature are examples of how rooted misogyny is in our culture. The structure of this project consists of two parts. The first one focuses on a theoretical introduction of witches and hysteria, and their relation to women in patriarchy. The second part entails a close readingof the play by Arthur Miller. This section is likewise divided into three epigraphs where the notions introduced in Part One are exemplified and analyzed further. The paper ends with a conclusion, which summarizes the main ideas and ratifies my aims. In the following pages, the traditional patriarchal reading of The Crucible is challenged through a Gender Studies perspective; therein, Miller’s apparent male-chauvinistic values are questioned by a feminist reading of the play.