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Miller portrays characters of Abigail and Elizabeth in stark contrast in their beliefs, values, traits, and even appearance. Elizabeth in the play is shown to be a religious woman, loving mother, loyal wife, and homemaker whereas Abigail’s character symbolizes desire, youth, passion, and mischief.
Abigail is a young girl or “child”. She is an orphan, who went through terrible emotional distress and she has been shown to have lost the love of John Proctor a middle aged married man, whom Abigail had loved while working at his house. Abigail, holds on to the feelings of love that she experienced while in relationship with John Proctor. She desperately tries to win John back evident in her line. “I have a sense for heat, John.” She wants John back and will attempt anything to get him. Her Character is linked to heat, passion, and “wicked”ness.
However, Elizabeth is a wife and a mother of three children. She is balanced, calm and controlled. She keeps all her feelings bottled up inside of her, not showing extreme love, passion or hate. Elizabeth represents the home, family and safety. Hence, in some respects she may come across as a plain woman as Elizabeth herself thinks that she is, “poorly made”. Elizabeth is linked to balance, good conscious, and coldness because she never shows these emotions, and John's sarcastic line reveals the same, when he says, “It is not winter in here yet.”
Abigail is violent in nature and a great actress. She puts up an act of a caring and loving towards her cousin Betty in front of Betty’s father Reverend Parris, and even tells that she “would never hurt Betty” and she loves “her dearly”. However, the moment she finds no adults around, she intimidates Betty and “furiously shakes her.”. When Betty reveals that Abigail “drank blood charm”, Abigail “[smashes her across the face]” and warns her to “Shut it!”. She prompts all the girls to tell lies that they just “danced” and Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters.”. She goes onto give a violent threat that if girls speak of anything otherwise, she will “bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder”. Thus, Abigail’s use of violence and threats creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
Elizabeth is a plain and simple woman. In Act two, She was shown to have cooked rabbit “stew” and “bread” for her family. She is shown to be “softly singing to the children”. This suggests that she is a caring mother, as singing is a loving trait. All these actions are not a show-off or pretense but comes from a genuine care and love for the family. This is evident as John is described to be on the field to “seed the farm” while she does all these household chores. Elizabeth’s question about if the stew is well cooked when she asks, “she’s tender?”, shows genuine care to make sure the meals are well done and enjoyable by her husband. Elizabeth’s line, that she felt hurt “to strip…, poor Rabbit!”, reveals the sensitive and empathetic side as dialogue explains she experienced deep pain to harm the rabbit to make their meals. This is in stark contrast to Abigail, who every now and then is plotting vengeance to smash or murder people.
Abigail’s relentless attempt to be with Proctor in the line “whatever sin it is you love me yet!” also reveals Abigail lacks a conscience to keep herself in check. As a result, she sees no folly in her affair with Proctor. When Proctor tells her, to “Wipe it out of mind. We never touched”. Abigail persists “but we did.”. According to the Puritanical mindset, Abigail's attraction to Proctor, who is married, constitutes a sin, which she could repent of and refuse to acknowledge. Abigail does the opposite. She continues to pursue Proctor and goes onto extreme of eliminating his wife Elizabeth Proctor so as she could marry John. In some sense she thinks of John as a leverage to obtain an elevated status in society.
Elizabeth lives by rules of Christian religion; the Ten Commandments and believes in it. Elizabeth boasts about how much a religious woman she is. “I am a contempt Christian woman.” She says this to Parris and because of this Christian, religious nature she is unable to forgive John. Elizabeth however continues her duty towards John and Children as loyal wife and loving mother. Even when she was being taken away for witchcraft accusations, she instructs household help Mary Warren to bake “bread” for John’s next day meals and not to bespoke children about her arrest as “it will frighten them”. This conveys caring selfless nature of Elizabeth and subtle love for her husband and children.
Abigail is so shrewd that she goes on to calling Elizabeth “sickly Wife”, “cold, sniveling woman”, who is “blackening” Abigail’s name and further says that John “bend[s] to her”, in her continuous attempt to make john re-consider returning to Abigail and sabotage Proctor’s re-union with his wife. She even goes on to a length of starting a sort of satanic ritual where she drinks “a charm to kill John Proctor's wife.” Even when “Witchery's a hangin' error….” in Salem.
On the other hand, Elizabeth is so simple that she thinks of her husband, John as “a good man” and “only somewhat bewildered”. She even suggests John that he has “faulty understanding of young girls” and advises that although spoken or silent, “There is a promise made in any bed”. She suggests John to counsel Abigail to help her understand that there is no such possibility of her taking Elizabeth’s place. Thus, Elizabeth, a sorted mature woman readily empathizes with young Abigail, who is orphan and desperate for affection.
Abigail, right up until the end of the play lives on her lies and pretense to try and steal John. To strengthen her accusation against Elizabeth Proctor, she puts up an act of being struck with a needle “two inches in the flesh of her belly” and falling “to the floor”. while doing so she indeed stabs herself with a needle and adds a “scream that bull would weep to hear” to her act. She does this at a time while at dinner with Reverend Parris at the dinner table so as she has people as witness who could see and hear her in pain. Abigail testify, it was Elizabeth Proctor’s “familiar spirit that put it in”. In this sense Abigail’s maddening love is psychotic in nature.
Whereas in case of Elizabeth, her husband John vouches in court for Elizabeth’s honesty when he says, “In her life, sir, she have never lied.”. Elizabeth’s line “It takes a cold wife to prompt lechery” reveals her integrity. Her sincerity in her admission that her lack of displaying her emotions, and her own insecurities prevented her from trusting Proctor, creating an emotional distance in the couple. She had “counted [her]self so plain”, that she would think “no honest love could come to” her! This also unfolds that Elizabeth is a simple and unpretentious woman, down to earth and one who is in grasp of her emotions and in check of her situation.
Miller’s stage direction in the actions of John’s ripping off the confessions and expressions of Elizabeth, and dialogues emphasizes the immense love of Elizabeth for her husband John, when she utters, “He have his goodness now, God forbid I take it from him”
In my view, Elizabeth's character, which appears in beginning to be a fragile, shy and insecure, by the end of the play emerges as the strongest and the most balanced character, who could see how much tormented John is over his sinful affair with Abigail , evident in Elizabeth’s line to John where she says,“the magistrate in your heart judges you”. She realizes that John’s emotional distress and immense pain could be healed only through his salvation.
Elizabeth mother of three, and pregnant with John’s another child, understands John’s beliefs. Although she wants John to live, she knows that John cannot live life based on a lie by falsely confessing to witchcraft hoax. Elizabeth lets John die a Christian hero and accepts widowhood instead of forcing him to live a “soul-less life” with lost reputation.Hence, throughout the play Miller although illustrates Abigail as a stronger, and dominant character and Elizabeth as shy and weaker character, right at the end of the play they switch roles.
Abigail realizes that John has thwarted her plan and he has opted to face “gallow”, she robs Uncle Parris of “Thirty-one pounds” and like a coward runs away from Salem to escape future violent outburst against her as she has caused havoc in Salem with many Salemites wrongfully executed, children orphaned, crops withered and cattle un-attended. If it were Abigail, she would have gone to extreme lengths to stop John from hanging for her own sake, as she is far too self-centered to see and understand John's beliefs.
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