The Crucible Through a Gender/Feminist Lens

Question

I need some help please :)

1. Analyze this through a gender/feminist lens. What does this suggest about women’s abilities? What is wrong with this?
2. When questioned about the dancing they did the night before, Abigail replies that it was only “common dancing.” What questions might a gender/feminist critic raise about the fact that she is being interrogated for dancing? Write three strong questions.
3. Why do you think that only one man is accused of being “seen with the Devil?” What is the gender significance of this?

Please and thank you :)

Answer 1

Arthur Miller's Crucible (1952) may be interpreted from a multitude of perspectives: political, psychoanalytic, myth-making/archetypal, and so on. So a "gender/feminist lens" means that feminist theory offers another critical approach that interrogates a familiar text in new ways.

While Miller imbued his male characters with political and economic power in their roles as ministers, judges, landowners. Married and single women held very little power in the public world. At most, a single woman could get a job as a servant.

Miller uses the underlying ethos of "Original Sin" to signify that women carry power sexually, and that men are mere victims, easily beguiled by women as Eve had been beguiled by the Devil. For example, Abigail had been a servant in the Proctor household. She and John Proctor have an affair. The village folk dislike Abigail because of her transgressions. She had seduced John.