77Episodes and language taken directly from trial records,
though sometimes altered, give the movie a historical feel.
For example, the Proctors were in fact interrogated on their
biblical knowledge. Whereas in the movie John falters by
omitting the commandment against adultery, in history, the
fatal mistake was Elizabeth’s. Asked to recite the Lord’s
Prayer, she substituted “hollowed be thy name” for “hallowed
be thy name.” The magistrates declared this to be a “deprav-
ing” act, for she had transformed the prayer into a curse—
proof of satanic possession.
The movie’s rendering of the girls’ hysteria mostly corre-
sponds with what we know from the historical record. A
bewildered John Hale, a minister from Beverly, recorded that
Abigail and her cousin were
bitten and pinched by invisible agents. Their arms, necks
and backs turned this way and that way, and returned
back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of
themselves....Sometimes they were taken dumb, their
mouths stopped, their throats choked, their limbs wracked
and tormented so as might move an heart of stone.Historians still puzzle over the girls’ behavior. Probably
they were seeking attention, or venting anxiety over their
fate as women in a patriarchal society. Certainly their choice
of victims suggests that they were expressing their parents’
enmity toward their neighbors. The movie alludes to such
issues, but mostly attributes the girls’ hysteria to sexual frus-
tration, a consequence of puritan repression.
Ryder’s Abigail symbolizes adolescent sexuality: Her lust
for John (and hatred of Elizabeth) precipitates the witch
hunt. In fact, the real Abigail did accuse Elizabeth of witch-
craft. The trial record reports that when Elizabeth denied the
charge, Abigail raised her hand as if to strike her, but instead
touched Elizabeth’s hood “very lightly” and cried out,“My fin-
gers! My fingers—burned!” Then Abigail swooned to the
floor. But if these few historical details provide some basis for
Abigail’s conjectured affair with Elizabeth’s husband, others
call it into question, the most telling being the gap in their
ages: The real Abigail was eleven and Proctor, sixty.
Whatever the merits of playwright Arthur Miller’s specu-
lation about Abigail and John, his larger questions have long
intrigued historians: Were the puritans sexually repressive? If
so, did young people assent to puritan strictures or rebel
against them?
Such questions cannot be answered with certainty. Few
puritans left written accounts of their illicit thoughts and sexual
behavior. Social historians have approached the matter from a
different angle. Nearly all marriages and births in colonial New
England (and most other places) were recorded. Scholars have
scoured such records to determine how many brides gave
birth to babies within six months of marriage; such women
almost certainly had engaged in premarital intercourse.
This data for about a dozen communities in puritan New
England indicate an extraordinarily low rate of premarital
intercourse, far below England’s at the same time or New
England’s a century later. This suggests that young puritan
couples were watched closely. Governor William Bradford of
Plymouth Colony, commenting on the relative absence of
premarital pregnancy, concluded that sinners there were
“more discovered and seen and made public by due search,
inquisition and due punishment; for the churches look nar-
rowly to their members, and the magistrates over all, more
strictly than in other places.” On the other hand, the low rate
of premarital pregnancy might not signify puritan repression
so much as young people’s acceptance of puritan values.
When critics confronted Arthur Miller on his deviations
from the historical record, and especially when they
expressed skepticism over whether young Abigail Williams
and the elderly John Proctor had an affair, Miller was unre-
pentant.“What’s real?” he retorted.“We don’t know what
these people were like.” Perhaps so, but one suspects that
Winona Ryder’s Abigail would have had a hard time of it in
Salem in 1692. Could a bloom of such poisonous precocity
have emerged through the stony soil of New England puri-
tanism, and if so, could it have survived the attentive weed-
ing of the puritans themselves?Questions for Discussion
■What factors, apart from those mentioned in this essay,
explain why puritan brides rarely had babies within six
months of their marriage? Is this a good measure of pre-
marital chastity?
■How did puritan courtship differ from modern courtship?This image shows actress Winona Ryder as a young puritan who
accuses others of witchcraft.