Crucible Power!!

Despite the class discussion's criticism of the formation of the female characters in The Crucible, the women in this play have much more have internal motivations and can wield what few prerogatives they have to control much of the play's action. It is among the women that we see most of the hysteria, heartbreak, and jealousy viciously enacted. If one is to cast Arthur Miller as a male chauvinist simply because he chooses to set his this play in a socially oppressive era, and was lucky or unlucky enough to have married Marilyn Monroe, perhaps one would have been well-suited to jury duty in Salem. A quick reading of Truman Capote's beautiful memories of his friendship with, and the quiet genius of Monroe included in his Music for Chameleons would prove that casting impossible.
Abigail may be one of the most manipulative female characters in American Literature. As sexually powerful, and without parents to contain her, she is able to successfully tempt John Proctor and control him for a good part of the play. Furthermore, she essentially dominates the direction of the trials, and as a result, the town. It's hard not to cheer a little for her when Parris reveals that she has literally taken the money and run. As "Echos Down the Corridor" reveals, she even makes it to Boston, although as a prostitute. The extra scene included in the appendix, while an interesting look into John and Abigail's relationship, in fact undermines her power. Clearly, Abigail is far from being emotionally well balanced. But if she is in fact convinced of her claims, she ceases to be the potent villainess and is really just another victim of the mania. The play is all the more chilling with her wits and cunning intact. Elizabeth Proctor wields the knowledge of her husband's infidelity. And whether she uses it against him or not, it is this knowledge that frees her. Goody Putnam has the most compelling argument and the most dire "evidence." Her and Putnam's dead babies, and the frantic agony she that she harbors is perhaps one of the greatest factors in the initiation of the trials. Goody Nurse is the angelic grandmother figure, whose unjust death is the least dramatic, but one of the most resonant murders in The Crucible.
The power of the female characters is more all the more subtle, and all the more potent that is in fact subversive. It works against the order that is to be maintained in the patriarchal theocracy. Although it is power that they are never have supposed to posses, without it, the events that form The Crucible never could have taken place.

By the way, in regards to the title of the play- wouldn't it be easy to interpret a crucible as a symbol of female anatomy? Kind of hot, isn't it?