Act One of The Crucible (Arthur Miller, 1953). Spring 1692, a bedroom in the Reverend Parris’s house: little Betty will not wake, and downstairs the parlour is packed with neighbors talking of witchcraft. The moment the adults leave, the child springs for the window and screams at her cousin that she drank blood, that she drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife. Abigail Williams, seventeen, slaps her and fixes the story for all of them: they danced, Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters, and that is all. Whoever breathes a word about the rest can expect a visit one terrible night. It is the first time we watch her dictate what counts as true in Salem, and it will not be the last. Before the act is over she has accused Tituba and is crying out the names of village women; weeks later she points at Elizabeth Proctor, wife of the man she had an affair with and the woman who dismissed her from their house. When the court begins to waver, she steals her uncle’s savings and runs. By then several innocent people have been hanged. Much of this is Miller’s: the historical Abigail was eleven or twelve and did accuse John and Elizabeth Proctor in 1692, but there is no record that she served in their house or of any affair, nor of any theft or flight; after her testimony that year she vanishes from the records.
// The theoryDeviance is created by the accuser
Labeling theory changed criminology’s question: instead of asking why someone deviates, it asked who decides what is deviant. For Howard Becker (1963), social groups create deviance by making rules and applying them to particular people. In that process moral entrepreneurs play a special role: those who drive crusades to define and pursue a new kind of deviant, and gain authority and protection by doing so. The sociologist Kai Erikson studied the historical Salem in Wayward Puritans (1966) and argued that communities need to point out deviants in order to mark their own boundaries, especially in times of crisis.
Accusation as power
Abigail is the minister’s niece, an orphan with no dowry and a dismissed servant: someone with no power at all. The accusation of witchcraft gives it to her at a stroke. Once the court believes the girls, her word is enough to jail anyone, and nobody can prove that they are not a witch. Becker noted that the moral entrepreneur rarely acts alone: he needs institutions willing to apply the label. The Salem court is that institution. Abigail supplies the names; the judges supply the authority that turns a scream into a conviction.
// The subjectAn orphan who learned to point
Miller builds Abigail as someone who understands the rules of the game before anyone else. She knows that confession saves and denial condemns: those who admit to being witches and accuse others escape the gallows, though they stay in jail, and those who insist on their innocence end up on the gallows. That perverse logic makes pointing the finger the only safe path. Abigail uses it to save herself and to take revenge on Elizabeth Proctor, whom she blames for having her thrown out. Her power lasts as long as the village is afraid; when the fear turns against the court, she flees with her uncle’s money.
Three scenes show it. In Act Two, the clerk Cheever finds a poppet in the Proctors’ house with a needle stuck in its belly; that same evening Abigail had collapsed at Parris’s dinner table with a needle driven into her flesh and blamed Elizabeth’s spirit. Mary Warren had sewn the poppet in court, sitting beside her. In Act Three, when Danforth asks her to search her heart in case the spirits are only illusion, Abigail does not defend herself: she attacks. She reminds him that she is hurt every day for doing her duty in pointing out the Devil’s people, and warns him that he is not safe from the power of Hell either. Then she wraps her arms around herself, says a cold wind has come and fixes her eyes on Mary Warren; the other girls shiver with her and end up seeing a yellow bird on the beam. Labeling, live: the label is performed rather than proved, and the room confirms it. Mary Warren, who has just sworn it was all pretense, ends by accusing Proctor of being the Devil’s man.
Abigail Williams
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// The crackThe accusers are not the cause, they are the symptom
Reading Salem as the work of a lying girl is the most comfortable reading, and the one labeling theory dismantles. Abigail would have had no power without a village willing to believe in witches, judges who admitted no doubt and neighbors who used the accusations to settle land disputes. Erikson insisted that these waves say more about the community that points than about the people pointed at.
The theory also has its limit: it explains very well how the deviant is manufactured and less well why a particular person agrees to be the accuser. To understand Abigail we need her resentment, her desire for Proctor and her fear. And the play reminds us of something Miller wrote with his own time in mind: the witch hunt was also an allegory of McCarthyism, where the accusation of communism worked in the same way.
From Salem in 1692 to moral panics
Witch hunts did not end in 1692. Sociologists call moral panic the waves in which a society identifies a group as a threat and reacts disproportionately: the satanic panic of the 1980s in the United States put day-care workers on trial for ritual abuse that never existed, on the basis of children’s testimony obtained through leading questions. The lesson of Salem is the same: when an accusation is enough and denial becomes suspicious, the process manufactures culprits.
Three key ideas
- Labeling theory (Becker, 1963) holds that deviance is created by those who define and apply the rules; moral entrepreneurs gain power by manufacturing deviants.
- Abigail Williams escapes punishment by accusing others of witchcraft and uses that power to attack Elizabeth Proctor; the court believes her because it needs culprits.
- The crack: Abigail is the symptom, not the cause; Erikson (1966) showed that communities point out deviants to mark their boundaries in times of crisis.
Sources · further reading
- Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
- Erikson, K. T. (1966). Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. Wiley.
- Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. MacGibbon and Kee.
- Miller, A. (1953). The Crucible. Viking Press.
- Boyer, P. and Nissenbaum, S. (1974). Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard University Press.
- Norton, M. B. (2002). In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Alfred A. Knopf.
- Ray, B. C. (dir.). Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. University of Virginia. https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Abigail Williams?
Abigail Williams is a villain from The Crucible, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. All it took was to scream a name and fall to the floor.
Why does Abigail Williams become a villain?
Labeling theory turns Miller’s Abigail Williams into a seventeen-year-old moral entrepreneur (the historical one was eleven or twelve): she learns that screaming a name outweighs any evidence, and that Salem is longing to hear it.
Which criminological theory explains Abigail Williams?
Abigail Williams's case is analysed through Labeling. Labeling theory holds that deviance lies not in the act but in the social reaction: someone with power defines a behavior as deviant and attaches the label to a person. Howard Becker called those who push such definitions “moral entrepreneurs”. Abigail Williams, the protagonist of The Crucible (Arthur Miller, 1953), is a seventeen-year-old moral entrepreneur (the historical Abigail, the Reverend Parris’s niece, was eleven or twelve): caught dancing in the woods, she saves herself by accusing others of witchcraft, and once she discovers the power of her accusations she uses them to destroy Elizabeth Proctor, the wife of the man she desires. The court believes her because it needs witches.
