Arthur Miller’s Self-Understanding in The Crucible

While the psychoanalysis of art has often focused on the internal conflicts in the creator’s life, psychobiographical sources are integral to understanding the process of artistic creativity but are not its equivalent. It is how the writer shapes and presents the personal that creates great works. In his essay on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, James William Anderson quotes from Tolstoy and Miller on how the “soul” of the artist should be revealed in the creations. Many have the depth of soul that Tolstoy and Miller say are needed, but few have the talent and capacity to make their inner experience sear the souls of readers, listeners, or viewers. Discussions of creativity then should encompass the full process from the recesses of the creator’s soul to the art, craft, and authenticity that are present within the work. With these caveats, I turn to Anderson’s essay on The Crucible.

Anderson asserts that it is the sexual liaison Miller had with Marilyn Monroe and the guilt the dramatist felt about it that is the creative well for this 1953 historical drama on the Salem Witch Trials. While the play appears to have sources in the contemporary Red Scare, Anderson declares, “Miller’s feeling about McCarthyism is not the kind of personal concern, rooted deeply within inner conflicts and obsessions, that I am claiming is at the heart of artistic creativity.” Why not? Are not the feelings of betrayal, of corruption, and of disillusionment with authority prominent themes in Miller’s earlier popular plays All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949) as well as in The Crucible? Cannot these themes awaken deep personal conflicts and become obsessions?

By favoring sexual preoccupations over conflict between generations, Anderson risks his study’s being psychologically in-

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complete. Commentators on the biographical sources of a writer need to look at the whole life, the creative work preceding the particular one in question, and the multiple themes within the work being examined. In focusing on the inner turmoil Miller experienced in succumbing to his desire for the glamorous and tortured movie star, Anderson does not place Miller’s agony within the full context of Miller’s psyche, including his preoccupation with the sins of those with power and position. These themes are present in the corruption of the manufacturer in All My Sons and in Death of a Salesman’s Willy Loman’s adultery and the disillusioning impact it had on his son, Biff. The sins of fathers are at the “heart” of one side of Miller’s “inner conflicts and obsessions” and “artistic creativity.”

Anderson thinks highly of Miller. He writes that the playwright had “an exceptional and penetrating understanding of himself.” Anderson uses as his example of Miller’s insight how John Proctor in The Crucible mirrors the conflicts that preoccupied Miller while writing the play. When Miller first became enamored with Marilyn Monroe, he was married with two children. Miller found that “a radiating force” entered him and he could “lose” himself in “sensuality” (quoted by Anderson). Miller’s guilt over his illicit desires is enacted in the play by the conflicts John Proctor feels between his sexual encounter with his former servant, Abigail, and his desire to preserve his marriage with Elizabeth.

When we first meet John Proctor, he rebuffs the advances of Abigail though he acknowledges he still is drawn to her. Later with his wife, he fears her judgment of him because of his affair with Abigail. Elizabeth tells John that she is not his judge and that the “magistrate sits in your heart that judges you” (The Crucible in Arthur Miller: Eight Plays, 1981, p. 258). The guilt-ridden Proctor seeks reconciliation with his wife. Elizabeth provides him with the opportunity to redeem himself and for a restored alliance with her. When the couple finds out that the accusations of witchcraft in Salem have resulted in trials and that the charges are based on false statements from Abigail and others, Elizabeth beseeches John to tell the authorities the knowledge he has that these are false allegations. Proctor then becomes a reformed man who will act virtuously amidst the hysteria in Salem. He confronts the accusers and

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the court, and is sentenced to death. On the day scheduled for his execution, to be with his wife he confesses to consorting with the Devil but refuses to name names. Before his false confession, he talks about the need for honesty and to let “them that never lied die to keep their souls” (p. 326). When pressured to name names, he tears up his signed confession. This act of defiance lifts him up, despite the death sentence imposed upon him. The character says of himself, “I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor” (p. 332). Miller portrays Proctor as ultimately an upright, moral man despite the fact that he has sinned sexually and lied to the court. If Proctor is a stand-in for Miller, the author is presenting himself as honorable, if flawed.

Contrast this with how Miller portrays Abigail, Proctor’s partner in sexual crimes. She uses her sexuality to seduce and betray and seeks vengeance on Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail is the leader of those who make false accusations of witchcraft against Salem residents. The woman who represents what Miller called “the sensuousness of a female blessing” is here presented as a lying temptress (quoted in Anderson). It could even be said that Miller views Abigail as acting evilly. The questionable motives in this drama are projected more onto Abigail than anyone else. She becomes the embodiment of sin, while a reinvigorated John Proctor fights for truth and justice.

This division between the moral conscience of Proctor and the malevolence of Abigail is an easy way out for the Arthur Miller who wishes to abandon himself to the luxurious life of fulfilled sensuality with Marilyn Monroe. The Crucible, then, seems less an example of Miller’s penetrating self-understanding than a rationalization for his need to retain a self-image of having a degree of moral integrity. Proctor’s courage is contrasted with Abigail’s uncontrolled sexuality and deceptions. This dichotomy gives the play a melodramatic element, which may be a reason for its appeal, but means it is less authentic. In this play, Miller is keeping some of the secrets of his soul from himself, and his art suffers for it. Psychoanalysis, when confronting creative works, can use its understanding to show the manifold ways we humans have of being self-deceptive and when an artist has reached the depths of insight that create enduring works of the highest quality.

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In Miller’s life, after he had divorced his first wife, married and then divorced Monroe, he did come to greater self-understanding that was evident in After the Fall (1964) and The Price (1968) and in his remarkable 1987 autobiography, Timebends: A Life. But in The Crucible, Miller does not reach the level of self-honesty that is his ideal.

In considering The Crucible, the political dimensions of the play also must be confronted. Toward the end of his article, Anderson recognizes the political intent of the drama and asserts that “one’s political stance also stems fundamentally from personal concerns.” He then goes on to recount what Miller writes about how familial rivalries motivated his personal and political ambitions. Oddly enough, Anderson then does not relate these psychological motivations to his earlier statement that the playwright’s feelings about McCarthyism could not be a source for artistic creativity.

Nevertheless, Miller does himself say that it “was the contemporary situation” and its resemblance to the Salem Witch Trials that motivated him to compose this work with a moral message. What can “safeguard” humanity against “human delusion,” he writes, are the sacrifices of the “courageous few.” He wants to show the centrality of “conscience” in these dire circumstances (quotes in Martin Gottfried, Arthur Miller: His Life and Work, 2003, p. 198). In The Crucible, authority becomes abusive when a mentality of hysteria overtakes a political community and destroys innocent lives. What is needed when the community goes so far astray is for righteous voices to speak truth to power. In The Crucible, we have another Miller play that addresses the malfeasance of authority and how standing up to abuse can free the soul, even if it means sacrificing one’s life. For Miller himself, the figure of John Proctor enacted the guilt that haunted him, and yet for both a sense of virtue was restored in defying unjust authority. What makes this drama less authentic is Miller’s creation of a scapegoat in the female character of Abigail that embodied the sins he could not quite face in himself.

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