Anyone else find Abigail interesting?

Okay, I just deleted my entire entry...so I'm going to try my best to type it again? Sorry if it's incoherent.


Just to go along with Dan's post, I'd like to discuss Abigail a bit.

Upon her entry into the play, she seems likes a traditional Puritan girl. Within the first several scenes of Act one, however, Abigail has revealed that she is also something else, from her dancing in the woods, threatening Mercy and Mary, and her previous affair with John Proctor. It's interesting, I think, to see Abigail in such a seemingly ascetic and austere environment. While Puritans are trained to repress their desires for a married man, death of his wife, etc., Abigail acts on them. She isn't completely open with them, but instead of ignoring them altogether, she uses seduction and duplicity to get what she wants: John Proctor. Abigail seems to represent the more realistically flawed and humane side of Puritans. (Puritans are people too, after all). All humans possess a desire to sin for their own pleasure, and Abigail is a perfect represenation of what happens when you give in to them.

I don't see acting on one's whims as necessarily a bad thing, but when your capriciousness results in an affair, threats, and perhaps murder...it has the possibility of resulting in complications , especially in such a strict atmosphere as Salem's.

I think why I find Abigail so interesting is because she symbolizes ostensibly contradictory things. She embodies the underlying and repressed desires of the Puritan people released through accusations of witchcraft, the tenaciousness one could possess in pursuit of a pleasure/power, and the arguable "badness" (I cautiously say "evil") of human nature. Miller obviously intended for Abigail to be seen in a rather negative light. The purpose of this, I'm not so sure, but the fact that Abigail is presented in such a way from the very start, definitely foreshadows more cringe-worthy acts on her part, and further suggestions of the consequences of xenophobia, impulsiveness, and pursuit of power can result in.

(For some strange reason, I have a feeling that...none of that was coherent)

--Tina

The Crucible: Act One

I'm afraid I have not pre-thought my discussion of the first act, so there will be no primo, secundo, tertio, etc. (Matt and his high standards) My ideas are more of a hit-or-miss thing, with me missing a lot. So let's get this started. The first thing I liked about the book thus far is the little tidbits by the author aside from the play placed sporadically, but intelligently, throughout the dialogues. And here my first analysis lies. Though we talked about the Salem witch trials, I think, Miller talks about how it was not a mere repression, it was also a time where people could express publicly his/her guilts and sins by blaming them on someone else. This leads to the scene where HALE comes in and gets ABIGAIL to confess, but she in turn blames TUTUBA for making her do it, then TIBUBA and BETTY blame a string of people. Whether these accusations are true, I do not know; what I do know is that this relates to what Miller said about how it was relieving to confess, in the event that no severe punishment will be put forth. I also see this sort of domino effect of confessing and blaming, which will no doubt continue until someone gets burned at the stakes if I remember correctly.

The only really confusing part to me was the part from pages 33-36. Even though my U.S. History is a little rusty, considering the time period this book was written in, I would have to say that Miller is making some allusions to the persecution of communist (like the witches in Salem) and how they were forced to confess and blamed someone else (as TITUBA, ABIGAIL, and BETTY did) I don't want to stretch Miller's words too far, so I'll stop here to prevent myself from looking more stupid if I'm wrong.

Other than that, this Puritan based play is rather straightforward, if anything Puritan can be thus so.
Sorry no cheap thrills (inside Latin joke); just read the play, it actually pretty good :)

--Dan

A Few Choice Inquiries Regarding Anne Bradstreet

Primo: Mrs. Bradstreet, in the first poem, claims that her "ill-form'd offspring" were snatched from her and published by well-meaning friends without her consent. How much of that is actually true? The last two lines of the poem suggest that she sent them "out of door" in hopes making some cash (such as it was). (A point could be made here regarding her implicit focus on the worldly, and indeed, it turns out I just did.)

The question following then is, did she actually get any money off of her work? (Technically, secundo.) My guess is-- probably, considering its popularity and her efforts afterward in preparing a second edition. The second edition leads me to believe that she did want them published or else was later encouraged by the first edition's success.

So (tertio), was all this deprecation an attempt to devalue her own poems in order to make them more palatable to the male dominated English poetry scene?!

Lastly, I just wanted to point out that Anne Bradstreet seems to me to be an all-round smashing good poetess and a rather ravishing woman at that. (!) The point is, I think, that her poems have the riveting quality of constantly working at multiple levels at once, the expected level, the ironic level, the metaphysical level and the crazy awesome poetical level. (Et al?)

And for a little comparison to top off this post, if we take her conviction that her poems have inherent defects as true and her ambivalence at having them published as sincere, then there is ample precedent. Countless authors were only put into print after their death. Kafka's works, for instance, exist entirely because Max Brod refused to honor Kafka's last wishes and burn all his manuscripts. A side question (quarto): Do those silly (genius) authors really know what they're doing?

So the final question then is (quinto), on how many levels, exactly, is Mrs Bradstreet working?

-- Matthew Weiss

Welcome to the MHS English 3H Blog!

Welcome, English 3H scholars of MHS Class of '08. Ever since we first began using online bulletin boards as a way to converse about literature and writing (all the way back in the early '90's, and please don't feel the need to comment about how long ago that was, or how old you were then), it was always my intent to do the same in my classroom. Admittedly, it took a little longer than I thought, but here we are.

I have put this space together for the benefit of your literary study--to expand your ability to converse about the texts we will be discussing. This space is essentially yours to post relevant--and presumably intelligent--comments and questions regarding our readings. At the moment, that would consist of American Puritan literature.

Please note the following rules:
1. only students enrolled in MHS English IIIH may post comments here. This is not a discussion board intended for the world.
2. anyone who posts must do so with their REAL first name. Any posts found to be made using names other than real (for example, posting using another student's name) will be dealt with according to school disciplinary policy.
3. all discussion will proceed in respectful, scholarly manner
4. to ensure that #3 is obeyed, I will personally monitor all discussions on this blog. It's not that I don't trust teenagers to behave in responsible ways. . .oh, wait--yes, it is. I don't.
5. Do not expect me to comment on every posting, even if a question has been directly asked of me by one of you. I am much more interested to see whether your fellow scholars are capable of suggesting viable answers and explanations. I reserve the right to comment when and if I deem it necessary.
6. From time to time, if the mood strikes me, I may make a comment or pose a question, or refer you to some additional reading I've discovered. Just because I've done that does not make you obligated to respond. . .at least, not yet.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but I also reserve the right to change/adjust/modify/ invent as we go along. Because I can, that's why.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and seeing you all in in class.

MR. LAZ