Moreover, Carl Jung gives it a different meaning: in Anima he mentions that the
femme fatale is the dark anima who evokes destructive power and symbolizes a
dangerous illusion. And he creates two terms, the animus and the anima to illustrate
archetypes of feminine and masculine. He suggests that every individual has a
psychological hybrid, that everyone has either a masculine or feminine side within
their unconsciousness.
The Anima is the personification of all feminine psychological tendencies within a man, the archetypal feminine symbolism within a man's unconscious. The Animus is the personification of all masculine psychological tendencies within a woman, the archetypal masculine symbolism within a woman’s unconsciousness.42
Yet, the anima and the animus both have negative and positive influences on a
person. If a negative animus is strongly present, the woman is more ruthless,
destructive and aggressive. John Proctor’s cold-heartedness makes a great impact on
Abigail and motivates her to do away with her role of a passive, feminine woman
but learn to be more masculine and aggressive in order to grab what she wants. She
has to be more logical, ambitious and assertive. Consequently, Abigail has
42 http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/anima.html.
developed the animus or the masculine energy within her unconsciousness. She is a
masculine woman.
The disorder of Abigail/ the woman/ the witch whose boundless body has
threatened patriarchal norms. She always finds a way to protect herself with the
atypical bewitchment. She has made men in town submit to her “oracle.” She
indirectly murders John Proctor to let Elizabeth Proctor lose her husband yet, at the
same time, Abigail is certainly losing him. Abigail confronts the phallogocentrism
by exploring her “dark continent” of female pleasure and challenges God and the
patriarchal authority by performing her flexible and malleable body. Is Abigail a
victim? The answer, definitely, is negative. Ritual for Abigail is not just a fantasy,
but a meaningful tactic. Because of her adultery with John Proctor, she desperately
wants to be more attractive and fascinating.
Rituals do create a free space where transformation could occur, thus the
unknown consequence is powerful. It breaks through the swirling thoughts chasing
each other around and around in the mind by taking us out of that mind, down into
the body and through the heart.43
43
And this kind of psychic transformation resonates
with self-awareness, being and consciousness. Sometimes it is also an autohypnosis
isolating us to reconstruct a new order beyond the official system. As for the girls’
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/ritualbooks.htm.
festival, the ritual is just like a performance; the individual experience and the
fantasy are the principles for them to design their own story, their own history. That
is, the inherent flow and the instinctive rhythm inside the women’s bodies could
never disappear and in Ruth Barrett’s essay “Daughters of the Goddess,” she points
out, “It is often through women’s rites that women connect to and honor the deepest
parts of them, bringing their inner knowledge to conscious awareness”. And, of
course, their behaviors intensify through the environment, observation, and imitation.
In The Crucible, according to Arthur Miller’s description, Abigail is in her prime at
seventeen: “a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for
dissembling.”44
Through powerful autohypnosis, the consciousness resonates with inner
knowledge and experience; the rituals connect to collective unconsciousness. Carl It cannot be denied that Abigail is indeed an attractive girl or
woman and the other girls perhaps have a little admiration for and envy of her
beauty and charms. In some situations, pretty looks, for a female, could win
privilege or some special treatment, especially from the opposite sex. It is possible
that the other girls, in some sense, want to be part of Abigail without knowing it, so
they try to persuade Tituba to conjure the so-called witchcraft in order to increase
their charm or femininity.
44 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.8.
Jung has theorized two unconscious levels, the personal unconsciousness and the
collective unconsciousness. The personal unconsciousness is based on the individual
experience, which is composed of suppression, forgotten memories and traumas,
whereas the collective unconscious connects to everyone’s common experience. Not
only does each person have special experiences, but also shares some similar
unconscious with one another. According to Jung, there are archetypes, including
images and memories of important human experiences, which pass from generation
to generation. The content of collective unconscious impinges immense influence:
when the content cannot be unfolded in the consciousness it appears as a symbolic
form within a dream or fantasy. For the girls’ gathering, it is proceeding by fantasy,
and I think the conspicuous part is Tituba’s “non-linguistic” performance. From this
aspect, the rituals are, according to Ruth Barrett, categorized as collective
unconscious, and she also notes that “In effective ritual, both the right and left
hemispheres of the brain are involved through the simultaneous use of visual
symbols, spoken words, movement, and / or rhythm.”45
Tituba is Parris’s servant, bought by him when he had business in Barbados.
Barbados is another British colony that furnished the North American colonies with
Tituba
45 Ruth Barrett, “Daughters of the Goddess.”
African salves. Tituba has a very obscure and ambiguous identity: her mother is an
Indian and her father is a fierce black. Puritans placed Indian, African and slaves
into the same category, and could hardly tolerate the half-breed of half-Indian and
half-African. Because her skin fuses two kinds of unknown darkness it is considered
that Tituba is inclined to affiliate with the Devil.
The salient characteristic in the Puritan mind, shared by both Indians and Africans, was their degeneracy due to their alien culture, pagan rituals, and corrupted skin color. Therefore, being perceived as both African and Indian served not to diminish but to intensify the satanic attached to Tituba and to heighten fears and fantasies Puritans projected on her.46
As a slave, she has been under a severe strain, and her suppression is more serious
than that of the other girls. Before entering the room to nurse Betty, Tituba has
already sensed that she would be the first to suffer from scolding and controversy.
“She enters as one does who can no longer bear to be barred from the sight of her
beloved, but she is also very frightened because her slave sense has warned her that,
as always, trouble in this house eventually lands on her back.”47
46 Veta Smith Tucker. Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village.
p.628.
47 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.8.
Her ESP tells her
that Betty’s illness will bring her misfortune. When she is forced to confess it is
surprising that her testimony is so flawless. How could an uneducated slave express
her thoughts so fluently? The following section shows Tituba’s perfect performance: