This ambiguity is manifested in the witch’s broom, which makes women voler
(fly or steal), that is, every woman/witch has her own invisible broom to let her fly
and steal. In The Crucible, the flying imagery of the witch/woman appears several
times. For example, when Mrs. Putnam comes to visit Betty, she asks Parris “How
high did she fly, how high?”86
Abigail, to the ceiling, in a genuine conversation with the “bird,” as though trying to talk it out of attacking her: But God made my face; Envy is a deadly sin, Mary.
And Abigail pronounces that she sees a bird that
seems trying to attack her in the court:
Abigail: Why—? She gulps. Why do you come, yellow bird?
………..
87
Moreover, the abrupt change of Betty’s reaction is conspicuous. She wants to fly
away from the predicament that she concocts by herself. “Betty: I’ll fly to Mama.
Let me fly! She raises her arms as though to fly, and streaks for the window, gets
one leg out.”
88
86 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.12.
87 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.106.
88 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.18.
Except for the meanings of flying and stealing, voler, I think, also
means metamorphosis. The metamorphosis is the only form that a woman could
assume to liberate herself. She could acquiesce in the plans a master/husband/father
has made for her in the daytime, and she could ride on the broom to attend the
devil’s Sabbat at midnight: the broom is compensation for the one that woman lost,
the phallus. With the broom/phallus, women have the autonomy to fly away from
the containing framework of the patriarchal system. In a sense, I consider that the
girls’ mass hysteria is an effect that is derived from the broom/ voler.
According to Denis J. Brion,
the popular distinction between hysteria as a clinical category ( whether a psychical disorder, a sexist mistake, or “false” symptom) and as a social phenomenon (“mass” hysteria) begins to collapse. This collapse is initiated not merely because individual and social hysteria can be viewed roughly as two sides of the same coin (i.e. the psychiatric establishment responds hysterically to women by naming some of them mad – which conception retains the individual/ social distinction), but because hysteria is a group (=
women) symptom that embodies a social, and not merely individual or even familial, disorder.89
Mass hysteria could be deemed not only an individual disorder but also a
social frenzy. It is not only a social frenzy but also female frenzy. Mass hysteria
could also be treated as a public wave or collective movement which is often
associated with witchcraft. Mass hysteria, according to some critics, is a sort of
collective movement/ behavior, a term used in a particular way by sociologists and
collective behavior scholars, who link it to such things as riots, crowds and mass
hysteria.90
89 Denis J. Brion. The Hidden Persistence of Witchcraft, pp.227.252.
Collective movement/ behavior refers to like-minded individuals who
gather together to express a kind of crowd phenomenon, sometimes they show
similar conduct and affection in the usual way. And mass hysteria is considered one
of the so-called collective movements. In mass hysteria, rumors play a principal role
90http://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/smc/glossary.html.
within the various congregations, including riots, panic rioters and frenzied reactions.
In The Crucible, the rumor is just a signal of mass hysteria which brings about the
girls’ anomalistic emotions, thoughts and actions. Thus, this sort of anomaly would
solicit spontaneous movement. That is to say, mass hysteria actually gives the
girls/the women a stage or space to materialize their subjectivity. Their autonomy is
recuperated from the enactment of mass hysteria and the “beneficial result” from
mass hysteria can be evidently seen from the girl, Mary in her conversation with
Elizabeth and Proctor.
Mary: (Striving for her authority.) I’ll nit stand whipping any more! The Devil’s loose in Salem, Mister Proctor, we must discover where he is hiding!
Proctor: I’ll whip the Devil out of you… (With whip raised she yelled.)
Mary: (Pointing at Elizabeth.) I saved her life today! (Silence. His whip comes down.)
Elizabeth: (Softly.) I am accused?
Mary: you are somewhat mentioned. But I said I never see no sign you ever sent your spirit out to hurt no one, and seeing I do live so closely with you, they dismissed it.
Elizabeth: Who accused me?
Mary: I am bound by law; I cannot tell it. (To Proctor.) I ….I hope you’ll not be so sarcastical no more—four judges and the King’s deputy sat to dinner with us but an hour ago. I …. I would have you speak civilly to me, from this out.
Proctor: (In disgust at her.) Go to bed.
Mary: I’ll not be ordered to bed no more, Mister Proctor! I am eighteen and a woman, however single!91
91 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.33-p.34.
It seems that Mary becomes more confident to make an eloquent appeal for
her subjectivity when she claims that she is a mature woman. Besides, Mary fears
Proctor no more because she knows there is a prop behind her to protect her. It goes
without denial that not only Mary but also other girls do experience this procedure
of awakening in which they liberate their hidden desire by performing mass hysteria
in search of their new identities.
In ancient times, mass hysteria was a women’s disease, but in Salem mass
hysteria means “ease”, if we ignore the negative “dis”. In the eyes of feminism, Feminist understanding of hysteria has been influenced by work in semiotics and discourse theory, seeing hysteria as a specifically feminine protolanguage, communicating through the body messages that cannot be verbalized. For some writers, hysteria has been claimed as the first step on the road to feminism, a specifically feminine pathology that speaks to and against patriarchy.92
witches/ may accept or repudiate the projected guilt but do not do so by using
rational thinking – rather, they reverse it by cursing or enacting a curse. Cursing is
so-called “performative language”; enacting a curse entails a bodily performance
and the two are closely linked.
Yet, as a matter of fact, the girls’/ women’s mass hysteria becomes a weapon to fight
against the patriarchal system and women have their own particular way of doing
things when encountering problems and the unknown. Moreover, the girls/ women/
93
92 Elaine Showalter. Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender, p.286.
93 Juliet Mitchell. Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria, p.203.
Hysteria or madness is even more a mechanism of self-protection and
self-defense. By performing her own body and speaking with her own language, a
woman knows how to play on to the audience’s susceptibility, the male gaze. When
the focus falls on the girls or women who have been marginalized and oppressed,
they find pleasure that could not happen in real life. There is one scene that Tituba
confides her abomination about Parris through the performance.
Hale: who came to you with the Devil? Two? Three? Four?—how many?
Tituba:(She pants, and begins rocking back and forth, staring ahead.) there was four. There was four.
Parris: Who? Who? Their names, their names!
Tituba: Oh, how many times he bid me kill you, Mister Parris!
Parris: Kill me!
Tituba: (Staring to weep.) he says Mister Parris must be kill! Mister Parris no goodly man, Mister Parris mean man and no gentle man, and he bid be rise out of my bed and cut your throat! (Parris backs away a step L.,
then all straighten up. They gasp.) I tell him, no! I don’t hate that man!
I don’t want to kill that man! But he say, You work for me, Tituba, and I make you free! I give you pretty dress to wear, and put you way high up in the air and you gone fly back to Barbados! And I say, You lie, Devil, you lie! And then he come one stormy night to me, and he say, Look! I have white people belong to me. And o look,…..and there was Goody Good.94
94 Arthur Miller. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, p.25.
The one who knows the truth clearly finds out that Tituba pretends to pass the
Devil’s words to express her complaint. In the real life, this kind of offense would
definitely bring her in a predicament. At that moment, it is Tituba’s turn to
manipulate Parris.