An Actor’s Perspective - Abigail and Tilly

While Abigail Williams of The Crucible and Tilly Dunnage of The Dressmaker may not appear to have much in common, a closer look exposes many similarities between these two fiery characters. In order to examine these women side by side, we can look at both the external factors – that is, elements such as the authors, the plot devices, and the formats of the novel and play – and the internal factors, such as the motivations and intentions of the characters. Through these different lenses, we can see many similarities between these two women.

Firstly, let’s look at the external factors of these texts. The Dressmaker is a novel written by a woman, in 2000. In this novel, we get plenty of insight into what the characters are thinking and feeling, as well as what they say out loud to other characters. For example, even though we see Tilly continuously rejecting Teddy, we can see from her thoughts that she does in fact care for him deeply; this positions us to empathise with Tilly, and want these two characters to get together. Tilly is the main protagonist of The Dressmaker, which means that the reader follows her journey and is prompted to care about what happens to her. Although the novel ends with Tilly setting the town on fire and symbolically destroying all her oppressors, we may judge her actions less than Abigail’s, because we have felt her pain and know that she had good intentions until that point. Tilly gave the people of Dungatar every possible chance to accept and love her; the final straw comes when Molly dies, not even to be given pain relief in her final hours, and Tilly decides that these people must be punished for their cruelty: ‘In light of all they had done, and what they had not done, what they had decided not to do - they mustn’t be abandoned. Not yet’. In a way, I think that we end Tilly’s journey where we see Abigail’s journey begin. Abigail has already lost everything before the events of The Crucible, so when we meet her, she has already been backed into a desperate corner. In The Dressmaker, we see Tilly lose everything, and only then do her actions match those of Abigail.

In contrast, Abigail is the antagonist of The Crucible. Not to be confused with ‘villain’, the antagonist exists to drive the action forward and to thwart the protagonist in their journey. Essentially, Abigail’s function in the play is to act in opposition to John Proctor, which we see her do to disastrous consequences. Because The Crucible is a play, we only learn about Abigail through what she says; this makes it more difficult to empathise with her, because while she may be feeling lonely, scared and insecure, her actions make her appear cold, vicious and calculating.

While Miller’s stage directions may give us a little more insight into Abigail’s thoughts, it’s important to remember that stage directions are clues for the actors in their performance, reflecting how the playwright wishes the character to come across to an audience, and don’t always give deeper insight into what the character is thinking. Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory for McCarthyism, and fashioned his protagonist, John Proctor, on his own experiences of feeling persecuted. As such, he wrote The Crucible intending for his audience to empathise with Proctor, not Abigail. On the other hand, we have Rosalie Ham writing a female protagonist in the 21st century but set in the 1950s, a time when women were still lacking many rights and opportunities. Using the gothic novel style to her advantage, Ham gives her story a more feminist ending, allowing a woman to enact revenge that realistically may not have been possible at that time.

Now let’s look at the internal factors of the worlds that make these women similar. Abigail and Tilly are both intelligent, independent and strong-willed. Because she was sent away from Dungatar as a child, Tilly is well-travelled and educated, and has picked up a range of skills and knowledge that the small-town folk know nothing about. This makes them admire and distrust her. We learn later that she had a child who died tragically; this is a woman who has lived a lot in her young life and knows wisdom and pain beyond her years! Though we know less about Abigail, we learn that she views the other inhabitants of Salem as hypocrites, the same way that John does (‘I never knew what pretence Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men!’, Act I). Her affair with John has ‘opened her eyes’; it has left her irrevocably changed and she doesn’t want to go back to a life of servitude (and who wouldn’t feel the same?!). We also see Abigail’s intelligence and quick wit in the way that she is able to turn allegations towards others. She listens to what the adults around her insinuate and uses the names that she hears mentioned to place suspicion upon others. While it may not endear her towards the audience, Abigail is acting to keep herself alive; she knows that by accusing people lower than she is in the social hierarchy (such as the homeless, the ‘mad’, and the slaves), she will be protected in the meantime.

Both women are also beautiful and alluring, often to their own or other’s detriment. The townspeople of Dungatar are intrigued or attracted to Tilly because of her beauty, mystery and otherness, but also ostracise her because of these qualities. In Act One, Miller describes Abigail as ‘strikingly beautiful…with an endless capacity for dissembling’; it is probably these qualities that attracted Proctor to Abigail, and that she then uses to her own advantage when later she must fight for her own survival. Both women suffer great loss and had traumatic and violent childhoods – Abigail saw her parents murdered before her eyes and was then sent to live with her cold and strict uncle Parris, while Tilly was habitually bullied and assaulted by the other schoolchildren, led by Stewart Pettyman, whose accidental death she was then blamed and sent away for. Even the eyewitness testimony of Ed McSwiney (who is himself towards the bottom of the social hierarchy) can’t save Tilly from the power and influence of Councillor Evan Pettyman.

Both characters are at the mercy of patriarchal societies and must adapt to these environments for self-preservation. As a poor orphan, Abigail is already towards the bottom end of the social hierarchy in Salem; we learn at the start of the play that she has also lost her virginity, which in those times was seen as a woman’s only commodity, so to ensure her own survival Abigail needs to be married to John, or she will risk persecution and become an outcast for life.  From a modern perspective, we can see how wrong their relationship is: John was her employer, while Abigail was a teenager that worked in his home. He was in a position of power, which he abused by taking advantage of her affections for him, and then fired her when his wife found out, leaving her jobless and with her reputation ruined. We then see in Act One that he gaslights her, by refusing to admit that he ever loved her, and first lying then admitting that he has visited her house and looked up at her window. By 2020 standards, we know that John would be held accountable for these actions and Abigail would be the victim. However, The Crucible was written by a man in 1953, a notoriously sexist time when female characters were often stereotyped and underwritten. Now, whether Miller was writing a one-dimensional character to suit the needs of his male protagonist, or whether he was intentionally writing women this way to comment upon the even more sexist time period that The Crucible takes place is debatable – I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Both characters are at the mercy of patriarchal societies and must adapt to these environments for self-preservation. As a poor orphan, Abigail is already towards the bottom end of the social hierarchy in Salem; we learn at the start of the play that she has also lost her virginity, which in those times was seen as a woman’s only commodity, so to ensure her own survival Abigail needs to be married to John, or she will risk persecution and become an outcast for life.  From a modern perspective, we can see how wrong their relationship is: John was her employer, while Abigail was a teenager that worked in his home. He was in a position of power, which he abused by taking advantage of her affections for him, and then fired her when his wife found out, leaving her jobless and with her reputation ruined. We then see in Act One that he gaslights her, by refusing to admit that he ever loved her, and first lying then admitting that he has visited her house and looked up at her window. By 2020 standards, we know that John would be held accountable for these actions and Abigail would be the victim. However, The Crucible was written by a man in 1953, a notoriously sexist time when female characters were often stereotyped and underwritten. Now, whether Miller was writing a one-dimensional character to suit the needs of his male protagonist, or whether he was intentionally writing women this way to comment upon the even more sexist time period that The Crucible takes place is debatable – I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

I like to think that these two women were ahead of their times, and if life had dealt them less tragic circumstances, they would have thrived and led full, fruitful lives. Both reject the patriarchal societies that they have been born into – societies that deny women education, freedom of speech, sexual liberty, and many other basic human rights to varying degrees. Tilly and Abigail are intelligent women who are unappreciated, judged and exiled in these societies. If they had been treated with love and nurture, both stories may have ended very differently.

Jess Stanley - 2020