In The Beginning of Act 2 How Does Arthur Miller Show the Audience the strain In the Relationship between John & Elizabeth Proctor? As a Member of the Audience Where Does Your Sympathy Lie?

Authors Avatar

        

In The Beginning of Act 2 How Does Arthur Miller Show the Audience the strain In the Relationship between John & Elizabeth Proctor? As a Member of the Audience Where Does Your Sympathy Lie?

In act 1 Abigail Williams and the other girls accuse several people of witchcraft. They are lying to get out of trouble. However, the judges believe them and condemn several people to hang. Abigail is the leader of the group; but not from friendship but from fear. She and John have had an affair in the past, which only Elizabeth knows about.

When Elizabeth first comes into the room, she immediately wants to know where John has been:

        ‘What keeps you so late?’

Elizabeth is afraid that John was with Abigail. This means that Elizabeth cannot let the affair go. Not only does she want to know where he is at all times, but she is showing coldness to John:

        ‘John kiss kisses her. She receives it. With a certain disappointment…’

She doesn’t push him away but nor does she respond. She could be thinking many things about john; maybe he is comparing me to Abigail. John realises this and lets the audience know that he doesn’t appreciate it:

        ‘It’s winter in here yet’

Miller is using this phase as a metaphor to explain that Elizabeth does not show much affection towards John especially later in this scene.

The actors onstage would act the scene with very little eye contact; this will emphasize the separation between John and Elizabeth. However John’s tone of voice should be very gentle just to try and please Elizabeth.

Join now!

Early in the scene John adds some salt to the pot, without tell telling his wife; this is in fear of her thinking he’s judging her. He says:

‘It’s well seasoned’

This is to make her feel better; he constantly wants to make Elizabeth happier. However he feels guilty because she replies with:

        ‘(Blushing with pleasure): I took great care’

As you can imagine John would start to feel awkward because Elizabeth took great care in cooking and yet did not get it the way John likes it. Yet it is a dramatic irony; as Elizabeth doesn’t know. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay