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The Significance of Mary Warren in The Crucible

            Mary Warren plays a very important role in the development of The Crucible's plot. Mary Warren is a young servant girl whose ethics are challenged when she becomes afflicted with terror and intimidation. Mary is a character of weak determination who allows herself to be bullied constantly. She is not an "evil" person, but her fragile will combined with her desire to be someone in the Salem community forces her into a situation in which she does harm to other people. .
             Mary Warren is clearly a follower and easily succumbs to Abigail's demands and threats. Mary's passive nature becomes clear from the beginning of the play, her "subservient" behavior automatically shown when she tries desperately to convince Abigail that they "must tell the truth". The fact that she must try to persuade Abigail first and insist on telling the "truth" instead of going to confess the authorities herself, shows how she is incapable she is under the threat of Abigail. Mary Warren understands the necessity for herself and the others to confess. Mary argues with Abigail that "It's a sin to conjure" Although Mary is "naive" she is not willfully malicious and realizes that her actions and the actions of the other girls were wrong. Miller also portrays Mary as a "lonely girl". The word "lonely" shows that Mary's participation with her fellow accusers provides her with the fulfillment of some need to be part of a group; she gains a sense of power amongst the others. Mary's loneliness and the deprivation of freedom being a female servant is a reason to why she involves herself in the initial event in the "forest". .
             A transition in her behavior is presented in Act 2 as she finds a new sort of power in being an accuser. Given what she states to John and Elizabeth Proctor, she feels that she has authority given to her by the courts.


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1. The Crucible

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2. Review of the Crucible

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The Crucible is a play about witchcraft and mass hysteria in the town of Salem in Massachusetts. The Crucible is set in the 17th century when Puritanism was very strong. People believed in God and followed strict religious. During Act 1 of The Crucible a group of young girls where dancing in the woods around a fire. The girls thought that Reverend Parris was thinking that they were practising witchcraft. Witchcraft in the 17th century was a very serious crime and people were hung if they were accused of being a witch. To avoid punishment after being accused of witchcraft the girls named other...

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4. The Crucible

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5. The Crucible

... ., of the New York Post says, "It is a drama of emotional power and impact." Robert Warshaw, of The Immediate Experience says, "It is a drama of universal significance." The characters in the play are very well developed. Each has his or her own traits that add to the story line. Every character shows some type of strong traits at some point during the play. Two of the strongest emotions shown in the play are fear and pride. In the case of Mary Warren ... compared to many fearful times such as the Holocaust, Vietnam, Gulf War, 9/11 terrorist attacks, and even the recent blackout in the U...

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6. Drama Response

... five minutes long, and involved a short dance section at the beginning. In this performance, I played the character Rose, a woman in her thirties, with the apparent mental age of a young child. The other girls in my group played the characters of Maggie, Agnes, Chris and Kate, who were all of Rose's sisters. I had quite a small amount of lines, but I felt my character bared a large significance. I felt that Rose was an important character to try ... to do so from Proctor. Proctor is not the only dominant character in the play, Danforth and Hale are both also very demanding. In this way ...

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