Who is Mary Warren? Is she just a servant in the Procter household….or is she more? I see Mary Warren as a pawn, a child and she is very naïve. Are you looking a little harder? Do you see more aspects or Mary Warren than you did before? Let us now take a closer look at this character….
Mary Warren was hired to the Procter household by Elizabeth Procter after she caught Abigail Williams (their old servant) in the midst of an affair with her husband, John Procter. Abigail Williams still wants to be with John however, and is using everyone around her to get what she wants. An excellent display of Abigail’s selfish use of Mary Warren is when she puts a needle into a doll Mary makes; After Mary Warren makes a doll in court one day, she gives it to Elizabeth Procter, not knowing that Abigail secretly stuck a needle into its belly. Later this end up being ‘proof’ that Elizabeth Procter was practicing witchcraft when Ezekiel Cheever finds the doll in the Procter household in Act II, and exclaims to everyone, “The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat down to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without a word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. Struck like a beast he says, and screamed that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save her and stuck in the flesh of her belly, he draws a needle out. And demandin’ of her how she came to be so stabbed, she testify were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in” (Miller 70) and, “’Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Procter Goody Procter keeps. I have found it Sir. And in the belly of the poppet a needle’s stuck” (Miller 71).
The Essay on Mary Warren Abigail Elizabeth John
... witch including poking herself in the stomach with a needle, imitating what Mary warren did to the poppet she sewed for Elizabeth, She ... do, it is a good man does it." Abigail Williams: Calculating: Betty and Abigail named their tormentors with such consistent stories that ... the church the very day they hang for silence!" Elizabeth Procter: Courageous: When John looses his temper Elizabeth stands up ...
Abigail Williams is trying to make it look like after Mary Warren gave the poppet to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth then used it as a voodoo doll against her (Abigail) – Mary is merely a pawn in Abigail’s quest to rid herself of Elizabeth Procter. Later in Act II, Mary goes to court to testify against Abigail and the girls but the whole time Mary is trying to present her case they make it look like Mary Warren is sending her spirit at them by pretending they see a bird (Mary’s spirit) in the rafters of the church and pretending it is going to come and attack them. They say, (Mercy Lewis) “It’s on the beam! Behind the rafter!” (Miller 106) and (Abigail), “Why do you come yellow bird? …oh Mary, this is black art to change your shape. No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth. It’s God’s work I do….Oh please Mary don’t come down!…Mary please don’t hurt me!” (Miller 107).
The girls go on and on pretending Mary’s spirit has taken the shape of a yellow bird and that the ‘bird’ is going to come and attack them. By saying this, they make Mary Warren look foolish which makes the court less apt to believe her testimony.
Mary Warren is also just a child which people in the play don’t really realize because of her age of seventeen. You can tell that she isn’t as mature or grown up as people expect her to be in the way she acts. For instance, when Mary goes to the court with John Procter to testify against Abigail and the girls she is very nervous and when she speaks she is “hardly audible” (Miller 88) and when the men around her start getting upset and angry towards each other she just bursts into sobs, unable to control herself. Someone older and more mature might have handled this situation differently perhaps asking the men to quiet themselves or by breathing deeply to try and hold back the sobs because it is expected that mature person would have controlled themselves rather than burst into tears. What’s more, when Abigail remorselessly beats down on Mary’s testimony by pretending to see a yellow bird Mary reacts by “Turning on them all hysterically and stamping her feet….screaming at the top of her lungs and raising her fists” (Miller 108) which is not something a mature person would have done. Children often react this way when they are in trouble with a parent or when fighting with a sibling. However, when in court, this is inappropriate and childish behavior by all standards.
The Essay on Mary Anne Warren And Abortion
Mary Anne Warren is one of the top advocates for keeping abortion legal without any restrictions on it. She states that the morality of abortion is dependent on the moral status of the baby, not simply on the rights of the mother. She criticizes those who defend abortion as the right to control one’s body: “it is at best a rather feeble argument for the permissibility of abortion. Mere ...
Another trait of Mary is that she is naive. Before all the trials are going on, Mary Warren does whatever Abigail Williams says because Abigail is older and ‘more mature’ (so Mary believes).
It is very normal for a younger girl to look up to an older girl, but Mary Warren does whatever Abigail says; In act I we can see a perfect example of Abigail’s control over Mary Warren when the girls (Mary, Betty, and Abigail) are arguing about what information they’re actually going to tell the public, Mary Warren exclaims, “What’ll we do? The village is out! I just come from the farm; the whole country’s talkin’ witchcraft! ….witchery’s a hangin’ error, a hangin like they done in Boston two year ago! We must tell the truth Abby! You’ll only be whipped for dancin’ and the other things!” (Miller 18).
Abigail responds to that by telling Mary Warren that they’ll all get whipped, not just herself, and then threatens the girls saying, “…And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word or an edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parent’s heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down” (Miller 19).
This frightens Mary and she does not say anything about the things they did other than dance because has Abigail had scared her so much- she really believed that Abigail would come and hurt her in the night if she betrayed her.
So, as you can now see, Mary Warren is really a very main character in Act three showing, quite prominently showing that she is a pawn to Abigail Williams, that she truly is still a child no matter her age and that she is quite naïve when responding to certain situations.
The Essay on Mary Anne Warren On Abortion
Abortion: right or wrong? In determining the moral status of abortion, we must first decide, How we are to define the moral community, the set of beings with full and equal moral rights (Warren 156)? According to John Noonan, a pro-life conservative, the presence of human chromosomes in the fetus s cell nuclei from the point of conception is sufficient evidence to prove that a fetus is human. Mary ...
