Abigail is the consummate actor, a professional liar, as
it were, and by Act II she is frightening the villagers and the Court alike by fainting
while it is in session, and falling to the ground with stomach pains. Abigail had
witnessed Mary putting the needle in a doll she was making during the court proceedings,
and as though it were a voodoo doll wielded by a jealous wife, she accuses Elizabeth
Proctor of sending out her spirit to stab her. The Court buys this lie hook, line and
sinker after the court clerk discovers the doll in the Proctor home with a needle inside
it, and Elizabeth soon finds herself arrested for
witchcraft.
At this point we see Abigail start to become
aware of her influence in the Court and the village, and she is a little drunk from this
power. She will use it to her own ends (to kill Elizabeth Proctor by getting her
sentenced to death) so that she can, in her own mind, be with John, but she also seems
to just genuinely like the fact that as a young woman, she has the ultimate power of
life and death over others.
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