John Proctor Is the Villain, Not the American Feminist

Everyone that knows me knows how much I love the play John Proctor Is the Villain. Taking place in rural Georgia at the height of 2018’s #MeToo movement, the play follows an honors English class studying Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Five girls, in their junior year, navigate the complexities of fourth-wave feminism, grapple with the uncomfortable realities of sexual harassment and assault, and revel in the greatness of Lorde’s Melodrama album.

Just as Arthur Miller uses the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the fanaticism of the McCarthy era, Kimberly Belflower explores the nature of the “witch-hunt” in relation to the #MeToo movement.

The girls (Beth, Nell, Ivy, Raelynn, and Shelby) all explore the various dynamics of fourth-wave feminist issues. Raelynn’s boyfriend denies her a sense of self, and Nell tries to assimilate into predominantly white living, having newly moved from Atlanta. Ivy’s father has been accused of sexual assault, and she struggles to believe it. Shelby is carrying a secret, and Beth tries to be a good, powerful feminist while trying not to offend her best friend Ivy.

The dynamics of the girls explore the failures of using silence to resolve conflict; I believe this to be the prevailing throughline of the American feminist movement. After all, the poignancy of the #MeToo movement was the disruption of silence.

In the play, Shelby speaks out of turn, and her character description references “a brain that moves faster than her mouth” and a “mouth [that] moves pretty dang fast.” She is the outsider of rural and uncontroversial Georgia, Belflower’s mouthpiece for victims who speak out against the abuse they have endured and are met with resentment: the reckoning that maybe this would not be an issue, had no one brought it up to begin with.

On October 15, 2017, days after the first allegations against Harvey Weinstein, a member of Hollywood’s elite, were published, Alyssa Milano asked survivors of sexual harassment and assault to reply “me too,” a phrase activist Tarana Burke had begun using in 2006. Millions responded, speaking out against their own abusers, and high-profile careers were dismantled. Weinstein himself was later convicted, and it is because of the strength of women like Burke, Milano, and the survivors who came forward that justice was pursued.

It was the role of the American feminist, to call out abuse loudly, that catalyzed real change. Then, it was the solidarity with which feminists approached the issue, marching in the streets and naming their abusers.

The conclusion of John Proctor Is the Villain (without spoiling too much) addresses this point. Shelby is right in questioning her town’s silence, and she is right in defiantly calling out injustice as she sees it.

There is then prolonged confusion and chaos, resolved as the girls dance wildly to “Green Light,” Belflower’s reflection of how the abuse continues to exist and how the solidarity of American feminists tries to dismantle it.