a quick and hilarious rewriting of the wife of bath: incredibly fun, witty, and smart, which from what i've heard seems to always be the case with zada quick and hilarious rewriting of the wife of bath: incredibly fun, witty, and smart, which from what i've heard seems to always be the case with zadie smith! (and that made me realize that this is the first zadie smith i've actually read, which is APALLING... gotta get to The Fraud soon!!) it was upbeat and funny and a perfect book to read on my breaks at work - and now i desperately want to see it performed. the perfect book/play to experience with a mimosa in hand....more
now i do hate john proctor and his weird victim complex about fucking a seventeen year old but this did kind of go hard
wait i have more to say on thisnow i do hate john proctor and his weird victim complex about fucking a seventeen year old but this did kind of go hard
wait i have more to say on this!! i'm kind of obsessed with this book? unfortunately there's a lot about it that pissed me off and unfortunately was glaring enough that it pulled me out of the story - like the constant vilification of abigail and the focus on john and his whole inner torment (which is basically just him alternating between self pity and self hatred the whole book and it's like okay, we get it, you are not an interesting or complex character and i've had enough of you!).
i definitely was disappointed after i finished it because it was SO focused on john getting this big redemption moment and left so many other characters underdeveloped - did goody proctor have a personality? did abigail have any other character motivation beyond "i want to kill this guy's bitch ass wife"? also i was SO disappointed that he left giles corey's death to hearsay instead of devoting a full scene to it, because i feel like that could've had so much impact in illustrating how far gone salem's community was at that point.
the play is very focused on internal conflict almost to the point of missing opportunities to show how the witch trials affected the community as a whole and the kind of acts it drove them to commit. i do like the stylistic choice to have the scenes be set outside the court until the end of the play, but it's kind of jarring when we jump straight to the court and find out that twelve people have already been hanged.
the first time we really see the violence of salem in action is during the scene when abigail and the other girls accuse mary of sending her spirit out to torment them and then start mirroring her actions (which was SO GOOD by the way i have absolutely zero complaints about that, favorite scene in the whole play for sure). but at this point twelve people have already been hanged, and again the giles corey death could've been used to such effect, i'm so mad about it.
it's one thing for people to be hung in the late 1600s, but pressing someone to death with stones, especially a well-known member of the community, shows a different level of almost insane devotion to the accusations of witchcraft. i mean, historically he was stripped naked and pressed with stones for two days, with the sheriff standing on them for periods of time as well. multiple people witnessed this! during the second day the pressure forced his tongue out of his mouth and the sheriff pushed it back in with his cane!! that is an incredible level of violence and torture for a small, close-knit community. even with struggles for land, how did it affect these people to watch or contribute to that kind of slow, agonizing death? were they so affected by the witchcraft fever that it didn't matter to them anymore? THERE'S SO MUCH POTENTIAL HERE AND I'M SO MAD HE SKIMMED OVER IT. arthur miller i will physically fight you for this
ANYWAYS beyond my complaints, i really did genuinely enjoy this. the dialogue is masterfully done, and even for someone who doesn't usually read plays, it was an incredibly engrossing read. the pacing is beautiful, and miller does an excellent job of building up this backstory and showing the grievances between characters while also keeping the whole story building this mounting tension that culminates in the final two acts. i genuinely got chills during the scene where proctor brings mary to court to confess, like i was fully on the edge of my seat. and the final scene where proctor signs his confession and then rescinds it was so genuinely emotional that it actually got me to care about him a bit!
i also have to admire the technical excellence shown here. even just through dialogue and setting the backdrop at the beginning of each scene, i had such a clear picture in my head of what was happening. i closed the book and immediately started looking for recordings of it being performed because it was all so visual that i felt like i needed to see that scene in my head played out in real life (and i will for sure be watching the movie version, mostly because of winona ryder ngl).
so yeah, overall i have my thorough complaints but this was a really intense, exciting, well-crafted read and it's about the witch trials so really how much can i dislike it??...more
Loading...
