The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 4 - My Name! The Disintegration And Reintegration Of John Proctor!

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 4 - My Name! The Disintegration And Reintegration Of John Proctor!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

Hi, I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is our final week to discuss Arthur Miller’s timeless allegory, The Crucible and wow have we covered a lot of topics. Week 1, we went back to the 1690s and visited Salem, the setting for this disturbing drama. We learned the real story of Salem village and the back story that led to America’s first and perhaps most famous incident of mass hysteria. On week two, we put history aside and spent a little time discussing tragedy and some of the literary aspects of this play. Last week, we jumped into the 1950s, and presented the play as allegory. We told, or at least visited in part, the story of the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare and we introduced the man whose name is synonymous with it: Senator Joseph McCarthy. This week, we will circle back to the literary, except this time we will explore the story of The Crucible as a Love Story, as well as introduce a little psychology. But before we do any of that, Christy, you want to take a little detour and drop back into Miller’s life and talk about Miller’s love life- specifically Marilyn Monroe.

That’s right- Miller’s personal love story was a little bumpy- and some say there is a little of Miller in Proctor- maybe that’s true- there’s likely a little bit of Miller in all of his characters, but unlike Proctor’s love story, Miller’s did have a happy ending. I do want to say that looking at the Crucible as a love story is a wonderful way to read the play. In spite of it all, There is a lot of love here, and the lines between Elizabeth and John Proctor in this act are so compelling and beautiful- Elizabeth drawing for us a beautiful picture of redemption, and John embracing it- and being restored. There is a lot of grace here. I told you when we finished Macchiavelli- that redemption stories are my absolute favorite- so I cannot help but be enchanted by this element of this one. So, as a seguey into the love story between John and Elizabeth- let’s look at the love life of Arthur Miller- and like I said, a little bumpity at first.

Bumpity- is that a word

I don’t think so. But it was fun to say- and as a onomatopoeia- it kind of expresses Miller and Monroe’s relationship- it was something that I will call- bumpity.

Yes, well, Marilyn wasn’t the first Mrs. Miller- his first marriage was to a woman named Mary Slattery and lasted 16 years. Arthur said he was drawn to her because she was from a background totally different from his own- midwestern Catholic that sort of thing. She was drawn to him because he was the Jewish new yorker, but in spite of 16 years sounding like a long time- the marriage didn’t work. Mary went on to become a school psychologist and beyond that there is very little publically known about her except that she and Arthur didn’t speak for over 20 years after their bitter divorce- but sadly, his track record was going to get worse before it got better. His second marriage was even less successful than this one.

But infinitely more famous.

True, but believe it or not, when Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller met, Miller was the more famous of the two. He had just won a Pulitzer prize for Death of a Salesman. Elia Kazan, the one we talked about last week who would eventually give names to the HUAC , introduced them. It appears there was an instant attraction on Marilyn’s part because he was the only man in the room who didn’t immediately fawn all over her.

I’m sure there was an attraction on his part- as well...as was the case with all men it seems when it came to Marilyn Monroe- he just hid it.

Likely, but that’s not unusual. What’s unusual is that she was interested in this nerdy writer at all- although it did start out just as a correspondence. She married to joe Dimaggio first- a professional baseball player in 1954.

, so the jock got first dibs.

He did. However, she said this about Miller when she first saw him back in 1950, “It was like running into a tree. You know, like a cool drink when you’ve had a fever.”

She and Miller wrote to each other for about five years. Eventually their relationship developed into an affair after her relationship with Joe Dimaggio went south in 1955- that marriage lasted less than a year.

By 1955 Miller is hooked on Marilyn and has established a residency in Nevada just for the purpose of being able to divorce his first wife and marry Marilyn. She was filming the movie Bus Stop. Now pay attention to the years here, because at the same time he’s in Nevada trying to get divorced and married to Marilyn Monroe, he gets his subpoena to go before the house of UnAmerican Activities.

Well, that’s an inconvenient time to be called a c...