Salem Rewritten Again: Arthur Miller, Maryse Condé, and Appropriating the Bildungsroman

This article considers the figure of Tituba in Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953) and in Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (1984). Although Miller's dramatic retelling vindicates the falsely accused and wrongly executed figure of John Proctor, Miller declines to recuperate the perpetually vilified figure of Tituba, whose reputation continues to suffer in scholarship across disciplines even in the present day. While Miller's play positions Proctor and Tituba as opposites in ways that encourage such a perspective, Condé's rewriting uses the form of the Bildungsroman to deconstruct this oppositional relationship, imbuing Tituba with precisely the characteristics that make Proctor's character so compelling in The Crucible. The ultimate result is not just to critique Miller's representation of Tituba but also to challenge her treatment both at the hands of the Salem community and in the work of contemporary scholars.