Crucible; by Arthur Miller.

I saw the play quite a few years before reading it, but it left a strong impression for more than one reason, not the least of which is the superlative quality of the play.

Arthur Miller wrote this during McCarthy era about the witch hunt of another times, and it fits the witch hunt of aommunists in postwar era as if tailored, tailored not only well but in fact tailored in Savoy in London to boot.

The only difference between the two times being the mundane details - that one in the era gone by was started by a few young girls amusing themselves, and the story is of how a mistake by a man involving an affair with a young servant, giving rise to hopes that he never intended to encourage, destroyed not only his life and family but also that of his innocent wife and of more than a few neighbours as well.

A few of my colleagues had a long argument after seeing the play, about whether the wife should have encouraged the husband to commit sin of forgery, of allowing his signature on a fraudulent paper to be fixed on the church door; and their opinion was it was all her fault he died - even though she was the one he most sinned against in having an affair with the young servant, she was the most innocent of the two, and yet was not given the option of being excused, and couldn't have escaped hanging in any way, leaving three young children and another newborn orphans.

The horror of their insistence on her guilt was unbelievable. She had not been given the option of life for the crime of being a woman, and those colleagues of European ancestral origins were essentially crucifying her again for the same reason.

Such is the grip of misogyny enforced on European culture for over a few centuries, that any issue turns into not only a witch hunt but generally they manage to find some innocent woman and pin the guilt on her, so she can be offered to their terrible gods above as a sacificial lamb.

They had entirely missed the point of the whole exercise of why Arthur Miller wrote the play in the first place, and what it was all about.

Or, perhaps, they fitted the characters he wrote about - those that would go on a witch hunt, preventing any possibility of independant thought and action on part of the ruled and subjugated, making sure most activities to do with any craft, any knowledge and any expertise of any sort whatsoever were kept from general people, and only allowed to the ruling classes.

They were after all of a culture that had a much longer witch hunt of a few centuries of inquisition, ruling out any possibility of women with knowledge even of matters of essential needs of life and family.