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Society and culture has always affected and influenced women. The feminist thinking finds difficult to argue on such thinking. Despite multiple versions of feminist criticism that began to emerge in the mid-twentieth century, Miller’s play seems hardly concerned with the women’s assertion of distinct identity in societal order. The presence of women appears apparently marginal as they only serve the dramatic purpose of complimenting and enriching the plot as well as reinforcing Miller’s artistic vision. Miller took almost two years to write All My Sons, which was the longest time he took to write a play. “Thus, as in Ibsen‟s best known work, a great amount of time is taken up with bringing the past into the present” (“Introduction” 20). The inspiration of the play All My Sons came from a wartime anecdote Miller heard about a woman, who had deserted in her father for delivering defective equipment to the U.S Military. From this Miller shaped the drama not about war, but about a topic, he knew better: money. The play is based on a true story. All My Sons happened to strike in Miller‟s mind after a casual conversation. “During an idle chat in my living room, a pious lady from the Middle West told of a family in the neighborhood which had been destroyed when the daughter turned the father into the authorities on discovering that he had been selling faulty machinery to the Army. The war was then in full blast. By the time she had finished the tale I had transferred the daughter into a son...” (Introduction 17). Arthur Miller‟s then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper, “The play‟s force lies in Miller‟s portrayal of how its characters come to identify and reckon with the sources of this unease, as what initially appears as a sunny small-town idyll turns dark and stormy”(Brantley‟s review online). All My Sons won the Drama Critic Circle Award beating Eugene O‟Neill‟s work The Iceman’s Cometh. With the success of All My Sons Miller says, I had won a new freedom to create, and I would stand on the high point of the Bridge‟s arch facing the wind from the ocean, trying to embrace a world larger than I had been able to conceive of until this time(...) The problem with All My Sons was not that it was too realistic but that it left too little space and time for the wordless darkness that underlies all verbal truth” (Timebends 144). The play‟s original title was The Sign of the Archer. Miller says that “In its earlier version, the mother, Kate Keller was in a dominating position; more precisely her astrological beliefs were given great prominence.” Miller justifies the change of the title, “where in previous play I might well have been satisfied to create only an astrologically obsessed woman, the obsession now had to be opened up to reveal its core of self-interest and intention on the character‟s part” (“Introduction” 20). The play focuses on Joe Keller and his sons; Miller recalls two productions of the play in Israel (1977) and a few years later in London. “The play in this production was centered on Kate, the mother, which was an emphasis our original production had bypassed in favor of the father-son conflict(...) Her guilty knowledge, so obdurately and menacingly suppressed, can be interpreted as her wish to deny her son‟s death also, and perhaps even primarily, to take vengeance on her culpable husband driving to his knees and ultimately to suicide” (Timebends 135). The protagonist in Miller‟s plays always searches for an identity and the woman close to him helps him in achieving it. The woman protects him from the truth that might destroy him and at the same time helps him to see the truth. Kate‟s stubborn refusal to accept Larry‟s death is perhaps the strong point in the play and the play revolves around it. The story of every woman in the plays of Miller is that of a common woman trapped by the commonplace values and pressures of the society. She is always a marginal figure in the play. Kate in All My Sons and Linda in The Death of a Salesman are not only loyal and subservient wives but also their attitude seems to sum up many traditional American values. Both Linda‟s and Kate‟s role in society is extremely limited. They are admirable figures, fulfilling the role of wife and mother and, an ideal American wife supporting their husband. Miller introduces Kate Keller in these words: “Mother appears on porch, she is in her early fifties, a woman of uncontrolled inspiration and an overwhelming capacity of love” (Act 1, 16). Kate is presented to us as a disturbed mother, who waits for his son Larry to come back from war. The memorial apple tree planted in the The Pressure of Society Faced by Women in Miller’s All My Sons www.iosrjournals.org 62 | Page name of Larry toppled away by the wind. Kate‟s reaction to the blown apple tree is superstitious and oversensitive. Miller even builds up a fearful expectancy about Kate‟s reactions to it. Mother: I was fast asleep, and (...) Remember the way he used to fly low past the house when he was in the training? When we used to see his face in the cockpit going by? That‟s the way I saw him. Only high up. Way, way up, where the clouds are. He was so real I could reach out and touch him. And suddenly he started to fall. And crying, crying to me(...)Mom, Mom! I could hear him like he was in the room. Mom!(...)it was his voice! If I could touch him I knew I could stop him, if I could only... I woke up and it was so funnyThe wind(...) it was like the roaring of his engine. I came out here(...)I must‟ve still been asleep. I could hear that roaring like he was going by. The tree snapped right in front of me-and I like-came awake (...) See? We should never have planted that tree. I said so in the first place; it was too soon to plant a tree for him. Chris (alarmed): Too soon! (... )Mother, Mother! The wind blew it down. What significance has that got? What are you talking about? Mother, please...don‟t go through it all again, will u? It‟s no good, it doesn‟t accomplish anything. I‟ve been thinking, y‟know?—maybe we ought to put our minds forgetting him? Mother: That‟s the third time you‟ve said that this week. Chris: Because it‟s not right: we never took up our lives again. We‟re like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes in (Act-1, 19). Kate throughout the play protects Joe and others from the truth. The truth she hides for about three and a half years is that a father is responsible for his son‟s death. She holds the truth for a long time, as intuitively as she knows her husband‟s guilt. Kate‟s belief that Larry is alive is based on a strange logic. As she asserts to Chris, “Your brother‟s alive, darling, because if he‟s dead your father killed him. Do you understand me now? As long as you live, that boy is alive. God does not let a son be killed by his father. Now you see don‟t you? Now you see” (73). Kate suffers no great shocks at Ann‟s letter unlike Martha in Edward Albee‟s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, who learns about the death of her son. What mattered was that no one said it aloud. In Martha, what truly died was not the son but the mother‟s self-deception. For Kate the guilt of her husband is the source of her anxieties and headaches throughout the play. Joe‟s response to it is ironic “She‟s out of her mind” (73). Kate‟s obsession deepens after Ann returns on an invitation by Chris. She opposes the possible alliance between Ann and Chris. Kate perceives Ann to be “Larry‟s girl.” (72) Kate protects Chris from marrying Ann because she‟s “Larry‟s girl.” Joe warns Chris that if he does so it will destroy Kate‟s dream that Larry will return one day. Hiding the truth of Joe‟s guilt makes her ill, resulting in her nervous breakdown twice, and Dr. Jim Bayliss expresses concern for her health. Her incapacity to accept the fact prompts Kate to ask her neighbor, Frank, to determine Larry‟s horoscope for the day he died. In the whole play, Kate is the only woman in the house hoping for Larry‟s return even after he has been missing three years and she is the one who is constantly talking about Larry. On the arrival of George, Kate advises Joe, “Be smart Joe” (41) and asks Chris to protect George from questioning his father. She appeals Chris at the start of Act II, “We‟re dumb; Chris, Dad and I are stupid people. We don‟t know anything. You‟ve got to protect us” (Act 2, 42). While Kate is pleading Chris to save them Joe on the other hand sleeps soundly. Kate tells Chris, “If they are going to open the case I won‟t live through it” (42). Act II reopens, as twilight falls. The twilight is symbolic. Keller‟s end is coming nearer. Joe Keller sleeping suggests his agony and mental illness, which he hides. The dialogues of Kate in the opening of Act II show her fear and sadness as she visualizes „an impending disaster‟. She tries to bring all things before Chris. She fears, “what can be the intensity of human agony when everything is realized?” The truth might blast the family. As Hayman aptly remarks, “Her stupidity and her stubborn superstitiousness come almost to seem like a dignified refusal to be bound by the norms of reasonableness” (18). Keller‟s integrity is questioned after the revelation of the letter of Larry, which he wrote just before his death. Kate‟s casual remark, a supposed slip of tongue that her husband has not been sick for fifteen years leads to the discovery of Joe‟s lie. At last, Joe realizes that Larry‟s letter had made him a stranger in his own house. However, at the end of the play, Kate prompts Joe‟s purge of conscience. When Frank arrives home with the horoscope that prompts Chris to state his intentions of marrying Ann, Kate shouts, “Never, Never” (72). Kate admits Joe‟s guilt prodded by Jim having guessed it. Joe wants to talk to Ann. While Kate says, “You can‟t bull yourself through this one Joe (...) I have no strength to think anymore (...) All your life whenever there is trouble you yell at me and you think that settles it” (80).