"in protecting her husband she betrays her sons" Do you feel this is a fair assessment of Kate? The character of Kate has a central role, in this play by Arthur Miller, because the story is about her family and set in the mundane arena of her back garden.
Kate is the wife of the main protagonist and her actions affect her sons, her husband and future daughter in law. Kate is a woman of enormous maternal love, which extends to her neighbors' children George and Anne.Despite her instinctive warmth, she is also capable of supporting her husband Joe in his criminal deceit. Skate's husband, Joe Keller, was accused of shipping damaged aircraft engine cylinder heads out of his factory during world war one. The damaged engines inadvertently caused the deaths of 21 pilots.
Kate provided an alibi for her husband. In doing this Kate changed the course of all their lives. She did this but not out of love for her husband who in the text she obviously resents enormously. She protected him for her own misguided reasons.
When Skate's son Larry, who was also a pilot, found out that his father was responsible or the deaths of so many innocents, he took his own life. Missing in action, Kate can not acknowledge that Larry is dead. In her mind to believe he is dead would mean his passing was some karmic punishment for Joey's crime. This is an intolerable thought, so she must persuade herself that Larry still lives.
In one of her lines, inform brother's alive, darling, because if he's dead, your father killed him" this is apparent. Her family sees this idea to be ridiculous, but they tolerate it for many different reasons.Kate knows that Joe is guilty but lives in her world of denial for three years hoping against hope that Larry will return. Later on in the play it is confirmed that Larry is dead and in fact killed himself because he was so ashamed of what his dad had done.
Thus proving Skate's fears that Joe was responsible, indirectly for his death. By backing up her husband Kate was betraying her son by denying him any sort of justice. Because Kate refuses to believe that Larry is dead and maintains that Ann Deeper - who returns to marry Lorry's brother Chris - is still "Lorry's girl".This is a semi betrayal of Chris because all he wants to do, in the play, is marry the girl he loves and his mother is the only person in his way.
At the very end of the play everything is exposed and as a result Joe Keller commits suicide. Had Kate not protected Joe, he wouldn't have killed himself because he would have been safely in prison. Betrayal is a strong word and not always black and white. Sometimes you can do the wrong thing by trying to do right.
In the Collins English dictionary it states that betrayal is " to be disloyal to a persons trust".So in not telling the truth to Chris (and the court) she technically has betrayed him but she did it to save them both from the truth. I don't think that Skate's intention was to 'protect her husband' at all. She was simply protecting her self and Chris.
You can see this at the end of the play when Anne Diver shows Kate the suicide letter from Larry. Kate finally acknowledges that Larry is dead and her ties to Joe are irrevocably broken. She doesn't even flinch at the sound of Joey's shotgun that's when she really becomes a mother, she tells Chris to "forget now. Live" **
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