How do the women view themselves, or use their own attributes to their advantage?

In the third scene of Act 2 marks a development in Abigall's character. She has, thus far, followed all her father's wishes, staying true to her name's literal meaning, "father's joy." (In English, though, ending the name with "gall" suggests a negative experience: 'father's gall.') Now, as two suitors are set up to compete for her, possibly to the death, she begins to assert her own opinions and desires. Must she really help her father set up Mathias and Lodowick? A tension thus arises between romantic love and familial love; she seems more concerned with this conflict at this point than with the possibility of losing her inheritance if her father's fortune is confiscated again. Another way of looking at the conflict is to see it between Abigall's love and Barabas's hate (a form of his love for revenge).

In a play full of malicious and hypocritical characters, Abigall may be the morally strongest. She earnestly follows what she perceives as the correct path of life, all the while staying faithful to her father. Until the end, she keeps her promise: "never shall these lips bewray [Barabas's] life." She keeps this promise: it is through writing that she informs Barnardine of her father's crimes--and she does so only under the strict secrecy of confession.