The Crucible: the last straw

So, this week has been a long week enduring the ending of the book, The Crucible by Arthur Miller.  As I have said before, I really enjoyed this book, however the ending kind of seemed to get on my nerves.  John Proctor's indecisiveness got a little irritating after a while.  I understand that the situation he was in was very intense and would chose whether he lived or died, but he had a lot of time to think about his decision and yet he was still unsure.  While I was reading, I was secretly hoping for a happy ending where John and Elizabeth would truly fall in love, the witch trials would end, and everyone would live happily ever after. But I knew that this wouldn't be the case, as the unfortunate events earlier in the book boded to.  However, I still don't understand why he would chose to die and keep a good name than live with a mediocre name.  The reason behind this on my view is that he has a wife and 3 kids, with a fourth on the way, so why would he chose to leave them to fend for their own than to live with a dirty profile but be loved and have the opportunity to earn his right back.  Also, I feel that this decision would be extremely hard on Elizabeth because in the tie period in which the book was written, women still didn't have many rights, it was mainly the men.  Therefore, leaving Elizabeth would be worse than staying and trying to help.