Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
evoloution of women in literature
trifles by susan glaspell and women
gender inequality in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: evoloution of women in literature
How Feminism Is Portrayed in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, may not be the best story to read and it may be confusing to some people, but it teaches the reader a great deal about how women were treated and how women were viewed during the early 1900’s. When analyzing the play from a feminist standpoint, Mrs. Wright’s motive for killing her husband becomes more clear and understandable to why she did it. Susan Glaspell gives the reader an idea of how men and women were treated during that time. In the next few paragraphs, I will use Susan Glaspell’s feminist approach to demonstrate how Mrs. Wrights murdering of her husband is completely justified.
If you were to ask someone if killing another person is justifiable, most of your answers would probably be a definite no and the occasional maybe depends on what they did, and I would have to agree with the people who say depends on what they did. No one ever kills anyone without a motive unless you are insane, but that is a police officer or detectives standpoint on the situation. Now from a Christian standpoint, the belief is that taking a life is a sin and only God can take a life. In the case of Susan Glaspell’s character Minnie, learning the past of her and her and her husbands relationship can help the reader realize why Minnie killed her husband. If the reader was to go through this process, then it creates sympathy for Minnie and people feel sorry for her, just like Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters did throughout the story.
If the reader was to analyze the title very closely, then the reader would realize that the title “Trifles” is the perfect example of how women were treated by men in this play. In the time period that the play resembles, back then men wo...
... middle of paper ...
... is a touchy subject for some people, but one of the greatest minds in history hit it right on the head when he said “Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish”. -Albert Einstein.
Works Cited
Alkalay-Gut, Karen. Jury Of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles Winter 84 21.1 (1984): 1. Web.
Brainy Quote. "Equality Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. New York: Frank Shay, 1916. Print.
Lewis, Tanya. "How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently than Women's." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Moore, Julie. "Differences Between Men and Women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles." Yahoo Contributor Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, and Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ; & A Vindication of the Rights of Men. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2008. Print.
and Trifles and 'A Jury of Her Peers,' by Susan Glaspell." Atlantis 24.1 (June 2002): 299-
A work of literature often subtlety alludes to a situation in society that the author finds particularly significant. Susan Glaspell incorporates social commentary into her play Trifles. By doing so, she highlights the gender stratification that exists even in the most basic interactions and presents a way to use this social barrier to an acceptable end. Despite being written almost a century before present day, Glaspell’s findings and resulting solution are still valid in a modern context. Trifles demonstrates the roles of men and women in their everyday behaviour and interaction. The women use their ascribed positions to accomplish what the men cannot and have the ability to deliberately choose not to help the men with their newfound knowledge.
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, was written in 1916, reflects the author’s concern with stereotypical concepts of gender and sex roles of that time period. As the title of the play implies, the concerns of women are often considered to be nothing more than unimportant issues that have little or no value to the true work of society, which is being performed by men. The men who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable to solve the mystery through their supposed superior knowledge. Instead, two women are able decipher evidence that the men overlook because all of the clues are entrenched in household items that are familiar mainly to women during this era. Glaspell expertly uses gender characterization, setting, a great deal of symbolism and both dramatic and verbal irony, to expose social divisions created by strict gender roles, specifically, that women were limited to the household and that their contributions went disregarded and underappreciated.
Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." Plays by Susan Glaspell. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., 1920. Reprinted in Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia Eds. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1995.
In today’s society, many women are powerful, independent, and for the most part treated equal to men, but before the 1920's women were restrained by the men. Imagine what being a woman in this era would be like. In Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles,” she addresses the life of women in the 1900’s by examining the marital relationships among the characters, specifically between Mrs. Wright and Mr. Wright, the Sheriff and Mrs. Peters, and last Mr. Hale and Mrs. Hale. Glaspell accomplishes this by separating the husbands and wives into different rooms in the home of the Wrights, leaving the women all together in the living room and kitchen, which is where they find the crime scene evidence. The point being is that the men did not consider what the
Trifles is one play that really shows the conflict between gender roles in the early 20th century. At the beginning of the 1900s the idea of everyone having equal rights didn’t exist. Men clearly dominated every aspect of life, while women were often left with little importance. The oppression of women during that time stretched to the point that they were not truly acknowledge as their own person. Their sole purpose was to take care of their families by keeping house and performing their caretaker duties. According to the essay “Literary Context in Plays: Susan Glaspell” by Bailey McDaniel claims that Glaspell’s work Trifles is considered an observation on the demeaning, insignificant characterization of women’s labor and their lives within domesticity (McDaniel). Susan Glaspell really tries to emphasize this feminist view throughout the entire play.
Susan Glaspell highlights the settings as theatrical metaphors for male dominated society in the early 20th century. “Trifles” begins with an investigation into the murder of Mr. Wright. The crime scene is taken at his farmhouse where clues are found that reveals Minnie Wright to be a suspect of murder. In the beginning of the play, it clearly embodies the problems of subordination of women. For example, there are two main characters in this play—Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who are brought along with the sheriff and attorney to find evidence for Mr. Wright’s murder. The men gather and work together at the stove and they talk with each other in familiarity while women “stand close together near the door behind men” (Glaspell 444). Perhaps the location of the women standing behind the men near the door reflects also their secondary or inferior social standing in the eyes of the men. Moreover, it seems that the wo...
"Trifles," a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there are five main characters, three men and two women. The weather outside is frighteningly cold, and yet the men enter the warm farmhouse first. The women stand together away from the men, which immediately puts the men against the women. Mrs. Hale?s and Mrs. Peters?s treatment from the men in the play is reflective of the beliefs of that time. These women, aware of the powerless slot that has been made for them, manage to use their power in a way that gives them an edge. This power enables them to succeed in protecting Minnie, the accused. "Trifles" not only tells a story, it shows the demeaning view the men have for the women, the women?s reaction to man?s prejudice, and the women?s defiance of their powerless position.
Trifles is based on a murder in 1916 that Susan Glaspell covered while she was a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News after she graduated from college. At the end of the nineteenth century, the world of literature saw a large increase of female writers. Judith Fetterley believed that there was an extremely diverse and intriguing body of prose literature used during the nineteenth century by American women. The main idea of this type of literature was women and their lives. The reason all of the literature written by women at this time seems so depressing is due to the fact that they had a tendency to incorporate ideas from their own lives into their works. Glaspell's Trifles lives up to this form of literature, especially since it is based on an actual murder she covered. This play is another look at the murder trial through a woman's point of view.
In the play Trifles, Susan Glaspell brings together three women through a crime investigation in the late nineteenth century. Glaspell uses symbolism, contrast of sexes, and well-constructed characters to show that justice for all equally important to finding the truth.
One striking characteristic of the 20th century was the women's movement, which brought women to the forefront in a variety of societal arenas. As women won the right to vote, achieved reproductive freedom through birth control and legalized abortion, and gained access to education and employment, Western culture began to examine its long-held views about women. However, before the women’s movement of the 20th century, women’s roles were primarily of a domestic nature. Trifles by Susan Glaspell indicates that a man’s perspective is entirely different from a woman’s. The one-act play, Trifles, is a murder mystery which examines the lives of rural, middle-aged, married, women characters through gender relationships, power between the sexes, and
The title of this drama "Trifles" demonstrates how men have the assumption that women and their respective actions are seemingly unimportant. Trifles can be used in two forms in the English language. In verb form, trifle means to treat someone or something as unimportant or non-essential. The word trifle in noun form means something of little value or importance. Both definitions of this word yield an idea in this story that women are seen as trivial and are not worthy of respect by men. This idea is conveyed throughout the entire story by the belittling assumptions and attitude the men use toward the women. For example Hale says, " Well, women are used to worrying over trifles" (1003). Typically, a kitchen represents women's work and the idea of domesticity. In Glaspell's eyes, men tend to assume that nothing of importance occurs in the kitchen and this can be related to the idea that women are insignificant. As Glaspell writes,
One of the most important tools that an author uses to convey his message to the reader throughout the text is his language. It plays a vital role in setting the overall tone of the text and helps in foreshadowing with crumbs of symbols and imagery. This essay focuses on the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, first performed on August 8th, 1916.
Susan Glaspell's play, "Trifles", attempts to define one of the main behavioral differences between man and woman. For most of the story, the two genders are not only geographically separated, but also separated in thought processes and motive, so that the reader might readily make comparisons between the two genders. Glaspell not only verbally acknowledges this behavioral difference in the play, but also demonstrates it through the characters' actions and the turns of the plot. The timid and overlooked women who appear in the beginning of the play eventually become the delicate detectives who, discounted by the men, discover all of the clues that display a female to be the disillusioned murderer of her (not so dearly) departed husband. Meanwhile, the men in the play not only arrogantly overlook the "trifling" clues that the women find that point to the murderer, but also underestimate the murderer herself. "These were trifles to the men but in reality they told the story and only the women could see that (Erin Williams)". The women seem to be the insightful unsung heroes while the men remain outwardly in charge, but sadly ignorant.
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in