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themes analysis of the play trifles
perspectives of the play trifles by susan glaspell
themes analysis of the play trifles
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Susan Glaspell's Battle Against Sexism with Feminist Drama
Susan Glaspell wrote in a time when women were supposed to be submissive to the men of the society, especially their husbands. She bucked the system and fought traditional gender roles with her plays, short stories and essays.
Susan Glaspell was born in 1882 in Davenport, Iowa. She led a rather uneventful childhood. She attended Drake University in Des Moines where she received her Ph.D. in Philosophy. Before becoming an author, she was a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News. She married her husband George Cook in 1913 and together they founded the experimental Provincetown Players, a theatre group managed by artists, created to present plays written by new artists (Hunter, Paul A80).
In 1931, Glaspell received the Pulitzer Prize for her play Alison’s House, a play about the life of Emily Dickinson. She is one of only two women to receive a Pulitzer. She is also well know for her play Trifles and its sister short story A Jury of Her Peers. In all Glaspell wrote fourteen plays, nine novels and over fifty short stories, articles and essays (Carpentier 92).
The play for which she is most recognized is Trifles. Trifles is a murder mystery that explores the oppression women felt during the twenties. The main characters are the middle-aged wives of the investigator, Mrs.Peters and the wife of the witness Mrs. Hale. We get a sense of the domination these women dealt with early in the story when the key witness was talking to the investigator about Mr. Wright, the dead husband, and a party phone he was interested in investing in. Mr. Wright’s comment about the party line was, “folks talk too much anyway and all he asked was peace and quiet”(Glaspell 1330). This begins to show the domination of his wife by keeping her silent and at home. This turns out to be the case, as later in the play we find out that because Mrs. Wright had no children, she had a bird to sing to her, and when she was single, she loved to sing. She sang so well and so much that Mrs. Hale compares her to a bird when she is telling Mrs. Peters about her. “Wright wouldn’t like the bird-a thing that sang. She used to sing.
Susan Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, journalist, and actress. She married in 1903 to a novelist, poet, and playwright George Cram Cook. In 1915 with other actors, writers, and artists they founded Provincetown Players a group that had six seasons in New York City between 1916-1923. She is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. She was a pioneering feminist writer and America’s first import and modern female playwright. She wrote the one act play “Trifles” for the Provincetown Players was later adapted into the short shorty “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. A comparison in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” changes the titles, unfinished worked, and
...stine. "On the Edge: The Plays of Susan Glaspell." Modern Drama 31.1 (Mar. 1988): 91-105. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Marie Lazzari. Vol. 55. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
Susan Glaspell wrote many literary pieces in the early 1900s. Two, in particular, are very similar in theme, which is the play Trifles and the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”. The Trifles was written in 1920 and “A Jury of Her Peers” was written in 1921, a short story, adapted from the play. Susan Glaspell was born in Davenport, IA July 1, 1876 as a middle child and the only daughter. In college, she wrote for her school paper, The Drake, and after Glaspell graduated, she started working for the Des Moines News. She got the idea for the play and short story, after she covered a murder about a woman on a farm.
Grose, Janet L. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’: Feminine Reading and
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.
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.
Parrish writes in her essay that Glaspell wrote and produced many plays, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1931. It is interesting and meaningful to read drama because it finds yet another way for women to find and express their voices. Parrish states that Glaspell’s writing focused on women’s "desire for equality and acknowledgement in a "man’s world.
When she moved to Harlem in the 1920’s that is when her writing career began and flourished. (after graduating college)
The struggles for equal rights for women were evident in this play just as they are evident today. One of the most obvious examples is how the women were treated at the beginning of the play. They are left in the kitchen while the men go upstairs to look for evidence. The men viewed the kitchen as a room for women and a room where only women belong. The Sheriff proved that when he made the statement that there is nothing here but “kitchen things” (Glaspell 662). In saying this he gives the audience the impression that this room was a room of little importance and that nothing of any value exist in the kitchen. Women who attempt to balance two jobs, the job and being a mother and the job of working in the outside community are often viewed as not being as committed to their job that they work outside of the home. It is often necessary for a mother to leave work to take care of a sick child and when she does this she is frowned upon in the community of the working world. It gives her employer the impression that she is not committed to her job because outside distractions are interfering with production. Employers do not see that fact that she has contributed countless hours. They only see the time that she is away fro...
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles Mr. Wright’s murder is never solved because the two women in the story unite against of the arrogance of men to hide evidence that would prove Mrs. Wright as the murderer. The play Trifles is about the death of farmer Mr. Wright and how the town sheriff and attorney try to find evidence that his wife Mrs. Wright killed him. As the play progresses the men’s wives who had come along were discovering important pieces of evidence that prove the men’s theory but chose to hide from them to illustrate the point that their ideas should have been valued and not something to be trifled. The very irony of the play comes from its title trifles and is defined as something that isn’t very important or has no relevance to the situation that it is presented to. In this play the irony of the title comes from the fact that the men find the women’s opinions on the case trifling even though the women solve the crime which ends up being the downfall of the men as they would have been able to prosecute Mrs. Wright if they had listened which made the women’s opinions not trifling. Glaspell was born in an age where women were still considered the property of men and they had no real value in society in the eyes of men except for procreation and motherhood. This attitude towards women was what inspired Glaspell to write the play Trifles and to illustrate the point that women’s attitudes should be just as valued as men’s and to let women have a sense of fulfillment in life and break the shackles that were holding them only as obedient housewives. Trifles was also inspired by a real murder trial that Glaspell had been covering when she was a reporter in the year 1900. Glaspell is a major symbol of the feminist movement of l...
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.
Susan Glaspell did get her message throughout the story that men and women are equal and should be treated the same. There is no such thing as which gender or sex should have the advantage or nor and which one seem weaker. Throughout her story it expressed great women power although a tragedy had to happen for it to become true.
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, 2004.
One woman’s Trifles is another man’s clues. The play Trifles, was written by Susan Glaspell based on the murder of John Hossack, which Susan reported on while working as a news journalist for Des Moines Daily News. Susan Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, actress, novelist, journalist, and founder of the Provincetown Players. She has written nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. At 21 she enrolled at Drake University even after the prevailing belief that college make women unfit for marriage. But many don’t know that her work was only published after the death of her husband George Cram Cook. Trifles is an example of a feminist drama. The play shows how male dominance was