Feminism in Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers
As a strong feminist, Susan Glaspell wrote “Trifles” and then translated it to a story called “A Jury of Her Peers.” These works express Glaspell’s view of the way women were treated at the turn of the century. Even though Glaspell is an acclaimed feminist, her story does not contain the traditional feminist views of equal rights for both sexes.
The short story and the play written by Susan Glaspell are very much alike. The story takes place in an old country town in the early 1900’s. Mr. Hale has found his neighbor, John Wright, strangled upstairs in the Wrights’ house with Minnie Wright, John’s wife, sitting calmly downstairs. With John Wright dead and his wife in jail, Mr. Hale, the sheriff, their wives, and the county attorney all crowded in the Wright’s house to try to find clues about the murder. While the men go upstairs, they leave the women downstairs “…worrying over trifles.” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 264) Unbeknownst to the men, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clue after clue that would convict Minnie Wright of the murder. Instead of telling the men about the clues, the women hide the clues and the men have no idea what the women have found. The clues are little things like a half cleaned kitchen, sewing that is messed up, and the sugar jar being left open. The clues the women find are very noticeable to them, but a man would over look them without thinking twice.
Feminists usually do not vary in the views that they have. The feminist wants equal rights for both sexes, and wants all women to be treated just like men. The short story and the play suggest something different. Within the story there are many instances that suggest that Susan Gla...
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Works Cited
Banner, Lois. Women in Modern America: A Brief History. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2000. 127-137.
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. "A Jury of Her Peers." Literature and the Writing Process. Eds. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 4th Ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 1996. 293-307.
Hewitt, Nancy. "Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980's."Social History. Vol. 10: No. 3 (1985): 299-321
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
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
... The empowerment of women is the major factor in the two pieces written by Susan Glaspell. The male detectives couldn’t figure out what may have happened, but when the women try to bring all the pieces together, they are thrown aside and not substantive. Glaspell shows how the women acted as if they were detectives, much more than the men by contributing to the fact that they solved the case, showing they were just as valuable as the men, and actually much more.
...mpletely dependent upon men. Playwright Susan Glaspell cleverly causes the reader to question the way that women and men are viewed in society. The women in Trifles, though they were overlooked by the men, solved this case while the men failed to do so when they were supposedly in charge. In failing to recognize the women’s ability to contribute to their work the men succeed in causing the women to unite, giving them the real power and knowledge to solve this mystery. All the while the women are moving a little closer together and moving forward toward their rights.
Hedges, Elaine. A. "Small Things Reconsidered: Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers'. " Women's Studies 12.1 (1986): 89. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web.
In17th & 18th century slave trading is lucrative business. Slaves were utilized to provide labour to industries and house helpers to rich people. In 1833, slavery was abolished
Slavery was a huge part of America’s history and is impossible to ignore today. African-Americans, during the 1860’s, obviously disagreed with the widespread use of slavery and did whatever they could to showcase their disapproval of it. There are many examples of slaves hostility toward their masters, but unfortunately the South was too heavily populated with slave owners for most of the protests to have a huge impact on the push for the abolition of slavery.
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.
Although slavery was an important component of the growing Americas, many African Americans were emotionally, spiritually, and physically abused by the dehumanizing slavery. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, slavery was widely practiced in the American colonies. The production of the cotton gin in the early 1800s made slavery a very important aspect of Southern agriculture. Many slaves worked in harsh conditions to help maintain the fields, “sunup to sundown”. Although there were many arguments for and against slavery over the years, most of the information did not come directly from the African American slaves themselves. Through different anecdotes, stories, and songs, we learn how different slaves viewed slavery in America. What did
This essay will also argue other factors played equally an important role in British abolitionist movement and subsequent emancipation in 1833. Later, this essay will look into the importance of Christian missionaries and how they indirectly brought about the Jamaican rebellion. However, it will be acknowledged this did have an impact on the emancipation movement in Britain, but the importance of religion was far greater in Jamaica. Therefore, this essay is in two parts. Part 1 will be discussing the influences of the French Enlightenment, the economic theory of Adam Smith and the Great Reform Act. Later, part 2 will discussing how Sam Sharpe used religious beliefs to great effect to start the Jamaican rebellion. Finally, part 2 will discuss how the education of slaves was important in bringing about the Jamaican rebellion.
The course of human history is marked by appalling crimes. But even the hardened historian is filled with horror, loathing and indignation on examining the record of African slavery. How was it possible? How could it have gone on for so long, and on such a scale? A tragedy of such dimensions has no parallel in any other part of the world.
Mrs. Hale’s keen wit and patience contributes to her embodiment of The Fate sister Clotho the Spinner, which is even more evident in her correcting of Minnie Wright’s improper stitching (Russell). Mrs. Peters begins the process of investigation deeply devoted to keeping the law. She doesn’t want any disruption in the house, saying, “I don’t think we ought to touch things” (Glaspell p. 666) when Mrs. Hale began searching for clues. Upon finding the dead canary, Mrs. Peters view on the situation changes drastically, and she decides with Mrs. Hale to hide the tiny dead bird from the men. They both figure that if the dead canary was discovered, Mrs. Wright would be thought to be a mad woman, though it was likely Mr. Wright who killed it.
The average woman’s role in society today, starkly contrasts that of the female social norm expressed in eras predating the current; however, similarities do exist. Women once existed in the background, limited to lives of household responsibilities, compelled by overwhelming societal expectations to obey their male counterpart, and preform a set of domestic duties specific to their gender. Today this is not the case, however certain gender related expectations remain intact, and for this reason gender roles are still a prominent aspect of everyday social dynamics. The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell exemplifies gender roles as they were practiced in the early 1900s, by identifying women's subordinate roles in their marriages, and domestic roles in their households. Multiple Historical accounts, which document women's social and domestic experiences, express similar instances of female inferiority. Even more examples of these gender roles can be observed from literary works of the time. "Trifles" is one such work, throughout which many examples of women's assumed social roles are portrayed. Ultimately Glaspell's play invites the audience to recognize the difference between women's societal role in the past and that of the present and then relate the two by identifying their similarities.
Most of the actions take place in the kitchen setting which demonstrates the author’s deliberate move to show the important details about the wifely role. The women hold their conversation in the unkempt kitchen, a domestic sphere that reveals everything about the lives of women. While the men were busy searching for clues around the farmhouse, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale see some evidence in the trifle that Mrs. Wright had left in the kitchen. The women can deduce that the messy kitchen with dirty pans gives a signal of incomplete work. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter spend most of their time in the messy kitchen that significantly reveal Mrs. Wright’s state of confusion (Manuel 61). Mrs. Hale understands Mrs. Wright’s experiences of loneliness and desperation from the male-dominated circumstances. The female characters sympathize with her situation by acknowledging the forces in her life that made her take the roles including that of murdering her husband. The men overlook the evidence that the women can trace in the house, and their dialogue suggests lack of sympathy towards women as noted from their humiliation and sarcasm towards women. For example, the women can relate the death of the canary to the murder scene. The attorney shows how woman’s concerns are unimportant, instead of sympathizing with Mrs. Wright for what has befallen her, they portray their women
As slavery continued and grew, complicated systems of social status developed on plantations. The lowest ranking slaves, the backbone of the plantation economy, were the field slaves. The field slaves were divided into ‘gangs’ according to their physical strength and ability, with the strongest and fittest males and females in the first gang. The highest ranking slaves were the domestic servants who worked in the owner’s house. The difference in status between field and domestic slaves caused a division between the slaves on most plantations.