In Brian Sutton’s article, it summarizes the similarities in Marie de France “Laustic” and Susan Glaspell “Trifle.” “Laustic” derived from medieval literature around the twelfth century. This story mostly seen in the Norton Anthology of Western Literature. The short play “Trifle,” is birthed around the twentieth-century during the women’s right movement. Although both works come from different parts of literature, their theme reflects each other. When comparing their works, they both depict that wives have been oppressed and devalued by their husbands. The women significantly suffer from the lack of companionship, as well as depression. As a result, they are not satisfied with their homes and searched for a way to escape the madness.
The strange thing about this woman is that she appears to be married. She secretly dates the knight and becomes fascinated by his charms. She falls head over hills in love with the knight. The husband suspects the wife of being unfaithful in the marriage. So, he becomes jealous and obsessive which eventually leads him to monitor her every movement. Due to the fact, she is observed attentively; she is unable to date her secret lover. So, every night the woman would go to the window and secretly lays eyes on the man who she loves. The husband wanted to know why she spent so much time at the window every night. The wife explains to her husband the reason she goes to the window is to listen to “the beautiful sound of the nightingale.” (Sutton171) The husband suspects the wife is dishonest and he not oblivious to the fact that she continues to see the knight. The husband ordered his servant to set out traps to capture the bird. So, his servant catches the bird and return it back to him. “The husband takes the bird to his wife and before her eyes he killed it out of spite breaking its neck with his hands.” (Sutton 171) The blood from the bird splatters over her chest (Sutton 172). The woman is immensely saddening and depressed over her husband actions. She takes the slaughtered bird, wraps it up and sends it to the knight. The knight receives the bird and places it
Wright who is convicted of killing her husband. Mrs. Wright and her husband lived on an “isolated farm.” (Sutton 171) Mr. Wright was so cold-hearted that all of Mrs. Wright’s friend avoided being around her. Mrs. Wright was not happy at home, in fact, she was miserable. Due to her loneliness, she built an intense relationship with a canary bird. The canary bird gave her comfort and helped alleviate the pain she endured in her household. When Mr. Wright died, Mrs. Wright felt liberated and relieved. His death was gruesome, and he died with a rope around his neck. During the murder investigation, the women, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peter found damning evidence to solve the case of the crime. They discovered the empty bird cage and noticed that the bird was gone. When they finally found the bird, it was dead, and its neck appeared
Susan Glaspell, from Davenport, Iowa is only the second woman to win a Pulitzer Prize [1]. Much of her writing is strongly feminist, mostly dealing with how society viewed women and the prevalence of male dominance. Possibly, the idea behind the play “Trifles” was based on a woman named Margaret Hosack from Iowa, who is thought to have killed her husband due to his abusive behavior. Susan Glaspell was influenced by this story when writing ‘Trifles’ because she worked at the Des Moines Newspaper at the time of the event and in
Wright. The bird had been Mrs. Wright’s last resort of happiness; it represents who she used to be. This bird was very precious to Mrs. Wright, that becomes obvious when the author says this,“ Mrs. Peters drew nearer—then turned away. “There’s something wrapped up in this piece of silk,” Silk was not an easy thing to come by. Considering that the women come to believe Mr. Wright strangled Minnie’s bird, they make the inference that he did not treat her properly and she would not have been able to get expensive things like silk often. If Minnie wrapped her bird in silk, then it obviously means a lot to her. The women finally understand what happened to Minnie’s bird when they take a closer look at it, “But, Mrs. Peters!” cried Mrs. Hale. “Look at it! Its neck—look at its neck! It’s all—other side to. ”She held the box away from her. The sheriff’s wife again bent closer. “Somebody wrung its neck,” said she, in a voice that was slow and deep.” The women know that Minnie liked this bird a lot and there was no way she would have killed the bird. They come to realize that it was not her that killed the bird, it was Mr. Wright, and the bird was not the only thing that he would have been rough with. “When I was a girl,” said Mrs. Peters, under her breath “my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—” She covered her face an instant. “If they had not held me back
The story “A Brutal Murder in a Public Place” by Joyce Carol Oates follows a person in an airport who hears a small bird but cannot seem to find it. Oates uses imagery and symbolism between the narrator and the bird to show how trapped and overlooked the narrator truly feels.
The females begin responding “stiffly” rather than “quietly”(7) as before. This adjective usage serves to support the speech even more by allowing readers to see the progression from silence to a bold rebellion in the women regarding their husbands, for “by hiding the canary Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are also going against their husbands” (Bee2). Indeed, this act was the major act of defiance that secured the women’s strengthened devotions to each other rather than their husbands. Peters especially undergoes a drastic transformation when she eventually joins in as “support of her fellow oppressed women” (Block B 1). When, at the climax of the story, the bird is hidden from the men in the sentimental tin box, Glaspell exhibits the tension with the selection of detail. She chooses to focus on the clammy hands of Mrs. Peters as she stuffs the tin away and the quivering voice of Mrs. Hale as she denies knowing any information about the crime. The descriptions of the seemingly miniscule and weakening objects around her house match the “quiet desperation” (Schotland 3) Foster repressed until it overflowed the night before. Considering that the adjectives show how burdensome it is for the women to conceal the evidence, it truly demonstrates how strong the relationships between them has grown based
Peters and Mrs. Hale that discovered most of the circumstantial evidence while they waited on their husbands in the kitchen. It was more than kitchen stuff in the kitchen. It was disarray, normally not the way a kitchen is kept. There was bread setting on the table that needed to go in the bread box, the bread box was open, and table was half wiped off. Minnie was in the kitchen in the middle of making bread when John grabbed the bird cage breaking the door as he reached in for the bird and rung it’s neck killing it for possibly singing. Even Mr. Hale stated that John just wanted peace and quiet. The ladies found the bird wrapped up in silk and was placed in a decorative box. They believed Minnie was going to bury the bird in the box. The ladies hid the dead bird from the Sheriff and County Attorney, leaving them with no physical evidence; that is all they
...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.
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 story of “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, and the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell share many similar characteristics. Such as, the theme of death along with the symbolism of freedom. The bond between the characters Lyman and Henry, are the same bond that Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters had throughout the play. Even though Lyman and Henry were brothers, their close companionship was ultimately brought together by buy the convertible. The same goes for the women in the play of “Trifles,” they were brought together by a murder. Both stories have certain items that also symbolize their journey’s surrounding the tragedy that both stories face.
The birdcage represents how Mrs. Wright was trapped in her marriage, and could not escape it. The birdcage door is broken which represents her broken marriage to Mr. Wright. It also represents Mrs. Wright escaping her marriage from Mr. Wright. When the door is open it allows Mrs. Wright to became a free woman. At one point in time the cage door use to have a lock that locked the bird inside the cage. This represents how Mr. Wright kept Mrs. Wright locked up from society. Mr. Wright knew that by keeping Mrs. Wright locked up, she would never be able to tell anyone how he really acted. Mr. Wright was very cruel to his wife.
Mr. Wright was a cruel, cold, and heartless man. He was also a very unsociable man. He abandoned his wife's contentment and paid very little attention to his wife's opinions. He even prevented her from singing. This is revealed about Mr. Wright during the conversations between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters when they find the dead bird with a twisted neck in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket. Mrs. Hale points out, "She- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery. How-she-did-change" (Glaspell 1267). Mrs. Wright used to be a very high-s...
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.
Even with her husband home, she felt joy in her heart while hearing the nightingale. With that being her one excuse as of why she would go outside onto her balcony, she cried, expressing how much sweet the sound was, so sweet, she cannot close her eyes at night. The husband coming to save the day, captured and killed the nightingale, so his wife could rest at night. She has betrayed the nightingale, and destroyed her relationship with her neighbor.
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," 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.
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