Masculinity In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, the men are introduced as confident leaders who seem to be in control of investigating a crime scene. The setting takes place in the early 1900s. A time of great gender inequality when men treated women more like property rather than their wives. The men are victims of the society they live in, consequently, it influences their decision making skills and behavior to blind them of the real situation at hand. In the play Trifles the men are portrayed as over-confident, degrading, ignorant, and clueless; as a result their wives mischievously bamboozle the men into thinking that they are one’s who are clueless, when in fact it is the other way around. County Attorney George Henderson, Sheriff Henry Peters, and …show more content…

As the men prepare to leave the kitchen and go upstairs to see where the body was found, the sheriff assures Henderson, "Nothing here but kitchen things" (1391), neatly classifying the kitchen as a woman's place and necessarily of minimal importance.When Henderson plows through the cupboard anyway, finding Minnie's broken jars of fruit and complaining, "Here's a nice mess" (1391), Mrs. Peters speaks up in concern for Minnie's ruined work. Her husband belittles her and her sex with his response, which is echoed by Henderson and …show more content…

Peters finds a large sewing basket that catches their attention with bright colors. (Glaspell #) Eventually when the men return the Sheriff overhears the ladies conversations about the quilt and cracks a joke “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it!” (Glaspell #) Another attempt of demeaning the opposing gender to give the men something to laugh about, little did he know he just set himself up for the punchline of the story. The men leave the room once more, the same room that Mrs. Wright spent most of her time performing activities such as cooking, laundry, and sewing.(Search) Giving these points the men ignorantly don’t even attempt to investigate the one place Mrs. Wright spends most of her time. The men never examine the kitchen, ironically the kitchen is where the women eventually find the bird cage and dead canary.

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