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Women's roles in literature
Women's roles in literature
What are the gender roles in the story trifles
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Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Susan Glaspell's Trifles
In the play Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, the male characters make several assumptions concerning the female characters. These assumptions deal with the way in which the male characters see the female characters, on a purely stereotypical, gender-related level. The stereotypical assumptions made are those of the women being concerned only with trifling things, loyalty to the feminine gender, and of women being subservient to their spouses.
The first assumption, women being only concerned with trifling things, is seen beginning with line 120 where the men say:
Sheriff: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves.
County Attorney: I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than her preserves to worry about.
Hale: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
These lines show the attitude toward women prevalent throughout the play. It is the men's nonchalance toward the small details t...
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...imple things in life, things of little or no significance to the important, male world in which they live. It is here we find the men to be wrong, for it is in the small, seemingly insignificant details that the guilt of a woman is found and stifled.
Work Cited
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.
Alex Haley’s, Autobiography of Malcolm X, continues to teach us of the prominent African American leader in the Nation of Islam. He starts off before Malcolm Little was even born, talking of his father and mother and how white members of the KKK drove his family out of their home and into Lansing, Michigan. In Lansing, their family was harassed once again by a white racist group, the Black Legion. Malcolm’s father died when he was six, and his mother was placed in a mental hospital seven years after this incident.
Malcolm grew up in Lansing Michigan on a farm majority of his life. Malcolms life of crime started when he began stealing goods for his family. He felt the need to due to his family being so poor. Malcolm lived with his mother Mrs. Little, who was not so stable herself. She was bombarded by bills and tax collectors that eventually led her to go into depression and have extreme anxiety. She later became so bad that she was admitted to the mental Institute and Malcolm was now a child of the state. This was his first true resentment towards white authorities after he blamed them for the detention of Mrs. Little and being a child of the state.
After the women come across a shattered jar of canned fruit, they converse about Mrs. Wright’s concern about the matter. Mrs. Peters states, “She said the fire’d go out and her jars would break” (Glaspell 918). The women here identify with Mrs. Wright’s concern, because they understand the hard work that goes into canning as part of the demanding responsibilities women endure as housewives. The Sheriff’s reply is “Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (Glaspell 918). In other words, the men perceive the event as insignificant; they clearly see women as a subservient group whose concerns hold little importance.
“The treatment of women in ‘Trifles’”, a web site that analyzes the demeanor of women throughout the play, states “ The women are betrayed as if they are second class citizens with nothing more important to think about, except to take care of the medial household chores like cooking, cleaning, and sewing.
Gender Dominance appears as the theme in “Trifles”. Women show weaker and fragile qualities compared to the men, causing the males to believe they are more superior and stand above women.
Trifles by Susan Glaspell is a one-act play centered around a woman, Mrs. Wright, who allegedly murdered her husband, Mr. Wright, in the night. There are no witnesses of his death; only unofficial confessions and he-said she-said talk. Without viable evidence and information (and the absence of Mrs. Wright altogether), the play soon focuses on a group of people who gather at the Wrights’ home the day after the murder. These characters include a male sheriff, county attorney, and neighboring farmer and their two wives. It is their job to determine what truly happened to Mr. Wright and piece together any evidence that would enable the conviction of Mrs. Wright. It is with the plot, setting, and overall use of symbolism that Glaspell communicates her message and themes. These messages and themes, which are the glue to the play, allow the audience to understand how unhappy of a life Mrs. Wright lived and how men viewed women’s roles as unimportant.
Malcolm X is one of the prominent activist and outspoken public voices of the Black Muslim. He was born as Malcolm little and he changed his last name to X to signify his rejection of his “slave” name. Malcolm X is a charismatic and eloquent, Malcolm became an influential leader of the Nation of Islam, which combined Islam with Black Nationalism. After Malcolm X’s death in 1965, his bestselling book The Autobiography of Malcolm X popularized his ideas, particularly among black youth, and laid the foundation for the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Malcolm X was born May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska by the name of Malcolm Little. His childhood was plagued with problems that stemmed from his father Earl's outspoken views on civil rights and his strong support of black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Constant death threats by the White Supremacist group known as the Black Legion (also known as members of the Ku Klux Klan forced the family to relocate twice before Malcolm's fourth birthday, but their efforts to keep themselves safe came up short when their house in Lansing, Michigan was set ablaze in 1929. Shortly after losing their house Earl Malcolm was found laid out and mutilated across the trolle...
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.
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...
Malcolm’s negative view of white people began at a young age; he saw his childhood home burned down by the Ku Klux Klan. He vividly recalled the sound of the of the pistol shots
I never wanted to wait for anything”. He even was trying to conform, even stating how he “was trying so hard, in every way, to be white” (pg. 33). The name Detroit Red is associated with a low point in his life. Malcolm was named Detroit Red as he came out of Michigan and he was light-skinned. During the period as Detroit Red he was hustler doing things such as stealing, gambling, drug dealing. He was essentially living a dangerous life. Looking bad at this lifestyle he chose that put him in jail he said: “I really was at least slightly out of my mind. I viewed narcotics as most people regard food” (pg. 141). With the name Malcolm X, he finally takes all his experience and new learnings from the Nation of Islam and applied it to the new chapter in his life. During his time in prison, Malcolm becomes informed about a new movement titled the Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam is one of the oldest Black nationalist movements that taught blacks about self-reliance and eventually going back to the motherland. Malcolm writes to Elijah Muhammad while in prison and starts working for him and renounces his reckless behavior. Malcolm works very hard so he can become the second man to the Nation of Islam. In the 1950s’ with the rise of the civil rights movement
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,
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.
Malcolm X was a well-known civil rights leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Malcolm was a very gifted inspirational speaker. Through his dedication and leadership during the 1950s and 60s he grew the Nation of Islam followers to over 400, 00 members. Malcolm X encouraged blacks not to become victim to racism by any means necessary. In the year of 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated in front of his wife and children while he was delivering a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.