Born in 1876, Susan Glaspell was a prominent novelist, writer, journalist, actress, and most notably playwright who won a Pulitzer prize for her work ‘Alison’s House’. After attending Drake University in Des Moines in 1899 she shortly found work as a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News. On the 2nd of December, 1900, a local farmer, John Hossack was murdered with an axe as he slept. Consequently, his wife, Margaret, was charged with the killing. Glaspell was delegated to cover the trial for her newspaper. This later became the inspiration for both a play and a short-story which became two of her most notable works. The former, the play ‘Trifles’, was Glaspell's first independently written drama. It has remained in performance since its …show more content…
The men in the story are trying to solve the mystery and look down on the women and their opinions, however, it is the women who are the ones that end up uncovering the most pertinent evidence. Throughout the stories the author/playwright presents many subtle messages focused on man’s regard for women. There is a difference, however in just how these messages present themselves due to the changes Glaspell made to adapt the play. In ‘Trifles’, we, the audience don't get to learn as much about the background of the situation as we are dropped into the situation without being introduced, whereas, in ‘Jury’, Glaspell chose to use a longer introduction describing Mrs. Hale leaving the kitchen. On the contrary, when writing ‘Jury’ Glaspell allows us a better insight into the world before we enter it. Originally, in ‘Trifles’, the setting and theme aren’t as readily determined and the plot isn't nearly as detailed as it is in the later adaptation, largely thanks to Glaspell’s excellent descriptions and introductions to our characters. For the same reason, the exposition of the murder and how the characters felt regarding it is much stronger in ‘Jury'. Additionally, due to the nature of a written story versus the drama, you get a deeper description of the setting which ultimately makes theme of the story is also easier to determine than in the …show more content…
The original work was intended to be portrayed by actors in a theater, with lights, music, and all, and thus it was written accordingly, using expository methods and particular phrasing by the characters to convey the theme and message Glaspell intended. However, in a short story the writer has more freedom. There is a whole range of literary methods at their disposal and it could take a lifetime of works to portray them all. This is what makes these stories most different: the tools the author had at her disposal. Consider, each type of work has its own format it must comply with and each work must be written with proper form. The form of a piece of writing is simply its structure, how it is constructed and organized. ‘Trifles’, as a play, is written as a script which consist of lines and stage directions, and thus the plot is revealed mainly through dialogue often leading to lazy exposition, or limited understanding of the plot or environment. On the other hand, in ‘Jury’, the written work, the author herself provides succinct description of the events, leading us to have a deeper comprehension of the murder and how the characters felt. In fact, in my opinion, one thing about drama that makes it less enjoyable than other literary genres is that it does not allow you to visualize
I. Article Summary: Suzy Clarkson Holstein's article, “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's 'Trifles'” evaluates the play Trifles and how the difference between the men in the play mirror how a woman's perspective is very different from a man's. Trifles is about two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who show up at a house with their husbands and the county attorney to investigate a murder. The entire time the men are looking for evidence to implicate the accused wife, Minnie Wright, of killing her husband. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are there to gather up some items to bring Minnie Wright in jail. While doing so, the women uncover evidence that would prove the wife is culpable but decide to hide it from the men in the last moments of the play. Trifles is evaluated on how the women are able to come up with the evidence unlike the men because they didn't approach it like a crime scene but rather a home, “By contrast, the women arrive at a home. Although neither they or the men realize it, they too are conducting an investigation” (Holstein 283). Holstein also notes they are able to find evidence because they use their own life experiences to relate to the accused murderer, Minnie Wright as shown here; “But the women do not simply remember and sympathize with Minnie. They identify with her, quite literally” (285). Holstein finishes the article by noting the women decide to hide the evidence because of the solidarity they feel towards Minnie Wright; “From Mrs. Hale's perspective, people are linked together through fragile, sometimes imperceptible strands. The tiny trifles of life –a neighbor's visit, a bird's song, the sewing of a quilt –have profound reverberations” (287).
Born in 1867, Susan Glaspell was raised in rural Davenport, Iowa during a time where young ladies were expected to marry and raise a family. Glaspell never conformed to this expectation; instead graduating from Duke University, becoming a reporter for Des Moines Daily News, and becoming a successful author and playwright. During her years as a reporter, she covered the story of Margaret Hossock, a farm wife in Iowa accused of murdering her husband. This would later serve as her inspiration for Trifles. Glaspell was a woman who bucked societal expectations but was not blind to the plight other women faced. (Ozieblo) Trifles shows how silencing a person’s soul can be just as dangerous as taking the song out of a caged canary; stealing
Susan Glaspell's Trifles explores the classical male stereotype of women by declaring that women frequently worry about matters of little, or no importance. This stereotype makes the assumption that only males are concerned with important issues, issues that females would never discuss or confront. The characters spend the entirety of the play searching for clues to solve a murder case. Ironically, the female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, uncover crucial evidence and solve the murder case, not the male characters. The men in the play, the Sheriff, County Attorney, and Hale, search the scene of the crime for evidence on their own, and mock the women's discussions. The women's interest in the quilt, broken bird cage door, and dead canary, all of which are assumed to be unimportant or trifling objects, is what consequentially leads to their solving of the crime. The women are able to discover who the killer is by paying attention to detail, and prove that the items which the men consider insignificant are important after all.
In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, a small number of people are at the Wright house trying to figure out why and how Mr. Wright was murdered. Mrs. Wright is already the suspect, and all that is needed for the case is evidence for a motive. The jury needs something to show anger or sudden feeling so that they can convict her for murder. The men, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Hale are there to find the evidence. The women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, are there to pick up a select few items for Mrs. Wright. While the men are going about business and looking for evidence to build a case against Mrs. Wright, the women are looking over what Mrs. Wright left behind and intuitively trying to understand what happened. They are also trying to fathom why Mrs. Wright would be compelled to perform such an act of violence. As the story goes on, it constructs each of the characters in slightly different means. Susan Glaspell presents Mr. Wright and Mrs. Hale as having contrasting and comparable characteristics. While Mrs. Hale and Mr. Wright differ in terms of emotions, they are similar in their cleanliness and are well respected by others.
The power of women is different than that of men. Women display a subtle and indirect kind of power, but can be resilient enough to impact the outside world. In Trifles, Susan Glaspell delivers the idea that gender and authority are chauvinistic issues that confirm male characters as the power holders, while the female characters are less significant and often weak. This insignificance and weakness indicated in the play by the fact that the women had the evidence to solve a murder, but the men just ignored the women as if they had no value to the case at all. This weakness and inability of the female to contest the man’s view are apparent. According to Ben-Zvi, “Women who kill evoke fear because they challenge societal constructs of femininity-passivity, restraint, and nurture; thus the rush to isolate and label the female offender, to cauterize the act” (141). This play presents women against men, Ms. Wright against her husband, the two women against their spouses and the other men. The male characters are logical, arrogant, and stupid while the women are sympathetic, loyal, and drawn to empathize with Mrs. Wright and forgive her crime. The play questions the extent to which one should maintain loyalty to others. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale try to withhold incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright, and by challenging the reader to question whether
...g to conceive to her audience by proving all opinions matter no matter whose it is. By looking in the past the audience can see that the story shows some significant similarities to the time it was written in. Glaspell shows women how a united cause can show the world that women should have just as much rights as men do. The theme of the story is expressly told through how and why Mr. Wright is murdered and Mrs. Peters transformation at the end of the story. Film adaptations that changed the title of Trifles to A Jury of Her Peers probably did it to appeal to the male audience and include a double meaning of how a jury can hold bias even with evidence directly given to them.
In Trifles, the play takes place at an abandon house at a farm where John Wright and his wife, Minnie Wright lived. John was killed with a rope around his neck while his wife was asleep. The neighbor, county attorney and sheriff came to the crime scene for investigation. Along with them came their wives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters; they were told to grab some belongings for Mrs. Wright that she may need while she’s in custody. Once they all entered the home the men dismissed the kitchen finding it as unimportant. The three men focused more on legal regulations of the law. The play was mostly revolved around the women, discovering the motive through “trifles” and other symbolic things that had significance to Minnie’s guilt. When Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters understood the reason behind the murdering they hid the evidence from their husbands, and kept quiet. Many readers would visualize this play as a feminist point of view due to women’s bonding in discovering Minnie’s oppressive life after marriage. However Glaspell, provokes two ethical paradigms that have different perspectives of justice. Glaspell uses symbolism to characterize women’s method in a subjective way, by empowering themselves through silence, memories of her and their own lives as well as having empathy about her sit...
Susan Glaspell's play, "Trifles", attempts to define one of the main behavioral differences between man and woman. For most of the story, the two genders are not only geographically separated, but also separated in thought processes and motive, so that the reader might readily make comparisons between the two genders. Glaspell not only verbally acknowledges this behavioral difference in the play, but also demonstrates it through the characters' actions and the turns of the plot. The timid and overlooked women who appear in the beginning of the play eventually become the delicate detectives who, discounted by the men, discover all of the clues that display a female to be the disillusioned murderer of her (not so dearly) departed husband. Meanwhile, the men in the play not only arrogantly overlook the "trifling" clues that the women find that point to the murderer, but also underestimate the murderer herself. "These were trifles to the men but in reality they told the story and only the women could see that (Erin Williams)". The women seem to be the insightful unsung heroes while the men remain outwardly in charge, but sadly ignorant.
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 wrote two different forms of literature that have basically the same plot, setting and characters. This was during a period in which the legal system was unsympathetic to the social and domestic situation of the married woman. She first wrote the drama version “Trifles” in 1916 and then the prose fiction “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. The main difference was the way the prose fiction version was presented. Glaspell effects emotional change in the story with descriptive passages, settings and the title. The prose fiction version has a greater degree of emotional penetration than the drama version.
Susan Glaspell coauthored over 10 plays. Her play entitled Woman’s Honor rejected the idea of the honorable and docile woman and freed the belief of honor from contemporary gender theories. Another play, The Verge, developed out of Glaspell's recognition of the way society left some women feeling stuck in roles they were not fit for. Subsequently, Susan Glaspell’s feministic views compelled her to introduce her opinions within her
“Trifles”, by Susan Glaspell, focuses on three points; relationship between men and women, the privacy of a home life and the justice that law must find. By using the play structure, powerful diction, meaningful symbolism and a tense tone, she successfully serves her purpose. The classic plot line of progression only further allows the reader to be enthralled by the focus of the story.
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in
The play Trifles by Susan Glaspell may not follow all the elements of Greek tragedy as described in Aristotle’s Poetics, however it does contain some important elements that he suggests, including how the plot is a tightly constructed cause-and effect chain of actions that do not rely heavily on the character and personality of the protagonist and a second element is conveyed through Glaspell’s characterization of her protagonist who is to be pitied and has found herself amidst a great upheaval due to a tragic moment in which she snapped. Trifles follows Aristotle’s outline for plot fairly closely; the play’s incentive moment begins as the characters enter the Wright’s kitchen, the men in search of clues to prove Mrs. Wright’s guilt and the women in search of Mrs. Wright’s supplies that she needs while she is in awaiting trial (Glaspell 69-70).