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
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
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 “Trifles” there are two plots occurring simultaneously, the men have a story offstage while the women have the attention on stage. This adds a dynamic to the play to further emphasize the sexism within it, Glaspell separates them physically as well as mentally to demonstrate that the men do not think that the women were clever enough to find any evidence. By
Trifles is written in a third person objective point of view. The text is a play, with narration giving detailed descriptions of the actions done by the characters. For example a description of an action done by a character in Trifles would be “After taking a step forward” (Trifles 709). That narration is describing what the characters are doing and gives the reader a better image of what the characters are doing. “A Jury of Her Peers” has a different point of view, third person limited. The reader is only made aware of the feelings and thoughts of one character. In “A Jury of Her Peers” the only character that has viewable feelings and thoughts is Mrs. Hale, the sheriff’s wife. She is the only character that the reader can see the thoughts of, an example of this is on page one of “A Jury of Her Peers” , “She hated to see things half done…” (Glaspell). Mrs. Hale has had to leave her bread undone and the reader can see that she doesn’t feel comfortable with that. That’s example of third person limited in “A Jury of 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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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 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...
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.
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