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Trifles susan glaspell symbolism analysis
Trifles susan glaspell symbolism analysis
The Three Symbols in Trifles by Susan Glaspell
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Why are women expected to be trapped inside of the house everyday and maintain the household? Over time the way women have been treated, and what is expected of them, has changed. The way women are viewed and treated has changed, but in certain situations men see them as nothing more than a maid Although women in today’s society may have another job, they are still expected to maintain the household. Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles places an immense emphasis on how the households should be kept and how men treated women. The main conflicts in the play stem from gender issues, which includes the different expectations that men have in mind for women and how men belittle women for certain things.
The men’s expectations for how Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s home should be kept up plays a huge role in the gender conflict. George Henderson, Henry Peters, and Lewis Hale all made comments throughout the story about how Mrs. Wright should have handled her house work. They portrayed a very aggressive and a rude tone throughout the entire play. As George Henderson, the county attorney, stated “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you
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Wright’s neck. Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s marriage was very toxic, and Mr. Wright emotionally strangled the life out of Mrs. Wright by the way he treated her. As Mrs. Hale states in the play, “We call it - knot it, Mr. Henderson” (Glaspell 611). This line in the play symbolizes the knot around Mr. Wright’s neck, not necessarily the knot in the quilt she was in the process of making. The knot truly symbolizes the anger and hurt that Mr. Wright causes Mrs. Wright throughout her marriage. Henderson, Peters, and Hale assumed that the ladies were referring to the quilt when they said knot, instead of the rope tied around Mr. Wright’s neck. The ladies did not want to say that they thought Mrs. Wright killed her husband, but the men never caught
Wright’s decision to kill her husband. This is why the story ends with Mrs. Hale saying that she’d decided to “knot” it instead of “quilt” it. Quilting it would have been symbolic of Mrs. Wright’s passiveness and continuing to live as though things were okay. Knotting it is both symbolic of Mrs. Wright standing up to her husband, and of the manner (rope, strangling) in which he was killed. This is suggested after Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover the dead bird, who had been strangled at the hands of Mr. Wright. This ties back to the questions Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters had when they observed the “messy” part of the quilt, and the “interrupted” kitchen, because it is now suggested that Mrs. Wright left things in this order in a fit of anger when she found he’d killed her
At the start of the play, all of the characters enter the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, who was recently hanged by an unknown killer. The Sheriff and County Attorney start scanning the house for clues as to who killed Mr. Wright, but make a major error when they search the kitchen poorly, claiming that there is nothing there ?but kitchen things.? This illustrates the men?s incorrect belief that a kitchen is a place of trivial matters, a place where nothing of any importance may be found. Mrs. Peters then notices that Mrs. Wright?s fruit froze in the cold weather, and the men mock her and reveal their stereotype of females by saying ?women are used to worrying over trifles.? The men then venture to the upstairs of the house to look for clues, while the women remain downstairs in the kitchen where they discuss the frozen fruit and the Wrights. Mrs. Hale explains that Mrs. Wright, whose maiden name was Minnie Foster, used to be a lively woman who sang in the choir. She suggests that the reason Mrs. Wright stopped being cheerful and active because of her irritable husband.
The Sheriff, Attorney, and neighbour Mr. Hale look for evidence while the women Mrs. Peters and Hale are left to their own devices in the kitchen. Condescendingly, the men mock the women’s concerns over Mrs. Wright’s stored preserves, its stated: “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” (Hale, act 1) It’s inferred that women- who care only of trifles, something of little or no importance, must be trifles themselves. Ironically, these said trifles: the quilt, preserves, a little bird- which will be discussed later, are what solves this mystery. A major concern expressed by all the characters is motive; why would Mrs. Wright kill her husband? While discussing the marriage and disposition of the victim, its stated: “Yes--good; he didn't drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him. (Shivers.) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.” (Mrs. Hale, act 1) Abuses, which have been hinted at all throughout the play are finally spoken of in these lines. Audiences find, that Mrs. Wright- “real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid” - would murder her
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...
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.
“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.
Wright was outraged. The only thing that kept her sane was gone. In order to calm herself, she starts to quilt. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find this quilt. Mrs. Peters states, “‘The sewing,’ said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way. ‘All the rest of them have been so nice and even—but—this one. Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!’” (Glaspell ¶166) We know that Mrs. Wright is good at quilting, so not just anything could mess her up this badly. It is also suggested throughout the story that the women don’t know whether she was going to knot it or quilt it. Quilting it would mean she would sew the patches together verses knotting which means to cut little slits and just simply tie the strips together. It is believed that the quilting symbolizing Mrs. Wright continuing her life the way it is with an abusive husband and no happiness, and knotting symbolizes her knotting the rope around his neck and killing him therefore ending the
In “ A Jury of Her Peers”, when the county sheriff and attorney go to the Wright house to investigate a murder. They search for clues to incriminate Mrs. Wright but find nothing. They discover Mr. Wright strangled in his bedroom and saw Mrs. Wright completely unaffected. Although Mrs. Wright claims to have been asleep while the murder occurred, the women conclude she choked her husband, Mr. Wright, as evidenced by the broken bird cage, the strangled canary, and the errant quilt patch.
Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. " They are not taken seriously. They are women and are not intelligent enough to understand the concept of murder. The men forgot, it's the little things that bother people the most and for Mrs. Wright, it must have been the death of her canary. I think the canary symbolized Mrs. Wright.
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
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...
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.
Hale and Mrs. Peters are quick to aid the defense of Mrs. Wright. Specifically, when the County Attorney is talking about how badly she keeps her home. “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies,” in which Mrs. Hale retourts “There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm.” Later on when the men are off looking for evidence, that is when the ladies discover the bird with the ringed neck. Glaspell (1916) writes “But, Mrs. Peters — look at it! It's neck! Look at its neck! It's all — other side to. Somebody — wrung — its — neck.” The ladies then discuss who they think may have done it. Mrs. Hale is quick to blame Mr. Wright, identifying him as the the person who wrung the birds neck: “No, Wright wouldn't like the bird — a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too,” and when Mrs. Peters says they do not know who killed the bird, Mrs. Hale replies “I knew John Wright.” In the end the county Attorney asks them what they collected for her, and they end up hiding the bird from the Sheriff and attorney. They most likely realized that the bird would provide a motive into the killing of John, something they desperately need if they will convict
...id it” especially when she asks “for an apron and her little shawl” (436). It isn’t until they discover the dead bird that their suspicion grows almost unlimited. The tone drastically changes from the mysterious beginning of wondering what occurred to a suspicion. This then ends with the panic and need to protect the woman. The last scene ends with a false closure as the Mrs. Hale concludes with “We call it—knot it”, leaving the reader to wonder as to what would happen next (443).
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles explores the unequal relationship between men and women in the early 20th century. How do you think the power relationship between the two genders was reversed at the end of the play? In the 20th century females were just meant to be at home, taking care of the house, making sure everything ran smooth. Women weren’t allowed to vote. They couldn’t go out alone. A women’s place was behind her husband and making sure he looked good, in every aspect. Weather it was political or not. The way they weren’t supposed to dress was extremely different, they weren’t allowed to go out showing skin. At the start of the play we see how the detective states that the house isn’t as clean as it should be. The jars in the kitchen