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Literary analysis on the play trifles
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Trifles
Trifles, written in the early 1900’s by Susan Glaspell, is a one-act play illustrating how women can overreact to their own emotions, allowing these emotions to cloud their judgment. This is shown by describing the feelings of two women who are willing to defend a suspect, blame the victim, and go so far as to hide evidence, to protect another woman from being charged with murdering her husband. Mrs. Wright is the suspect in the murder of her husband, who was strangled in his sleep, found with the rope still around his neck. The sheriff and an attorney are examining Mrs. Wrights home for evidence. Mr. Henderson, the attorney, speaking of Mrs. Wright says, “Here’s a nice mess, ..Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (Kirszner & Mandell 1166) Mrs. Hale, the suspects neighbor, defends Mrs. Wright immediately saying, “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm. Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.” (1166) She says this even though she hardly knows Mrs. Wright. She admits this when she says, “I’ve not seen much of her of late years. I’ve not been in this house – it’s more than a year.” (1166) Even so, Mrs. Hale feels protective toward Mrs. Wright and defends her. Mr. Peters, the sheriff, and Mr. Henderson, go upstairs to look for a motive. Mrs. Hale is left talking to Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, and they begin to put themselves in the shoes of the suspect.
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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).
Trifles” is a play written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell. The play’s audience consists of young adults to those in their late 50’s. Mrs. Glaspell takes a serious matter of domestic violence and uses her platform as an author to raise awareness about the issue. In the play “Trifles” a neighbor went to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wright only to find Mr. Wright dead in his bed. He had been strangled to death by a rope. The neighbor questioned Mrs. Wright about the matter and her response was odd and suspicious. Mrs. Wright was taken to jail while the home is being investigated for further evidence. Mrs. Glaspell’s play “Trifles” effectively achieves the goal in raising awareness on domestic violence by the evidence of the crime and through pathos.
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 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.
Anne Bradstreet is one of the most remembered American poets who lived during the ages of the 17th century. She faced many hurdles simply because she was a woman taking part of the Puritan law. The Puritans were an assembly of English Protestants that formed in the sixteenth century. The Puritans wanted to cleanse the church by shadowing powerful, stringent religious philosophies which they then earned the name Puritans. They presumed that they were God’s chosen people and that they are an admirable illustration for the rest of the world, attempting to create an exemplary for America. Bradstreet is one of the first notable poets to write English poetry in the American colonies. According to many authors that have studied and written about Bradstreet,
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.
Craig Anderson worked with kids third through eighth grade in singapore to study the effects of video games on children cognitive development(69), specifically focused on violence and hostility, without taking into account many of the other factors. Anderson and his team gave the students a questionnaire, that asks about their video game habits and measures their hostility and aggression, 3 times over the course of 2 years to measure the effects playing video games has on children. Part of the studies findings directly contradict the title of Park’s article showing that rather than video games making us more violent over time, the children including the ones playing more video games were less aggressive as they got older(Park,2014). Children naturally outgrow their tendencies to lash out and find better coping skills(43). In describing Anderson’s research Park uses the ambiguous phrase “long-term gamers” in a study involving only children in grades three through eight. It is hard to imagine that any of these kids could have been gaming long enough to be considered “long term gamers”. Perhaps while she may want the reader to think prolonged exposure to games will lead to violence, she actually means that kids that play for obsessive hours are more likely to have results on Andersons test to indicate that they may have more aggressive behavior. While Anderson’s research does hint that there is a possibility that games affect children negatively it is not concrete
Video games are one of the most addictive things in the world. Researchers said that more than 1.2 billion people are playing games worldwide whatever genre is. Many people buy it to have fun with friends, other people buy it for themselves, and others just buy it because they don’t have nothing to do at home. What many people concern about is whether or not kids should play video games. In my opinion, I believe that video games can make kids more violent for three main factors.
Another reason that video games are bad for children is because it can cause injuries towards the person physically as well as mentally. It can cause auditory hallucinations, enuresis, encopresis, wrist pain, neck pain, elbow pain, tenosynovitis, hand arm vibration syndrome, repetitive strain injuries, peripheral neuropathy, and even obesity (NCBI. US. National Library of Medicine). Tests have shown that as you get older the more video games you play the less ability you have to multitask while playing games. As well as not being able to multitask, video games distract players from the sensation of pain, so in theory a child could have a severe injury and not even know about it which could cause the...
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
Anne Bradstreet wrote poetry in a time when only Puritan men were publishing writing, mostly about their faith and religion. Thus, she was the first woman in the colonies to be published and received a lot of criticism for it. At this time, there were roles that women were expected to fill, specifically wife and mother roles, and going against these roles could have grand consequences. While her poems may seem simple and domestic, they contain a more complex meaning when looked at closely. Through many of her poems, Bradstreet expressed her frustration towards her society’s gender norms and went against the Patriarchal ideas of the Puritan society.
Other people may argue that violent video games do not affect people’s behavior at all. Cheryl Olson, Lawrence Kutner, and Dorothy Warner said that “Playing violent video games reduces violence in teenage boys by replacing rough housing. Playing violent video games allows teenage boys show their anger and create peace with his friends without anyone getting hurt”. This quote is significant because it shows how violent video games can have a good outcome on the youth. Also violent video game is a good anger reliever because it takes out a lot of anger out. Cheryl Olson and various contributors said that “Playing violent games provides a safe channel for aggressive and mad feelings. A 2007 study reported that 45% of boys played video games because “it helps me get my anger out” and 62% played because it “helps me relax””. However this is a bad habit to give to children which is substituting something bad to a little less bad. Dave Grossman and Gloria DE Gaetano said “Violent video games cause the person to experience happiness and pleasure when causing someone else pain”. If children get use to causing pain up to the point where they feel pleasure for causing it, how do you think they will act in their future? Certainly not in a positive way and t...
First of all, video games can become a obsession. In fact, an average teenager plays at up to nine hours of video games and/or music per day, CNN states. Video games don’t only become a habit or obsession, but they can put a bad influence on younger children. If a young child were to walk into a room, to find a teenager sitting at the TV or Computer shooting people, this child may get hooked and be violent in the future.