Mrs. Minnie Wright is the prime suspect in Trifles, a play by Susan Glaspell, taking place in and around a farmhouse in 1916 where the owner of the farmhouse, Mr. Wright, is found dead. Likewise, Emily Grierson is believed to have murdered her partner, Homer Barron, in “A Rose for Emily”, a short story written by William Faulkner taking place in the early 1900’s. During this time period, women were cast into low positions in society and although Emily and Minnie’s living situations are quite different, the women show other similarities growing ever so lonely and depressed leading them to murder the men in their lives. Susan Glaspell, the writer of Trifles, was born shortly after the Civil War in 1867 in the midwestern town of Davenport, Iowa and was of Scottish, English and Irish decent. “Completing her public school education in 1894 she began employment at the Davenport Morning Republic and Weekly Outlook. Glaspell received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Drake University. Soon after, she worked as a journalist for Des Moines Daily News before deciding to focus solely on creative writing. Many of the short stories written by Glaspell were set in a fictional town called “Freeport” mirroring her own community and based on her erudition of politics and Midwestern life. Before …show more content…
Minnie lived on a farm where she did all the housekeeping and cooking; while Emily had a manservant to help her with daily chores. Emily had no one to keep her company with the exception of the manservant while Minnie had her neglectful husband, not being much company at all. “In both plots a wife stands accused of the crime of murdering her husband” (Wright 225), during the same time period, with both of their living situations being different but both suffering from depression triggering them to massacre the men in their
Susan Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, journalist, and actress. She married in 1903 to a novelist, poet, and playwright George Cram Cook. In 1915 with other actors, writers, and artists they founded Provincetown Players a group that had six seasons in New York City between 1916-1923. She is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. She was a pioneering feminist writer and America’s first import and modern female playwright. She wrote the one act play “Trifles” for the Provincetown Players was later adapted into the short shorty “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. A comparison in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” changes the titles, unfinished worked, and
A lack of cultural awareness or the assumption by one cultural group that another is inferior often results in painful and personal and social encounters. Consider the characters in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. During a short visit to the Wrights, Mr. Hale found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely, after purportedly finding her husband with a rope around the neck. The incident ultimately became the talk of the town. Some were accusing Mrs. Wright of murdering her husband. Mrs. Wright of course denied the allegation, arguing that she was asleep when someone broke into her home and murdered her husband. While the men were blinded by their relentless and often emotionless inquiry of the murder case, the women sympathized with Minnie, the wife of the
The author, William Faulkner, has a collection of books, short stories, and poems under his name. Through his vast collection of works, Faulkner attempts to discuss and bring awareness to numerous aspects of life. More often than not, his works were created to reflect aspects of life found within the south. Family dynamics, race, gender, social class, war, incest, racism, suicide, necrophilia, and mental illness are just some of the aspects that Faulkner explored. In “A Rose for Emily” the aspects of necrophilia and mental illness along with the societal biases that were observed in a small-town setting are seen to be a part of this captivating story. These aspects ultimately intertwine with the idea of insanity that characterizes “A Rose for Emily.
“Trifles” written by Susan Glaspell explores the oppressive nature of an enduring patriarchal hierarchy within farm life throughout the 1900’s coinciding with the extensive psychological damage solitude and isolation imposed on the soul of, Mrs. Wright.
Evans, Elizabeth M. “Biographical Influences on Glaspell’s Trifles.” 30 July 1996. University of South Florida. 28 March 2004. http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm#knot.
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.
Notably, one of the principal ideas presented in Glaspell’s work is the concept of gender roles, moreover, the notion of institutional misogyny present in 20th century America. These said ideas are fleshed out through the characters of the play. The play opens with the introduction of five characters: Sheriff Peters, Hale, County Attorney
...stine. "On the Edge: The Plays of Susan Glaspell." Modern Drama 31.1 (Mar. 1988): 91-105. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Marie Lazzari. Vol. 55. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
First, When Martha and Mrs. Peters arrive at the scene of the crime, they see that it is a very lonely place off the road. The house is in a hollow, with lone-some looking trees around it(1).Mr. Hale thinks that having a phone to communicate with rest of the world in such place will reduce loneliness although Mr. Wright does not want communication(2). Minnie lives a miserable life in this place. Martha cannot believe that this is what Minnie foster has turned into. She describes her rocker, and says: “ that rocker don’t look in the least like Minnie foster. The Minnie foster of twenty years before”(3). The rocker is a very old rocker with a faded color and few parts of it are missing. Also, Mrs. Hale thinks it is a torture for Minnie to wrestle with the stove year after year because that stove is in a very poor condition(8). These are some few examples that show how miserable Minnie is in such a lonely place.
Grose, Janet L. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’: Feminine Reading and
Glaspell authored this feminist short story, now considered a classic and studied in many institutions of higher education, in 1917, a story that underwent reawakening in the 1970s (Hedges). As the investigation of Mr. Wright’s murder takes the sheriff of Dickson County, neighbor Mr. Hale, and their wives to the Wright farm, the story “confines itself to the narrow space of Minnie’s kitchen--- the limited and limiting space of her female sphere. Within that small space are revealed all of the dimensions of the loneliness that is her mute message” (Hedges). It is evident through Glaspell’s writing that Minnie Wright feels distress from being trapped in the confines of her kitchen with no telephone and no outreach to the world outside her husband’s farm. Mrs. Wright being quarantined to her own home every day--- a common occurrence in housewives of ...
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...
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, from Davenport, Iowa is only the second woman to win a Pulitzer Prize [1]. Much of her writing is strongly feminist, mostly dealing with how society viewed women and the prevalence of male dominance. Possibly, the idea behind the play “Trifles” was based on a woman named Margaret Hosack from Iowa, who is thought to have killed her husband due to his abusive behavior. Susan Glaspell was influenced by this story when writing ‘Trifles’ because she worked at the Des Moines Newspaper at the time of the event and in
William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” is considered a great story not only for its dark, almost morbid plotline, but also for its unique and interesting point of view. Faulkner’s distinct use of the first person point of view, through the eyes of one narrator illustrating generations of townspeople’s thoughts, provides an insight into Emily’s life that can not be replicated by any other perspective. The story spans three generations and includes the opinions and outlooks of both male and female townspeople, as well as people young and old, making Faulkner’s successful use of a single narrator to express the collective beliefs of all of the townspeople impressive. Had Faulkner set up the story around any other narration, the character composed of the conglomerated thoughts of all the townspeople wouldn’t exist and the confessional tone created through the narrator’s gossip would not be portrayed. The narrator conveys the eternal view of Emily’s life by what her acquaintances see and think, providing a stance that is necessary to the central idea that it is a part of human nature to assume the worst about someone who lives a withdrawn life.