Women In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

810 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Women and the fight for equality

Alejandra Gomez
Professor Wheeler
Essay 2
27, October 2017 Women have struggled for equal rights since as early as the 1900’s. During this period, the roles of women were franchised as stay-at-home-wives and completed daily chores such as: cleaning, cooking, sewing and motherhood. In “Trifles”, Susan Glaspell uses dynamic characters and their interactions to show us the effects of a male dominant society and how it can be both physically and mentally damaging.
Though not present physically during the play, Glaspell displays how the town viewed Minnie Foster, before her marriage with John Wright, describing her as “like a bird herself”. The author states, “She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the singing in the choir” (Glaspell 245). This imagery of Minnie demonstrations to us
Glaspell exposed how this dominance can be physically and mentally damaging to the women by displaying the sexist interactions between males and females. According to the article “Representations of Rural Women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles”, Raja Al-Khalili states “Susan Glaspell used domestic violence as a motif to arouse questions concerning motives that lead women, who are relegated to the house, to become physical aggressors.” (132) Glaspell uses hidden clues such as the men having important professions, and how these professions play a huge role in the hierarchy of male dominance. These specific professions were being the town’s sheriff and the court appointed attorney. Another example, in the beginning of the play, Glaspell uses great imagery to show us the men stand by the stove and the women by the door during a cold time. This essays demonstrates the changes the characters underwent and displays the physical and mental damage that Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Peters endured during this male central

Show More
Related

  • Symbolic Reasoning In 'Minnie Wright By Susan Glaspell'

    1560 Words  | 4 Pages

    This symbol is where the desolation that Mrs.Wright felt. The dead canary is the representation of the companionship and how weak Mrs. Wright acted on the scene when Mr. Peters showed up. According to Elke Brown, Mrs. Wright thought that “Wright was a harsh man, who like to have his quiet and disapproved of conversation and singing” causing him to break the bird 's nest. Not only that but he killed his owns wife spirit, turning a happy, Minnie Foster into a lonely, desperate Minnie Wright. It is a reality that Mrs. Wright was pushed away to be in isolation. The second symbol in the play was Mrs. Wright 's quilting. Mrs. Hale realized that the quilt was uneven, and that stitches started well and then ended all wrong. It was “the first clue about Minnie 's real state of mind lies in the fact that parts of the quilt have been sewn together haphazardly, which showed Minnie’s state of mind”, according to Mr. Brown. Her incompleteness leads to quilting. This technique of self is to distress, and that was the way Minnie felt. At the beginning of time, Minnie and her husband had everything flowing until it went down the drain and felt abandoned by Mr. Wright. When this happen, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters felt the same way as Minnie. They talk about how it was not bad at all for Minnie to act like she did and left everything with no anger as the sheriff would have thought. Minnie 's friends also realize that her fruit province broke

    Read More

  • Character Analysis: Minnie Wright

    295 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Wrights home was a poor, lonely type of home. The trees that surround the house grew in a sad state. The road that led up to the farm was an unoccupied path. Minnie Wright is the woman who lives on these lonely grounds. She is friendless and mostly keeps to herself. There is no one for her to talk to, her husband died recently, thus, she lives out her life as an outcast. In hindsight, Mrs. Hale, a woman who knows Mrs. Wright, explains to her friend, “'But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs. Peters I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here I wish– I had.’ I [too] wish I had come over to see Minnie sometimes.’” Since no one takes the time out of their busy schedules to visit Mrs. Wright, Minnie feels unwanted.

    Read More

  • Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Deception of Trifles: Gender Roles in the Play by Glaspell

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Trifling Justice

    1534 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Everyday Roles and the Female Choice

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    A work of literature often subtlety alludes to a situation in society that the author finds particularly significant. Susan Glaspell incorporates social commentary into her play Trifles. By doing so, she highlights the gender stratification that exists even in the most basic interactions and presents a way to use this social barrier to an acceptable end. Despite being written almost a century before present day, Glaspell’s findings and resulting solution are still valid in a modern context. Trifles demonstrates the roles of men and women in their everyday behaviour and interaction. The women use their ascribed positions to accomplish what the men cannot and have the ability to deliberately choose not to help the men with their newfound knowledge.

    Read More

  • Repression of Women Exposed in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    954 Words  | 2 Pages

    Susan Glaspell in Trifles explores the repression of women. Since the beginning of time, women have been looked down upon by men. They have been considered “dumb” and even a form of property. Being physically and emotionally abused by men, women in the early 1900’s struggled to break the mold formed by society.

    Read More

  • Power In Trifles

    2135 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Patriarchal Society In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1334 Words  | 3 Pages

    Glaspell uses dialogue to convey the gender-role stereotypes. At the beginning of Trifles, “Hale: Harry and I started to town with a load of potatoes. . . . but I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, though I said to Harry that I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John- - (116). Clearly, we see that the patriarchal society is completely applicable to this play and we slowly unfold the mystery of the effects of the patriarchal society on Minnie Foster. All throughout the play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters make it obvious what kind of husband Mr. Wright was. For example, “Mrs. Hale: But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him- - Like a raw wind that gets to the bone” (123). “I wonder how it would seem to never have any children around. No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird- - a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too (124) is also evidence that what Mr. Wright wanted, he got. I believe that after Mrs. Wright was isolated from society and suffered under the dominance of her husband for so long, she reached her breaking point. Therefore, being a victim of the patriarchal society. Yet, Glaspell takes it up another step I believe. Not only is Minnie Foster a victim, she uses Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to also prove her feminist point. “Mrs. Peters: Oh, her fruit; it did

    Read More

  • Gender Differences in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Justice In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    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 is equally important to finding the truth. Perhaps the most prevalent literary device in the Trifles is the rich symbolism. Each of the women in the play are equally important, but come together to become more powerful. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters directly bond, while Mrs. Wright indirectly contributes from jail by leaving them small clues.

    Read More

  • To Kill A Mockingbird Essay: Minnie Foster

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    Minnie Foster was a happy, carefree young woman living without the burdens and constraints of marriage. While gathering items to bring to her in prison, Mrs. Hale describes to Mrs. Peters how Minnie used to be 30 years ago: “She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir” (1129). Later, Mrs. Hale expresses regret for not visiting Minnie more often, and mentions a white dress Minnie used to wear for the choir. This white dress may represent the innocence of Minnie’s earlier life, before she became the cold, lonely Minnie Wright, wife of John Wright. Any joy that Minnie Foster used to experience, she apparently no longer enjoyed as Minnie Wright. As Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discuss the whereabouts of the canary, Mrs. Hale reminisces about Minnie Foster: “She used to sing real pretty herself”

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Trifles And A Jury Of Her Peers

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    Susan Glaspell, author of the play “Trifles”, and author of short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” was born in 1876, and is a well-known feminist whose stories did not become popular till later in life. Men believe they are superior to women, and Susan Glaspell shows through her short stories how this belief has affected women throughout history. In this case, the women was driven to kill her husband because she was in desperate need of freedom. Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles”, and short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” compare and contrast changes between the two writing such as, plot change, character change, and theme change.

    Read More

  • Gender Dynamics and Empowerment in Glaspell’s Trifles

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although these problems are still around, women are more powerful now than ever before. Glaspell’s short story intensifies the idea of women’s rights and proves that we are not alone. Standing up for what they believe in has become more relevant in today’s world. Glaspell’s short story Trifles stands to point out that women may do things differently but those things are still important, and that a united front is much better than standing alone. The world has come such a long way from where it started. Women began as the people who keep the household in check and the men held jobs and brought in the money. Now, society’s norms are down the drain, if somebody wants something they’ll go after it. The fight for equality has raged for years and it still is not

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Trifles

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    One woman’s Trifles is another man’s clues. The play Trifles, was written by Susan Glaspell based on the murder of John Hossack, which Susan reported on while working as a news journalist for Des Moines Daily News. Susan Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, actress, novelist, journalist, and founder of the Provincetown Players. She has written nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. At 21 she enrolled at Drake University even after the prevailing belief that college make women unfit for marriage. But many don’t know that her work was only published after the death of her husband George Cram Cook. Trifles is an example of a feminist drama. The play shows how male dominance was

    Read More

More about Women In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

Open Document