In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the central character remains unseen for the entirety of the piece. “The central character - the person whose actions are to be understood - is absent, thus rendering her all the more a figurative blank space” (Keetley 342). The audience never sees or hears Minnie Wright throughout the piece, and therefor cannot develop an accurate opinion of the outcome of the play, as they are missing vital information about Minnie’s personality. The audience and characters instead make several assumptions about the truth that cannot be verified without closer inspection of Minnie’s personality and experiences. Glaspell’s use of an unseen central character in Trifles causes the story to develop based on assumptions made by both the audience and the characters and ultimately leads the audience to question the outcome of the play.
“Almost every action of the farmwives in this tightly compressed play is designed to make Minnie's presence felt” (Noe 11). While it is true on first glance that the audience can empathize with Minnie and that her present is felt, on further inspection it is realized that without hearing from Minnie directly and seeing her responses to questions we cannot be certain of the outcome of the story. The audience creates the backstory of Minnie and John’s marriage without meeting either, or hearing about them from a reliable source. “His [Mr. Hale’s] comment that he didn’t think Minnie's view on the question would make any difference to her husband, as well as the discovery of the strangled canary and broken bird cage, suggests that Minnie was habitually silenced and dominated by her husband; and that conflict between the Wrights may often have been resolved through violence” (Noe 13). Given no ...
... middle of paper ...
...Importance Of Trifles." Studies In Short Fiction 21.1 (1984): 1. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1383-93. Print.
Hedges, Elaine. “A Jury of Her Peers." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 154-176. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
Keetley, Dawn. "Rethinking Literature's Lessons for the Law: Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers"." Trans. Array Real Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, Volume 18 Law and Literature. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002. 335-353. Print.
Noe, Marcia. "Chapter Two: Reconfiguring The Subject/Recuperating Realism: Susan Glaspell's Unseen Woman." New Readings In American Drama (2002): 9-21. Book Collection: Nonfiction. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
In this play, the women are housewives; responsible for bearing children, and keeping the house. They are often made fun of or made to feel less of themselves when they didn’t perform those duties to the specifications of the men. The city attorney openly criticizes Mrs. Wrights housekeeping skills by stating “here is a mess, dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper would you say, ladies?” (Glaspell 1109-1110). Mrs. Hale describes Minnie Foster as “real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery” (Glaspell 1114). But a lot of changes are evident once she marries Mr. Wright. She spends her days in isolation, focusing on her quilts, preserves, and caring for her canary. She didn’t receive any type of appreciation for her hard work. This defeats her mentally and she doesn’t have any joy left in her life. While looking for evidence in the murder, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find red flags that support her mental decline, such as blocks on the quilt described as “all over the place” (Glaspell 1113), like she didn’t know what she was doing and a “dead bird in a fancy box, wrapped in a piece of silk” (Glaspell 1114). After the death of her beloved canary at the hands of her husband,
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
The story is set in a rural community in turn-of-the century Iowa. This time-frame is one where women did not have the freedom they have today, but were instead seen as wives, cooks and housekeepers. This is the basis for Minnie’s isolation, her place in the society of the day. This is also compounded by Minnie’s husband, John Wright, who makes her more isolated than many other women of the time. We see that Minnie is isolated from love. Her husband is not an affectionate man and she has no children. In the story, we are told that after her marriage her only friend was “solitude.”
and Trifles and 'A Jury of Her Peers,' by Susan Glaspell." Atlantis 24.1 (June 2002): 299-
...ing and themselves, they see that Mrs. Wright is worth their protection, which has several meanings for the women. They come together with her against the law; they also protect her by not telling her the truth about her ruined preserves. Mrs. Hale regrets not protecting Minnie Wright from isolation and solitude, and she rushes to her defense and protects Minnie Wright earlier by helping her now.
Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles.” Literature: A World of Writing. Ed. David L. Pike and Ana M.
Ortiz, Lisa. Critical Essay on “A Jury of Her Peers.” Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale. 163-166.
Susan Glaspell uses literary elements that show the readers the feminist theme in the play. The use of characters in this play really shows the feminist theme the most. Men in this play clearly demonstrates how men wer...
Susan Glaspell highlights the settings as theatrical metaphors for male dominated society in the early 20th century. “Trifles” begins with an investigation into the murder of Mr. Wright. The crime scene is taken at his farmhouse where clues are found that reveals Minnie Wright to be a suspect of murder. In the beginning of the play, it clearly embodies the problems of subordination of women. For example, there are two main characters in this play—Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who are brought along with the sheriff and attorney to find evidence for Mr. Wright’s murder. The men gather and work together at the stove and they talk with each other in familiarity while women “stand close together near the door behind men” (Glaspell 444). Perhaps the location of the women standing behind the men near the door reflects also their secondary or inferior social standing in the eyes of the men. Moreover, it seems that the wo...
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.
Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, and Writing. By Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 2011. 1366-375. Print.
Mrs. Hale describes Minnie as formerly singing “real pretty herself” (Glaspell p666). The connection between Minnie and the canary is established here, and in the bird’s physical death parallels Minnie’s emotional death (Russell). Mrs. Hale’s keen wit and patience contributes to her embodiment of The Fate sister named Clotho the Spinner, which even more evident in her correcting of Minnie Wright’s improper stitching (Russell). Mrs. Peters begins the process of investigation deeply devoted to keeping the law. She doesn 't want any disruption in the house saying, “I don 't think we ought to touch things” (Glaspell p 666) when Mrs. Hale began searching for clues. Upon finding the dead canary, Mrs. Peters view on the situation changes drastically, and she decides with Mrs. Hale to hide the tiny dead bird from the men. They both figure that if the dead canary was discovered, Mrs. Wright would be thought to be a mad woman, though it was likely Mr. Wright who killed it. Mrs. Peters sympathizes with Minnie remembering back to an old memory of her childhood, where a menacing boy killed her small kitten with a hatchet (Russell). Mrs. Peters then realizes that the justice to be served is to conceal evidence and find the answers for themselves. These
In the play Trifles, a handful of people are thrust into a situation that allows us to compare their personalities. The comparison of Mrs. Hale and Mr. Wright is captivating because both characters have striking similarities and differences that are well defined in the events that unfold in the Wright kitchen. Though both show emotions that are unlike from one another, they are similar in their organized lifestyles, and they conduct themselves in such a way to have the respect from others.
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.
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