Blurred Boundaries in Trifles
In her landmark feminist play, "Trifles," Susan Glaspell offers a peek at the complicated political and social systems that both silenced and divided women during their struggle for equality with men. In this simple but highly symbolic tale, a farmer's wife, Minnie Wright, is accused of strangling her husband to death. The county attorney, the sheriff, a local farmer, the sheriff's wife and the farmer's wife visit Minnie's farm house. As the men "look for clues," the women survey Minnie's domestic environment. While the men scoff at the women's interest in what they call "trifles," the women discover Minnie's strangled bird to realize that Minnie's husband had killed the bird and Minnie had, in turn, killed him. They bond in acknowledgment that women "all go through the same things--it's all just different kind of the same thing" (1076). As their horror builds and the women unravel the murder, they agree to cooperate with one another, conspiring to protect Minnie against the men by hiding the incriminating "evidence."
Women's slow reluctance to cooperate across class even in the face of male oppression, as depicted in Glaspell's play, symbolizes the difficulty women had in creating a united "cross class sisterhood" when struggling for suffrage during the Gilded Age. This class conflict was exacerbated by the socio-economic dynamics of the day. Middle class women often employed working class women in their homes as servants. Employing women with hypothetically oppressive wages in their "private lives," while at the same time fighting for the economic freedom of all women in their "public lives" placed middle class women in a hypocritical bind. As historian Lois Banner reports, "In the 1900s and 1910s there was an outpouring of writings on the so-called servant problem--the shortage of women willing to work as cooks and maids. . . .It was not simply that they [servants] were expected to be paid long hours and were not well paid; they were subject to the whims and status anxieties of their mistresses" (52). The control that middle class women reportedly bestowed upon their domestic laborers extended into the larger picture; much of middle class club work focused on the "reform" of working class women. The imposition of middle class values onto working class and black women's lives alienated these women--making the feelings of sisterhood necessary for solidarity, nearly impossible. As historian Nancy Hewitt explains, "When 'true women' [i.
Using secondary sources from academic journals, as well as other peer-reviewed materials in the science of sleep medicine, this report outlines how academic performance and physical health is affected by chronic sleep
Sleep is one of our basic needs to survive, however in the modern days sleep deprivation in increasing more and more each day, causing accidents and medical problems for the people and the community. This essay will look at the meaning of sleep and sleep deprivation and the basic perspectives on what motivates sleep and sleep deprivation with the five perspectives; evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive and the hierarchy of needs. This essay will also evaluate the best perspective to eliminate sleep deprivation with the cases studies discussing the general hypothesis of sleep and sleep deprivation.
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.
Sleeping disorders are a very common thing that people face every day. A sleeping disorder is when a person is unable to sleep or unable to stay asleep when they have the chance to do so. There are many things that impact a person through out the day, causing sleeping disorders but the two most common are stress and medical problems. Stress is so common in adults and college students preventing them from being able to fall asleep and getting the right amount of sleep they need each night. Medical problems such as sleep apnea and night terrors also do the same thing and are not curable. This is not good because many people cannot perform a normal day without the right amount of sleep the night before.
Those that have a bad sleep pattern most likely suffer from sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is a significant loss of sleep that results in concentration problems and is detrimental to one's health. The symptoms of sleep deprivatio...
Wells, Mary Ellen, and Bradley V. Vaughn. "Poor Sleep Challenging The Health Of A Nation." Neurodiagnostic Journal 52.3 (2012): 233-249. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 May 2014.
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...
There are two types of sleep. The first type, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the a...
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).
Sleeping is a complex process that greatly affects an individual’s well-being. There exists within each person a natural body clock which allows one to operate at a 24 hour cycle. In relevance, the body clock iswhat instinctively determines the cycle of sleep and awake time of a person. This relates to sleep because the issues that affect one’s body clock has a connection ...
2.National Parent Information Network. “Teens, Sleep, and School.” Parent News Vol. 4 Number 8 (8/1998) http://npin.org/pnews/1998.
According to the Merriam -Webster Online Dictionary an assumption is a belief that something is true or a fact or statement that is taken for granted. Susan Glaspell wrote "Trifles" to demonstrate the male assumption that women are insignificant members in a male dominated society. Because the men underestimate them, the women are able to prove they are not insignificant. The improper assumptions by men toward women can have dire consequences, as demonstrated in Glaspell's world. Combating these narcissistic assumptions displayed by men can result in a unity among women that can overcome any male caused disrespect and oppression.
Important public policy issues have arisen in our modern 24-hour society, where it is crucial to weigh the value of sleep versus wakefulness. Scientific knowledge about sleep is currently insufficient to resolve the political and academic debates raging about how much and when people should sleep. These issues affect almost everybody, from the shift worker to the international traveler, from the physician to the policy maker, from the anthropologist to the student preparing for an exam.
Sleep disorders are an underestimated public health concern considering that fifty to seventy million Americans are affected. Technological advances in the field of sleep have facilitated various theories to explain the need for and the purpose of sleep. Scientist have uncovered many types of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Sleep disorders affect men ,women, children, the elderly, and the obese in different ways. Factors such as the number of children and the effects of menopause have been studied to determine their effects on sleep. Various treatments have been utilized ranging from non-pharmacologic to pharmacologic methods. Scientist have pinpointed areas of the brain that are involved in sleep deprivation and hormones that ultimately affect sleep.