Character Analysis Of Susan Glaspell 's ' Trifles '

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a short story with third party narration, centered on the main character, Emily Grierson. She is suppressed by her father, life expectations and community interest in her life. The reader gets a sense that Emily cracks under all the pressure and they soon realize after her death, when she is in her seventies, that she did in fact have a mental disorder.

"A Rose for Emily" is a fictional short story written by 1949 Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about an aristocratic woman who lived a very secretive and unusual life. Miss Emily had always been very sheltered by her father. He was the only man in her life and after his death, her behavior became even more unnatural. However her father's death cannot be seen as the only cause of Miss Emily's insanity. Miss Emily's behavior was also influenced by her own expectations of herself, the townspeople's lack of authority over her, and her neighbor's infatuation with her.

Throughout history, and especially in the early 20th century, women were not in the same arena as men; they were not a man’s equal. The Mariam-Webster Online Dictionary, defines “trifle” as something of “little value, substance, or importance,” which is the way women are seen in both William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” and Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles. Both authors use of style and settings are different but their theme is the same. Faulkner and Glaspell were born and wrote in approximately the same era, America’s late 19th and early 20th centuries. Glaspell, the author of Trifles is from the northern United States and uses a lower class, uneducated vernacular of that area; whereas, “A Rose for Emily” is written in an eloquent upper-class English tone, by Faulkner who was from the south. Faulkner metaphorically and symbolically describes the personality, life, and death of the main character, Ms. Emily Grierson, and the murder- mystery surrounding her. Glaspell’s murder -mystery Trifles also surrounds the life and death of the main character, Mrs. Wright, and her husband. Both women, while representing opposite ends of the socio-economic class spectrum, are isolated and lonely,not only due to their social class but also due to a time in history when men were not kind to the “fairer sex.”

A Rose for Emily was Faulkner 's first short story to be published in a national magazine. It was then published in a collection entitled These 13 in 1931 and went on to become one of the most collected American short stories. This short story is a Gothic horror and a tragedy. It is about a lonely Southern woman who has become mental ill after having an unfortunate childhood and being isolated from reality. We can see in the quote from William Faulkner about how “you can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that 's next to the poem, almost every word has to be almost exactly right.” that Faulkner had mixed feelings about the short story as the best form for his narrative. A Rose for Emily has a complex plot and good pacing. Faulkner only gives information needed to foreshadow the murder at the ending or to allow the audience into Miss Emily’s life, so that we could further understand her.

William Faulkner wrote, "A Rose for Emily." In the gothic, short story he contrasted the lives of the people of a small Southern town during the late 1800's, and he compared their ability and inability to change with the time. The old or "Antebellum South" was represented by the characters Miss Emily, Colonel Sartoris, the Board of Aldermen, and the Negro servant. The new or "Modern South" was expressed through the words of the unnamed narrator, the new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron, and the townspeople. In the shocking story, "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner used symbolism and a unique narrative perspective to describe Miss Emily's inner struggles to accept time and change

Symbols are important, especially in literature. They have been known to inspire hope and life, in turn inspiring some of the most profound actions in the history of the world. Yet, humanity’s statement to symbols goes beyond us finding meaning in innominate or non-human objects. People assign humanity into objects, almost a part of themselves. This concept is clearly demonstrated in Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles. The work contains many element of symbolism that make important and relieving comments on the characters of the play and the themes of the story.

Marriage a sacred bond uniting two people who are so deeply in love that they can't live without one another, for even a second. Many couples in this situation take these marriage vows to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Those vows remain cherished throughout the years of marriage. Partner’s share intimate details and form a strong trustworthy bond with one another. Often couples settle into a routine, move out of the city and have children. Occasionally over time that love will fade; couples change and lose interest in one another and begin to look for a way out of marriage. In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, there is evidence to

Post Civil war era Mississippi, a racially divided confederate state. The south is known for hospitality, and that special charm. Yet in “A Rose for Emily” the townspeople tend to gossip about Emily and are very nosey. The author of the short story created an environment in where the values of the town contrast the typical stereotypes of a southern state. William Faulkner's, “A Rose for Emily” exposes the hypocrisy of the Post Civil War south.

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

“A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, tells the story of a lonely woman who is stuck in her own timeframe. Miss Emily refuses to adapt to the new ways of the South and keeps her own traditions instead. The town she lived in spread much gossip about her, they pitted her lost soul. “A Rose for Emily” highlights the traditions of the Old South vs the New, which is told through the life of Miss Emily who refuses to change.

“Trifles” is a one act play written by Susan Glaspell in 1916, which was first performed on August 8th by the Provincetown Players in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the Wharf Theater. The author, Susan Glaspell, was born on July 1, 1876 in Davenport, Iowa. Over her lifetime she had become proficient in many different professions: Playwright, Actress, Novelist, and Journalist. For her works, she won an American Pulitzer Prize in 1931. The Provincetown Players was founded by Susan Glaspell and her husband, George Cram Cook. This was the first modern American theater company. Most of her works centered on current issues at the time such at gender roles between males and females. Susan Glaspell was not the typical woman of her time, she decided to go to school and get herself an education and find herself a her own career instead of waiting around for a husband. In 1899, Glaspell graduated from Drake University in Iowa and found herself a job as a journalist for the Des Monies Daily newspaper. The play Trifles was based upon a story that Glaspell reported on when she was a journalist.

A trifle is something that has little value or importance, and there are many seeming "trifles" in Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles." The irony is that these "trifles" carry more weight and significance than first seems to be the case. Just as Glaspell's play ultimately reveals a sympathetic nature in Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, the evidence that the men investigators fail to observe, because they are blind to the things that have importance to a woman, reveals the identity of the murderer and are, therefore, not really "trifles," after all. Thus, the title of the play has a double-meaning: it refers, satirically, to the way "trifling" way some men perceive women, and it also acts as an ironic gesture to the fact that women are not as "trifling" as these men make them out to be. This paper will analyze setting, characters, plot, stage directions, symbolism, themes and genre to show how Glaspell's "Trifles" is an ironic indictment not of a murderess but rather of the men who push women to such acts.

"Trifles" is a play with a unified plot. Although there are verbal flashbacks to the events of the day of the murder of John Wright, the play's entire plot begins and ends in a span of one day. The author also extends the unified plot to create a single setting (the farmhouse kitchen). The plot centers on John Wright's murder. Mrs. Wright is the main suspect; an investigation is taking place as to the motive or reason for the crime.

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,

A Rose for Emily was written by William Faulkner, the story was written to show how the South has evolved, furthermore it is about a woman named Emily who refuses to accept change, as change is happening all around her. Emily is stuck in her ways and she functions as a symbol of the Old South as the town around her becomes more civilized and developed.