How Does Susan Glaspell Create Suspense In Trifles

This murder is one that the two women can identify with. The reason is that both of the women were farmers' wives and had very similar lifestyles. Mrs. Hale describes John Wright as a hard man, and never let Mrs. Wright do anything. I feel that this is just how she is describing her own life perhaps. The two women also find a quilt that is not stitched very well. This adds to the fact Minnie Wright was under some stress when sewing this quilt. At this moment Mrs. Hale begins sewing the quilt, the way it should have been sewn in the first place. I feel that Glaspell is giving the women a lot of symbols to justify the women's findings, and making it easy for them to foil the investigation.

Susan Glaspell was an american playwright, novelist, journalist, and actress, alongside being a strong feminist. Her writings mainly explored contemporary social issues such as gender and ethics. The play “Trifles” is loosely based on the trial of Margaret Hossack for the murder of her husband, John Hossack, which Susan reported during her time of being a journalist of “Des Moines Daily”. Her report was based out of Warren County in Iowa. This vicious murder stunned and divided the close-knit rural community. Neighbors and family members were reluctant to talk about their ideas on what might have happened that cold night of December first, 1900. With some plot adjustments, Susan reconstructed her report into “Trifles”. The play hints to the perspective men held about women during the early 1900s. Susan Glaspell then converted her play into the story, “A Jury of Her Peers”.

Susan Glaspell’s one act play “Trifles” is based on an actual murder court trial that she remembered covering from her days as a newspaper reporter in Iowa. She wrote at a time when women were supposed to be submissive to men and especially to their husbands. This play takes a look at a common social problem during the early 1900s when Americans wanted to keep all of their relationship problems private. Many married couples would do anything to keep their lives free from scandal, and this murder mystery examines the necessity of appearances and reputation of having the perfect marriage that was typical during that time. This was done to protect the married couple from being scorned by family, friends and community if their secrets were ever turned into a scandal. It is an incredible play that may be better understood by those who have experienced the same situation at some time in their lives. This play/production is a good definition/example of a problem play because it aims to draw attention to a /the social problem, such as of emotional abuse.

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

Susan Glaspell in the play Trifles, utilizes a sense of irony and contrasting character development to depict the ineptitude of prevalent stereotyping of women in the early 1900’s. The plot of Trifles is the attempt to discover evidence supporting the murder of John Wright by his wife. The scene begins as the sheriff, Henry Peters and his wife, the County Attorney, and the witness, Mr. Hale and his wife, enter the murdered victims home in search of evidence concerning the murder. Through the development of these characters one can see a social division in the value of the perception of men in relation to that of women. It is in the development of male characters that supposedly represent intelligence and diligence yet alludes to the innate

The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is type of murder mystery that takes place in the early 1900’s. The play begins when the sheriff Mr. Peters and county attorney Mr. Henderson come to attempt to piece together what had happen on the day that Mr. Wright was murder. While investigating the seen of the murder, they are accompanied by the Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale and Mr. Peters. Mr. Hale had told that Mrs. Wright was acting strange when he found her in the kitchen. After taking information from Mr. Hale, the men leave the women in the kitchen and go upstairs at seen of the murder. The men don’t realize the plot of the murder took place in the kitchen.

The play begins with Mr. Hale telling the county attorney exactly what he saw when he came to Mr. and Mrs. Wrights’ home the day before. He tells them that he was knocking on the door of the home with hopes of finding John so that he could go with him into town. He states “But I opened the door and there in that rocker sat Mrs. Wright” (Glaspell 1392). Knowing that her husband was murdered the day before, it was strange to find her resting in the rocking chair as if she was unconcerned. In order to build suspense and anticipation among the audience, during this scene I would dim the lights and make the stage appear gloomy and dull. As Mr. Hale entered the home, I would center the focus on Mrs. Wright by shining a brighter spotlight on her to emphasize the peculiarity of her behavior. By doing this, it would force the audience to begin to wonder and become curious as to whether or not Mrs. Wright is guilty of the murder of her husband.

Glaspell’s play presents one drastic women rebel. Mrs. Wright, who goes to the extreme to free herself of made dominate. It also presents two quiet reformers, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who side with Mrs. Weight and with hold evidence that the Sheriff need to establish for Mr. Wright’s crime(Glaspell). Susan Glaspell uses patriarchal dominance as a major theme to stress on ill treatment toward women at that time. She also uses elements of irony to implicate her evident(Glaspell).

Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles” is located on a cold, winter night in Nebraska. The main set is in the kitchen of Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s house. In this play, the man of the house Mr. Wright is murdered and a group of men and women gather together to find out what happened. The men are in charge of the investigation and the women are cleaning the messy kitchen and gossiping about what happened within the household. The men and women are on two different pages. While the men laugh at the messy scenery of the kitchen, the women start to find numerous of clues for the murder investigation. The men suspects that Mrs. Wright is responsible for her husband’s murder, but their ignorance leads them in the wrong direction. In the “Trifles” play Mrs. Wright

In Susan Glaspell's Trifles, women are seen as less of a person based on their gender. Trifles by definition describes an object or situation as being of little importance. The boundary between female and male gender is a prominent issue in our society. Modern society till this day, is unable to escape gender inequality (Cohen 1177). It is all around us, at work, in homes, and in media.

Author Susan Glaspell wrote the short play, “Trifles” in 1916, a time where women were belittled by men; she depicts the patriarchal society in which they lived in during that time. This play centers on the murder case of John Wright and the people trying to find out what happened to him and why. Three authority figures go to the house and investigate what exactly happened to Mr. Wright, two women go with them and while the detectives are looking for “major clues”, these women end up solving the case by paying attention to what the men say are “trifle” things. The inferiority complex the female characters experience is seen when their male counterparts dismiss the women’s findings and ridicule their conversations. Through the literary element of symbolism which were the canary, the bird cage, and the trifle things, the reader is able to identify the themes of the value of life, marriage, and the injustices experienced by women that prevailed throughout the play.

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.

The main purpose of Glaspell’s play Trifles is to convey the inferiority and exclusion women faced, as a result it is a well-known play that encourages feminism in the American society and today. The attitude of men in the play as the County Attorney and Sheriff is of superiority, contempt, arrogance, and condescension. From the first moment they discard the possibility that in the kitchen, the sphere in which women move, there may be some clue to solve the case, since the things of the kitchen are, for them trifles. Women's concerns about domestic issues (canned foods that have been spoiled, dirty dishcloths, etc.) are minimized by men who call them "little things." When the prosecutor hints that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale may find some clue