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Susan Glaspell 's ' Trifles ' Essay

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Abandoned places are always ready to tell a story, even the newly deserted ones. In Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles,” the setting is the still, recently abandoned kitchen of a recently dead Mr. Wright. The story focuses on the sheriff’s and witness’s wives and their slow realization of who killed Mr. Wright and why. These realizations could not have happened if the wives were anywhere other than where they were. The time period, the kitchen itself, and the cheerlessness of the house all assist in unraveling the story of a house to be left behind. The time period of the play is between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This aspect is very important throughout the play because of what the time period means for the female characters. In this rough time frame, women were not a big part of the functions of society. Most jobs were men’s only; this left the women to tend to the house and children. [PP2] Throughout the play, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale follow this stereotype as they focus on the homemaking aspects of what was left behind. The men are disdainful of this, saying, “held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (?) or “women are used to worrying over trifles” (?). They dismiss the wives as if they were children to be mollified until they have something to do, and they do not even consider the possibility of the wives lying or withholding information, despite the fact that they acted “loyal to [their] sex” (?) earlier in the play. That lack of consideration for women

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