“We all go through the same things – it’s all just a different kind of the same thing” (561) is a line spoken in Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles. Writers look at the world around them and envision the way it should be. They take bits and pieces of their life’s landscape, add a liberal dose of surreal ideology and finally toss in human oppressions. To that end, the writer hopes to create a memorable character that can touch the human soul for eternity. Susan Glaspell, a writer in the early twentieth century, lived during a time when women were only briefly part of the social role and were mainly given the reproductive role which confined them to raising children and taking care of their households and husbands – husbands, always first and foremost (Mustazza 491)). From this oppressive landscape, the character of Mrs. Wright is born in Glaspell’s 1916 play Trifles. This character will be analyzed using details, such as character interactions, the title, setting, and numerous symbols to understand Mrs. Wright’s transformation from a vibrant beautiful young woman into a lonely, unhappy, isolated, abused and mentally fractured murderer. Glaspell supplies numerous subtle clues and hints through the interactions between the women and men in the play. The most obvious is Mrs. Wright’s name. Glaspell intends a "Pun on the surname marking her [Mrs. Wright 's] lack of 'rights, ' and implying her 'right ' to free herself against the societally sanctioned 'right ' of her husband
The article had a deep analyzation of Trifles by Susan Glaspell. Alkalay-Gut focuses in on scenes that show the clear division amongst the men and the woman in the play. For various scenes, the article takes apart and truly explains the symbolism throughout the course of the play. Not only are the symbols explained and given high importance, but Alkalay-Gut mentions the main character would have never had a fair trial to begin with. This ties in with my theme focusing on the belittlement of women.
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.
In today's society, we generally view upon everyone as equal beings who deserve equal rights. At the turn of the 20th century, this particular view didn?t exist. Men clearly dominated almost every aspect of life and women were often left with little importance. The Wright?s embody this view of roles in Susan Glaspell?s play Trifles. Mrs. Wright was a typical woman who suffered the mental abuse from her husband and was caged from life. In Trifles, a mixture of symbolism of oppression illustrates Mrs. Minnie Wright?s motives to kill her husband and to escape from imprisonment.
Glaspell proves her point by a conversation between two women in this story. The women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, are at the scene of the murder of John Wright. The women accompanied the County Attorney, the Sheriff, and Mr. Hale to the house. Mr. Hale describes everything that he saw the morning he discovered Mr. Wright's body. The men have come to the house looking for evidence to
The play Trifles is a world-famous production written by Susan Glaspell in 1916 during the women’s suffrage movement. The women’s suffrage movement was a point in U.S. history when rights for women, like voting and gender equality, were greatly stressed to be enforced. Glaspell’s involvement in the movement did not go unnoticed. Today Glaspell’s plays are famous worldwide for her feministic and socialistic views on legal reform, and involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. However, the play Trifles stands out amongst her others due to it being based on a true murder story she covered as a reporter. The play is about a man named Mr. Wright who is discovered by his neighbor, Mr. Hale, with rope around his neck murdered. Upon discovering Mr. wright, the county attorney and sheriff get involved, along with Mr. Hales wife, Mrs. Hale, and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters. Throughout the investigation at the Wright residence, the women are not asked for help, and are looked down upon by the men. While the men seldom ask the women for their opinion on the murder, the case unfolds right in front of the two wives’ eyes. Like the women in the play, Glaspell was unable to play a significant role in the murder case she was involved in, and her observations over small and minor details she thought may be of importance went unnoticed by the men. Throughout the play, Trifles, Glaspell symbolizes the conflict of men versus women seen during this period through recognition, the
Susan Glaspell purposely hid the names of the female characters to symbolize that they don’t have an identity. Only the men receive a first name in Trifles, while the play refers to the women by their husbands' last names. The role that society has cast them in is one that is defined by their husbands. This shows how women were oppressed by not allowing them to have their own names unless they were called by their husband’s last name. Susan Glaspell gives good examples in how their marital status changes the female characters’s names. In the play Mrs. Hale says: “… I heard she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster…” (1972). The reader can see how the name changes according to her marital status, and how she was unhappy probably because she was being oppressed by her husband. In “The “Trifles” of Feminism” Christina McLure really makes a good point in that Mr. Wright always tried to
From the Initial introduction of characters in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” we are presented with a distinct difference between the male and female characters of the play as a very clear line is drawn between their “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. The county attorney and the sheriff have arrived at the empty farmhouse that used to belong to John Wright to investigate his murder and look for evidence that his wife was the guilty party. Mr. Hale has come along with them to give his testimony, having found the now passed Mr. Wright the morning of his murder. All of the men are at the scene with important duties to perform, while the woman, the sheriff’s wife and Hale’s wife, are there to merely collect some small things for the jailed widow. The men immediately decide that there is nothing worth discovering in the kitchen when the woman begin discussing Mrs. Wrights worry for her preserved fruit. The men find this odd that she would care about such a little thing and Hale states “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” It is in this moment that the title of the play is born.
Glaspell very simply demonstrates the men’s role of power through their authoritative positions as sheriff and county attorney, compared to the passive, yielding position of a domestic housewife. Their dominance is displayed in subtle cues to acting plain rude throughout the play. The first example is in the opening lines,
What is a trifle? A trifle is something that has little to no importance (dictionary.com). For instance, the color of your nails would be considered a trifle. In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, women are criticized and made fun of by men because of the little things they worry about, such as the color of their nails or their hair. This exhibits the gender role difference portrayed during the play’s time period. The central conflict is what the plot is centered around. In Trifles, the central conflict involves the investigation the Mr. Wright’s murder. As the story progresses, we learn that the women’s trifles would’ve helped the men solve the murder, which is ironic. Numerous accounts of symbolism, relating Mrs.Wright to the bird, is also found
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.
Glaspell enhances on the sympathy between women by using literary devices such as foreshadowing, tone, and theme. First of all, I like the foreshadowing part of the play. The scene where Hale describes to the county attorney and sheriff about his experience with Mrs. Wright foreshadows that something unhappy will happen in the play. My assumption was correct because the two women find out
Susan Glaspell uses a variety of symbols in her play to demonstrate the stereotypical view and treatment of women by men during the start of the twentieth century. She intricately portrays the female characters in her story as intelligent, but passive due to the fact that males dismiss their ideas and conversations as unimportant. The play, Trifles, uses multiple symbols to show how men fail to recognize the intelligence of women, and oppress the feminists’ way of thinking throughout society.
When Glaspell creates Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters in Trifles in 1916, it is clear that her understanding of a women’s position in patriarchal society has clearly developed far past that of her reporting done in 1901. This is best seen with the characterization of Mrs. Hale and with the tone and theme of her writing as a whole. Glaspell uses Margaret Hossack from the actual case to create Minnie Wright for
As we all know, women suffer a lot under men’s control in the early twentieth century. In the play, Mrs Wright is the best example to show the existence of oppression in women. The readers get to know the real reason why Mrs Wright murders Mr Wright. Before marrying John Wright, Minnie Foster was a cheerful and popular singer. Her life undergoes big changes after marrying John Wright. She is forced to live in John’s uncheerful and hollow farmhouse, managing households every day. She struggles and suffers alone as they are childless. This is portrayed through Mrs Hale and Mrs Peters conversations. “I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful. Maybe it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road.”John Wright has used to control Minnie Foster’s daily activities. She has no choice but keeping herself alone in the kitchen. Her decision to buy a canary to sing for her has made mad of the husband, John Wright. He killed the bird and the killing of bird oppressed Minnie Foster to murder her husband. The main cause of the tragedy is prominent through the theme of oppression of women. If John Wright treats her wife nicely, I am sure that the murder will not happen. With this, I think that Glaspell may like to emphasize that women often have the rights to be treated equally just as the
Susan Glaspell's Trifles can be regarded as a work of feminist literature. The play depicts the life of a woman who has been suppressed, oppressed, and subjugated by a patronizing, patriarchal husband. Mrs. Wright is eventually driven to kill her "hard" (1178) husband who has stifled every last twitch of her identity. Trifles dramatizes the hypocrisy and ingrained discrimination of male-dominated society while simultaneously speaking to the dangers for women who succumb to such hierarchies. Because Mrs. Wright follows the role mapped by her husband and is directed by society's patriarchal expectations, her identity is lost somewhere along the way. However, Mrs. Hale and Mrs.