The Women In “Trifles”. The Play “Trifles” , Written By

Trifles deals with gender roles by using a woman that feels trapped in her marriage. “The Story of an Hour” also uses a woman that feels trapped in her marriage to express woman’s position at that point in time. In “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard feels trapped in her marriage. When she finds out that her husband has passed away, she goes through a sea of conflicting emotions. She feels more relieved than the overwhelming sadness that she should feel. She felt as though she was free. As she began to work through the emotions she was feeling, she began to feel a moment that she saw the years to come that she only had to live for herself. This just goes to show how trapped she felt in her marriage. She didn’t feel as if she could live for herself. With the death of her husband, she felt as there would be no one to live for in the coming years, but herself. This shows the submissiveness of women of that time. A time where women were expected to play the part and be housewives and care for the husband. In Trifles, the same message appears. You see a woman who is arrested for the murder of her own

Trifles, Susan Glaspell’s play written in 1916, reveal concerns of women living in a male dominated society. Glaspell communicates the role that women were expected to play in late 19th century society and the harm that can come of it to women, as well as men. The feminist agenda of Trifles was made obvious, in order to portray the lives of all women who live oppressed under male domination. John and Minnie Wright are two main characters who are never seen; however provide the incident for the play. In this play women are against men, Minnie against her husband, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters against their husband’s, as well as men in general.

Trifles was written in the early 1900's by Susan Glaspell. This occurred far before the women's movement. Women were generally looked upon as possessions to their husbands. Their children, all wages, and belongings were property of their husbands. In Glaspell's story it is easily depicted as to what role the men and women portrayed in society at this time.

In today’s society, we generally view upon everyone as equal; however this view did not exist for decades. Throughout history, there were many instances showing that men dominated women and women were often seen as left with less important or treated as an inferior being. Women were often expected to be good mothers to their children as well as caretakers to their husband. After reading the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, I was able to grasp the important facts about social views of women and their domestic roles. Glaspell’s play depicts the gender inequality which exists in the society, drawing significant attention to the societal values of women at that time. Although women’s roles are treated as unimportant, she depicts women’s

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

The play ?Trifles?, by Susan Glaspell , is an examination of the different levels of early 1900?s mid-western farming society?s attitudes towards women and equality. The obvious theme in this story is men discounting women?s intelligence and their ability to play a man?s role, as detectives, in the story. A less apparent theme is the empathy the women in the plot find for each other. Looking at the play from this perspective we see a distinct set of characters, a plot, and a final act of sacrifice.

The reactions in Trifles reveal to the reader how heavily defined gender roles were in the early twentieth century. The two genders quickly form separate bonds with one another in this play. The men of this time dominate every aspect of this story. They make sarcastic jokes at the women when they start to show concern about things that appeared out of the norm in Mrs. Wright’s house. The first thing they noticed is the broken can goods when the Sheriff says, “Well, you can beat the women! Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (Glaspell 1245). This tone of voice reveals how the men did not take the women seriously. They laugh at the women’s idea of trifles but as Phyllis writes, it is “their attentiveness to the "trifles" in her life, the kitchen things considered insignificant by the men, the two women piece together, like patches in a quilt, the

“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a play that is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one is the inferiority of women over men, though the play also explores the differences between genders in general.

When a woman marries she is expected to give up her family, her last name, and her virginity. In other words she is expected to give up the life she knew. Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles tells the story of a woman that gave up her all to please society and her husband. The story examines a woman who sacrificed her tranquility, her talents, and her individuality. In the end, the woman even gave up her freedom.

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.

"Trifles," a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there are five main characters, three men and two women. The weather outside is frighteningly cold, and yet the men enter the warm farmhouse first. The women stand together away from the men, which immediately puts the men against the women. Mrs. Hale?s and Mrs. Peters?s treatment from the men in the play is reflective of the beliefs of that time. These women, aware of

“Trifles” a play by Susan Glaspell, emphasizes the thought that women were kept in their homes and their contributions to the home and family went unappreciated and unnoticed. The play gives readers a view of how women were view and treated during the 1900’s. As a female analyzing the play, Mrs. Wright’s motive for killing Mr. Wright was quite clear. Susan Glaspell gives her readers a feminist approach, to demonstrate how Mrs. Wright’s murdering of her husband is justified.

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.

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