Trifles By Susan Glaspell Symbols

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.

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play “Trifles” was written in 1916. It was written based on real events. When Glaspell was a reporter, she covered a murder case in a small town in Iowa. Later, she wrote this short play which was inspired by her investigation and what she observed. Glaspell used irony, symbolism, and setting in her creation of the authentic American drama, “Trifles”, to express life for women in a male-dominated society in the early nineteen hundreds.

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.

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, weaves a tale of an intriguing murder investigation to determine who did it. Mrs. Wright is suspected of strangling her husband to death. During the investigation the sheriff and squad of detectives are clueless and unable to find any evidence or motive to directly tie Mrs. Wright to the murder. They are baffled as to how he was strangled by a rope while they were supposedly asleep side by side. Glaspell artfully explores gender differences between men and women and the roles they each fulfill in society by focusing on their physicality, their methods of communication and vital to the plot of the play, their powers of observation. In simple terms, the play suggests that men tend to be assertive,

First, there is Mr. Peters’ interpretation of his wife’s preference of having a female accomplice when she is to gather things for Mrs. Wright; the reader is given insight to this when Mr. Peters asks Mrs. Hale to come along with them because “…he guessed [Mrs. Peters] was getting scared…” (Glaspell). This symbol represents the fragility men in the nineteenth century associated with their wives, daughters, and women in general because of their rank in the social system. Second, is the way in which the men speak to or down to the women in general, almost as if they were children. For example, on multiple occasions Mr. Hale makes a mockery of the women by belittling them without the slightest intent to take them seriously. The first occasion is in response to the attorney’s remark over Mrs. Wright having more significant things to worry about other than her fruit jars: “’Oh well…women are used to worrying over trifles’” (Glaspell). With this remark, Mr. Peters is ultimately invalidating the logical worries Mrs. Wright had over her fruit jars. The second occasion he does this is after the county attorney asks the women to keep an eye out for clues, to which he responds, “’But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?’” (Glaspell). By doing this once more, Mr. Peters brings attention to himself through his underestimation of the women’s capabilities, thus rendering himself of the superior sex. The final noteworthy occasion where the

In Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers”, Sheriff Henry Peters, Mrs. Peters, and George Henderson, the county attorney, go to the Wright’s house to investigate the murder of Mr. Wright. Along the way the Wright’s neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Hale, come to help aid with the investigation. The prime suspect being accused for this murder was Minnie Wright, Mr. Wright’s wife. Then the story starts to unravel as the characters walk into the Wright’s home. In the series of events in “A Jury of Her Peers”, Glaspell suggests that men subjugated women through the use of symbolism, irony, and foreshadowing.

In Trifles, the differences in evidence that the men and woman notice, led men to failure in the investigation of Mr. Wright’s death, because men and women shared different perspectives in the same setting. Hence, even though all the items in the home of the Wright family, held significance and meaning to the death of Mr. Wright, the male characters dismissed these elements as they were more interested in forensic evidence. Whereas the women, on the contrary, caught on to these clues and recognized the relevance, as it revealed the bleakness of Mrs. Wright’s life. The quilt, kitchen and canary/cage are just a few of the many symbols in the play that the men treated as mere trifles which the women weighed important.

In Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles, originally starred at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts on August 8,1916. What makes this play unique is because the way it starts off as a mystery, for the most part all that’s known is there’s a man dead and Mrs. Wright pleads “her husband has been murdered while she was asleep (872)”. Moreover, this play has come to a surprise to people at the time because men where always portrayed as dominant figures or maybe would have expected a similar situation to this but opposite, with a

When investigating throughout the house, the men laugh about things that the women become concerned about such as Mrs. Wright’s fruit jars (Glaspell 264). Mrs. Hale’s husband states that “women are used to worrying over trifles,” referring to things that the women tend to find important (264). However, the half wiped table, half poured sugar, and the dirty pans (Alkalay-Gut 3) are clues to the investigation unseen by the men due to their inability to interpret things beyond “what they consider to be significant information” (4). Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Wright conclude that Mrs. Wright was forced “out of the pattern of her chores” (3). Later, the women find motive for John Wright’s murder when they discover the strangled bird that indicates to Mrs. Hale that Mrs. Wright found herself as a caged bird being strangled by her husband (6). The ladies then transfer their roles from “being married to the law” and following their spouses to sympathetic

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.

Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is a play about the effect of gender differences on perceptions of duty, law, and justice. The early 1900’s is the setting, arriving at the Wright farmhouse on a crisp, cold morning. Mr. Hale, a neighbor, found John Wright murdered the morning before. Hale has brought his wife, the county attorney, the sheriff and his wife to the home so the men can investigate Wright’s death. With Mrs. Wright as the primary suspect, Henderson, the county attorney, is looking for her motive. While the sheriff and the county attorney are busy looking at the mess left in the kitchen, the women are noticing some of the smaller things, the "trifles" according to Mr. Hale. The men go upstairs, and that is when Mrs. Hale

The single act play “Trifles” is loosely based on the murder of a farmer in the state of Iowa in the early nineteenth century, which Glaspell reported on while working as a journalist. The farmer’s wife was accused of the murder, and was initially convicted, but later acquitted. Literary analysts note that Glaspell “approached the case like a detective” (Bryan and Wolf). More than a decade after that incident, when she was a career writer, analysts describe, “in a span of ten days, Glaspell composed a one-act play” being inspired from that real life murder event (Bryan and Wolf). In “Trifles,” while the county attorney and sheriff, along with Mr. Hale are investigating the murder of Mr. Wright, the female companions Mrs. Hale and Mrs.

The play Trifles written by Susan Glaspell in 1916 reflects the gender differences between men and women in this time period through the investigation of Mr. Wright’s death. Men in the early 1900’s go to work, leaving the women at home to typically clean, cook and wait for the arrival of their husbands back home. This is the leading cause behind the men in Trifles being incapable of seeing the full motifs and actions behind Mrs. Wright. Leading for the women to understand more about the murder than the men from the small clues Mrs. Wright has all over the house. The insignificance of the “trifles” in the play are passed by the men due to what they thought the objects insignificance actually held dealing with the crime, which the women

The 1916 play Trifles by Susan Glaspell is a one act murder-mystery that showcases a range of characters that help to portray the undervaluing of women, their work, and their interests in society. The main plot revolves around farmer Lewis Hale, his wife, Sheriff Henry Peters, his wife, and county attorney George Henderson trying to figure out who could have strangled farmer John Wright in his bed and, more importantly, why. The true culprit is clear from the moment Hale begins to recount what occured the previous day. “...I opened the door--this door and there in that rocker--sat Mrs. Wright” (940). It isn’t until near the end, however, that Mrs. Wright’s motive is revealed. It is evident that Mrs. Wright did not enjoy her life with Mr.

Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, is a real life murder case that uses symbolism to help solve a mystery. Glaspell's use of dialect, set on a midwestern farm, emphasizes the town's gender-separated society. Isolationism, a quilt, and incomplete house work are the three key symbols in the play the help the reader figure out who murdered Mrs. Wright's husband.