Main Characters In Susan Glaspell's 'Trifles'

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Recommended: Analysis of Trifles by Susan Glaspell

In Susan Glaspell’s short story, “Trifles”, the main character is a woman known by Mrs. Wright who “was” married to her husband around the early nineteenth century. The story starts by introducing the readers with the scene of the story which plays a big role in the story. The scene starts by informing the reader of the messy and unorganized kitchen. The play takes place in Mrs. Wright’s house with the Court Attorney, Hale and the Sheriff there as well. The reason the Court Attorney, Hale and the Sheriff were there, is to see Mrs. Wright’s husband, Mr. Wright which later they find dead. Mrs. Wright showed absolute no expression when the three men questioned her about her dead husband, in fact she informs them that Mr. Wright was strangled to …show more content…

Wright used to be. Mrs. Hale reminisces when Mrs. Wright, “used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir” (Glaspell 765). Mrs. Hale also starts to remember how similar Mrs. Wright was to the bird, “sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and – fluttery, How – she – did – change” (Glaspell, 768). This shows how her marriage changed her. “Wright wouldn’t like the bird- a thing that sang”(Glaspell, 769). Mrs. Wright was like the bird trapped in the cage, stripped of its …show more content…

Women are still sometimes portrayed as a “thing” rather than a strong independent woman. Even though we are getting closer to straightening out the backward mentality that men are meant for working and the women are meant for cleaning and doing house chores, the idea is still there. “Yet for many years, women in the United States were denied numerous fundamental rights. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920, and a variety of jobs remained closed to them until recent decades” (Women’s rights, 2016). It won’t be for a while till the mentality will be perished. Maybe, not in America, but in other countries, women are still being bound to obey their husbands and stay home to cook. There have been many acts and laws passed for women to regain their social freedom, “Acts of Congress entitled them to equality in education, employment, and legal rights. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act, initially intended only for blacks, was extended to women” ( Women’s Rights). Hopefully, one day the stereotype of women and men will be perished and they will both be able to live as they

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    Trifles” is a play written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell. The play’s audience consists of young adults to those in their late 50’s. Mrs. Glaspell takes a serious matter of domestic violence and uses her platform as an author to raise awareness about the issue. In the play “Trifles” a neighbor went to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wright only to find Mr. Wright dead in his bed. He had been strangled to death by a rope. The neighbor questioned Mrs. Wright about the matter and her response was odd and suspicious. Mrs. Wright was taken to jail while the home is being investigated for further evidence. Mrs. Glaspell’s play “Trifles” effectively achieves the goal in raising awareness on domestic violence by the evidence of the crime and through pathos.

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  • Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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    Susan Glaspell's Trifles explores the classical male stereotype of women by declaring that women frequently worry about matters of little, or no importance. This stereotype makes the assumption that only males are concerned with important issues, issues that females would never discuss or confront. The characters spend the entirety of the play searching for clues to solve a murder case. Ironically, the female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, uncover crucial evidence and solve the murder case, not the male characters. The men in the play, the Sheriff, County Attorney, and Hale, search the scene of the crime for evidence on their own, and mock the women's discussions. The women's interest in the quilt, broken bird cage door, and dead canary, all of which are assumed to be unimportant or trifling objects, is what consequentially leads to their solving of the crime. The women are able to discover who the killer is by paying attention to detail, and prove that the items which the men consider insignificant are important after all.

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  • A Prequel to Susan Glaspell's Short Story, Trifles

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    Minnie Foster was once described as the belle of the ball. To look at her tonight for the first time you could see why. She carried herself with both an air of confidence and modesty at the same time. Her small eyes dominated her face. They did not look directly at you anymore though. Still, they seemed all knowing and experienced as if they were able to see and know secrets about you that you wish no one knew. Her slender peaked nose was no match for the full lips she had, lips that never uttered a sound and which have become as pale as her knuckles. Her lips were pierced shut protecting the thoughts in her head from falling out one by one to the hard flooring.

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  • Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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    Mrs. Hale describes her; "She -- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself - real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery. How she did change"; and like a bird, Mrs. Wright even sang in a choir. But after she got married, everything stopped. She didn't sing anymore or attend social functions. Like a bird, her house became her cage.

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  • Susan Glaspell's Trifles - Some Observations

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    Trifles I would like to make three major points. Major #1: Since this is the first play we’ve read, the stage direction really caught my eye and I tended to consider it very seriously in determining the meaning of the work. The most obvious direction, which the essay by Parrish discusses, is that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wright ever appear in the play, and Glaspell was the first to use this type of direction (which was later recognized as uniquely her own.) Other important examples of the play’s direction (not spoken lines) are: (. she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters).

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  • Trifles By Susan Glaspell Literary Analysis

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    In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the men ignore key signifiers that Mrs. Wright is guilty, yet the two women present are able to see these clues. The men shrug these off as mere “trifles, which sets up the story to be a social commentary because the women are able to solve the crime while the men are laughing at their observations. The men first comment on the women worrying over “trifles” when Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discuss the preserves being ruined (747). The women understand that this is a relevant concern because it symbolizes disrupt in the household, as well as Mrs. Wright’s lack of concern for her husband’s death. This intimation brought upon by the women in the house edifies the fact that they solely understand the motives Mrs. Wright might have for killing her husband.

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  • Susan Glaspell's Use of an Unseen Central Character in Trifles

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    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 both the audience and the characters and ultimately leads the audience to question the outcome of the play.

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  • Feminist in Susan Glaspell´s Play Trifles

    987 Words  | 2 Pages

    The bird and the cage are the two most important symbol in this play because it symbolizes the oppression of Minnie Foster, and it can also mean the death of her husband (Mr. Wright). Minnie Foster is sometimes compared to the bird by Mrs. Hale saying that she was real sweet, pretty, and that she like to sing just like the bird, but then Mrs. Hale asks: “How she did change?”(1074). The bird symbolizes Minnie Foster before she got married, but everything changed about her after she got married with Mr. Wright. The reader can clearly see how abusive Mr. Wright was to Minnie Wright to completely change the way she is. For example, one way that Mr. Wright kept Minnie Foster oppressed is by preventing her from singing. As the reader knows Minnie really liked to sing, but Mr. Wright hated a “thing” that can sing ,as a result, he didn’t let Minnie to sing anymore.

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  • Silent Justice in a Different Key: Suzy Clarkson Holstein´s Trifles

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    I. Article Summary: Suzy Clarkson Holstein's article, “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's 'Trifles'” evaluates the play Trifles and how the difference between the men in the play mirror how a woman's perspective is very different from a man's. Trifles is about two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who show up at a house with their husbands and the county attorney to investigate a murder. The entire time the men are looking for evidence to implicate the accused wife, Minnie Wright, of killing her husband. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are there to gather up some items to bring Minnie Wright in jail. While doing so, the women uncover evidence that would prove the wife is culpable but decide to hide it from the men in the last moments of the play. Trifles is evaluated on how the women are able to come up with the evidence unlike the men because they didn't approach it like a crime scene but rather a home, “By contrast, the women arrive at a home. Although neither they or the men realize it, they too are conducting an investigation” (Holstein 283). Holstein also notes they are able to find evidence because they use their own life experiences to relate to the accused murderer, Minnie Wright as shown here; “But the women do not simply remember and sympathize with Minnie. They identify with her, quite literally” (285). Holstein finishes the article by noting the women decide to hide the evidence because of the solidarity they feel towards Minnie Wright; “From Mrs. Hale's perspective, people are linked together through fragile, sometimes imperceptible strands. The tiny trifles of life –a neighbor's visit, a bird's song, the sewing of a quilt –have profound reverberations” (287).

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  • Justice In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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    Mrs. Hale’s keen wit and patience contributes to her embodiment of The Fate sister Clotho the Spinner, which is even more evident in her correcting of Minnie Wright’s improper stitching (Russell). Mrs. Peters begins the process of investigation deeply devoted to keeping the law. She doesn’t want any disruption in the house, saying, “I don’t think we ought to touch things” (Glaspell p. 666) when Mrs. Hale began searching for clues. Upon finding the dead canary, Mrs. Peters view on the situation changes drastically, and she decides with Mrs. Hale to hide the tiny dead bird from the men. They both figure that if the dead canary was discovered, Mrs. Wright would be thought to be a mad woman, though it was likely Mr. Wright who killed it.

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  • A Comparison of Mrs. Hale and Mr. Wright in Trifles, by Susan Glaspell

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mr. Wright was a cruel, cold, and heartless man. He was also a very unsociable man. He abandoned his wife's contentment and paid very little attention to his wife's opinions. He even prevented her from singing. This is revealed about Mr. Wright during the conversations between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters when they find the dead bird with a twisted neck in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket. Mrs. Hale points out, "She- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery. How-she-did-change" (Glaspell 1267). Mrs. Wright used to be a very high-s...

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  • Literary Analysis Of Setting In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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    Trifles is based on a murder in 1916 that Susan Glaspell covered while she was a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News after she graduated from college. At the end of the nineteenth century, the world of literature saw a large increase of female writers. Judith Fetterley believed that there was an extremely diverse and intriguing body of prose literature used during the nineteenth century by American women. The main idea of this type of literature was women and their lives. The reason all of the literature written by women at this time seems so depressing is due to the fact that they had a tendency to incorporate ideas from their own lives into their works. Glaspell's Trifles lives up to this form of literature, especially since it is based on an actual murder she covered. This play is another look at the murder trial through a woman's point of view.

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  • Analysis of the Play Trifles

    1307 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles Mr. Wright’s murder is never solved because the two women in the story unite against of the arrogance of men to hide evidence that would prove Mrs. Wright as the murderer. The play Trifles is about the death of farmer Mr. Wright and how the town sheriff and attorney try to find evidence that his wife Mrs. Wright killed him. As the play progresses the men’s wives who had come along were discovering important pieces of evidence that prove the men’s theory but chose to hide from them to illustrate the point that their ideas should have been valued and not something to be trifled. The very irony of the play comes from its title trifles and is defined as something that isn’t very important or has no relevance to the situation that it is presented to. In this play the irony of the title comes from the fact that the men find the women’s opinions on the case trifling even though the women solve the crime which ends up being the downfall of the men as they would have been able to prosecute Mrs. Wright if they had listened which made the women’s opinions not trifling. Glaspell was born in an age where women were still considered the property of men and they had no real value in society in the eyes of men except for procreation and motherhood. This attitude towards women was what inspired Glaspell to write the play Trifles and to illustrate the point that women’s attitudes should be just as valued as men’s and to let women have a sense of fulfillment in life and break the shackles that were holding them only as obedient housewives. Trifles was also inspired by a real murder trial that Glaspell had been covering when she was a reporter in the year 1900. Glaspell is a major symbol of the feminist movement of l...

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  • Critical Analysis Of Trifles

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wright was described as a beautiful women filled with such joy and life until she married John Wright. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale feels sorry for her because her husband treated her so bad. Due to female bonding and sympathy, the two women, becoming detectives, finds the truth and hides it from the men. The play shows you that emotions can play a part in your judgement. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale felt sorry that Mrs. Wright had one to keep her company no kids and she was always left alone at home. “yes good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debt. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that goes to the bone. I should of think she would have wanted a bird. But what you suppose went with it?” Later on in the play the women find out what happens to the bird. The bird was killed the same way Mrs. Wright husband which leads to the motive of why he was killed. Mrs. Wright was just like the bird beautiful but caged no freedom not being able to live a life of her own. Always stuck in the shadows of her husband being told what to do and

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  • Trifles Title Analysis

    1511 Words  | 4 Pages

    Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in

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