Susan Glaspell tells the story of a murder in a small town in the midwest. The man who was murdered was Mr. Wright, and everyone believes the guilty party may be his wife, Mrs. Wright, but two other women in the story decide to conduct an investigation of their own to try to solve this murder. In a scholarly essay about this story, Judith Kay Russell tells how the three women in the story are like the three fates from Greek mythology. Each woman plays a specific role in the tragic fate of Mr. Wright, and Russell goes into detail about each woman to emphasize that they are only powerful together. Russell’s essay begins with the story of Mrs. Hale. She is the leader of the three women. Russell calls her “Clotho the spinner, the sister who spins the thread of life” (Russell). She is the woman who begins the process. The one who takes something with no order and shapes it into something that is usable. Mrs. Hale’s role is to convince the other two women what she believes happens, and she is able to do this but altering reality slightly. Mrs. Hale at one point alters the stitching on a quilt that Mrs. Wright was working on …show more content…
Peters is the next woman who is seen as the second fate. Her role in the fates is “Lachesis the Disposer of Lots” (Russell). This means she takes the tread spun by Mrs. Hale and gives it shape and purpose. She is like the one who takes what Mrs. Hale finds and convinces other to believe it. Without Mrs. Peters, there would be no purpose for anything Mrs. Hale did. Mrs. Peters finds a dead canary, and tells how it is like Mr. Wright due to the fact that someone also killed it by strangling it (Glaspell 642). This dead canary really affects Mrs. Peters because it reminds her of a tragic time from her past, which is why she feels so strongly that something needs to be done. It was in this moment that she no longer thinks objectively, but she is thinking subjectively (Russell). This is when she truly steps into the role of the second
Born in 1867, Susan Glaspell was raised in rural Davenport, Iowa during a time where young ladies were expected to marry and raise a family. Glaspell never conformed to this expectation; instead graduating from Duke University, becoming a reporter for Des Moines Daily News, and becoming a successful author and playwright. During her years as a reporter, she covered the story of Margaret Hossock, a farm wife in Iowa accused of murdering her husband. This would later serve as her inspiration for Trifles. Glaspell was a woman who bucked societal expectations but was not blind to the plight other women faced. (Ozieblo) Trifles shows how silencing a person’s soul can be just as dangerous as taking the song out of a caged canary; stealing
Whether it was Homer or George, a small town or being sick in bed, or murder or a peaceful death, both women attempted to overcome failed love, and ended up being consumed by that and death. The comparison of both “Jilting” situations is explained by conflicts that the women have with themselves and others in each story and the symbolic deaths that happened at the end of each
Susan Glaspell, from Davenport, Iowa is only the second woman to win a Pulitzer Prize [1]. Much of her writing is strongly feminist, mostly dealing with how society viewed women and the prevalence of male dominance. Possibly, the idea behind the play “Trifles” was based on a woman named Margaret Hosack from Iowa, who is thought to have killed her husband due to his abusive behavior. Susan Glaspell was influenced by this story when writing ‘Trifles’ because she worked at the Des Moines Newspaper at the time of the event and in
On one side, she is married to the law, and on the other side, she understands what Minnie has been through. Her husband used to mentally abuse her to the point where she is now basically secluded from everyone and everything in the world. Mr. Hale even makes the comment, “Though I said at the same time that I didn’t know what his wife wanted made much difference to John” (260). The reader feels sympathy for Minnie throughout the story and gets a feeling of justification for her killing her husband and getting revenge. Mrs. Peters seems to have a hard time deciding whether to side with her inner feelings and cover for Minnie or to side with the law.
Notably, one of the principal ideas presented in Glaspell’s work is the concept of gender roles, moreover, the notion of institutional misogyny present in 20th century America. These said ideas are fleshed out through the characters of the play. The play opens with the introduction of five characters: Sheriff Peters, Hale, County Attorney
The major idea I want to write about has to do with the way Mrs. Hale stands behind Mrs. Wright even though it seems like everyone else especially (the men) would rather lock her up and throw away the key. We see this right away when she gets on the County Attorney for putting down Mrs. Wright’s house keeping. I find this to be wonderfully symbolic in that most women of this time usually allowed the men to say whatever they wanted about their sex, never standing up for themselves or each other
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles a man has been murdered by his wife, but the men of the town who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable solve the murder mystery through logic and standard criminal procedures. Instead, two women (Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters) who visit the home are able to read a series of clues that the men cannot see because all of the clues are embedded in domestic items that are specific to women. The play at first it seems to be about mystery, but it abruptly grows into a feminist perspective. The play Trifles written by Susan Glaspell can be considered a revolutionary writing in it its advocacy of the feminist movement.
Grose, Janet L. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’: Feminine Reading and
Susan Glaspell wrote two different forms of literature that have basically the same plot, setting and characters. This was during a period in which the legal system was unsympathetic to the social and domestic situation of the married woman. She first wrote the drama version “Trifles” in 1916 and then the prose fiction “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. The main difference was the way the prose fiction version was presented. Glaspell effects emotional change in the story with descriptive passages, settings and the title. The prose fiction version has a greater degree of emotional penetration than the drama version.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, and Mrs. Hale, the neighbor man’s wife, are able to relate in many ways to the loneliness and loss of self that Mrs. Wright felt while spending her days alone tending to her home and husband. The men in the play are so blinded by their sexist ideas about females, that they miss the evidence of a motive to convict Mrs. Wright of murder. The men, after hearing the women discuss how Mrs. Wright was worried about her jarred fruit freezing, make several comments regarding the fact that this is something trivial that a woman would worry about even while being held for the possibility of murder. Mr. Hale makes the comment, “-Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” (pp. 945)
Glaspell not only exposes how the characters have different perspectives but she also makes the reader realize the differences between male and female perception in the play. The play is about perception, and what is actually important is not the death of Mr. Wright but the life of Mrs. Wright. Truly, perception is different not only for men and women but also for each individual person, for it determines one's ability to perceive the truth and to achieve happiness.
Wright’s life and the way that the women help in sewing up the loose ends. Mrs. Peters is at first concerned that Mrs. Hale is going to take out the stitches and re-stitch them correctly. She asks, “Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?” (881). Mrs. Hale replies that she is “just pulling a stitch or two that’s not sewed very good” and that she will “just finish up this end” (881). This is ironic because the women end up sewing up her defense the way they sewed up her quilt. It is ironic that the two women end up being in charge of Mrs. Wright’s fate when they are not in charge of their own. Mrs. Peters is another example of the situational
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...
In final analysis, Susan Glaspell techniques of using symbolism and stereotype to arise a disputatious topic of murder between spouses to show her view on women oppression can be observed with in the play. The manner the play writer uses literary techniques of stereotype to describe how women shun from society just for been the wrong gender for the time period. Symbolism saturates the production with meaning that create sympathy for women being oppressed by
...lso becomes complicit in keeping information from her husband and other men. She too--owing to the loss of her first child--understands what loss means and what Mrs. Hale means when she says that women "all go through the same things" (1180).