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What are the themes that are seen in trifles by susan glaspell
What is the subject matter of the trifles by susan glaspell
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Plot Structure in Susan Glaspell's Trifles
The play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell is a whodunit type of murder mystery. But in this case, the "professionals," whose job it is to find out what happened, failed in their task. The County Attorney (Mr. Henderson) and the Sheriff (Mr. Peters) attempt to piece together what had transpired on the day when John Wright was murdered. They interviewed Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mr. Hale who told them that Mrs. Wright, John's wife, had been acting strange when he had found her in the kitchen. After taking in all of this information, they left Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale in the kitchen.
Instead of focusing on the men and their quest to solve the case, Glaspell concentrates on the women in the kitchen. It is at this point, when the men leave the kitchen and go upstairs, that the women begin to, perhaps inadvertently, find out for themselves who had killed John Wright. I believe the rising action of this play begins when the men leave the women alone in the kitchen. Without even knowing it, the women are using the tactics that a trained detective would use: asking many questions and making inferences. They engage in small talk and comment on how the kitchen was left after the murder. For example, when Mrs. Peters was looking through the cupboard, she discovered that Mrs. Wright had a bread set. Mrs. Hale then concludes that "she was going to put this in here," referring to a loaf of bread beside the breadbox. Another example is when Mrs. Peters noticed that Mrs. Wright had been "piecing a quilt." As the two women are wondering whether she was going to "quilt it or knot it," the men come down the stairs and overhear them. The Sheriff repeats out loud what he had heard them say and the men all laugh, obviously making fun of the women. This situation is interesting because the men have no idea that the women were actually making valuable conclusions. I think the next line that Mrs. Hale says is very important:
"I don't know as there's anything so strange, our takin' up our time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence. I don't see as it's anything to laugh about."
This line shows that even the women themselves believe that they are not finding anything of importance.
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.
In their discussion of supposedly unimportant items, such as the ill-stitched quilt, broken bird cage door, and dead canary, the women are able to collect important evidence and know enough information about Mrs. Wright to give her a motive for murdering her husband. The men, though, are clueless as to who killed Mr. Wright and why, even after they thoroughly search the house for clues. They believe that they possess superior intelligence and knowledge of the world in comparison to women, but cannot find enough evidence to convict Mrs. Wright. Even if the men did uncover the same clues as the women, it is highly unlikely that they would understand how that would make for a motive for Mrs. Wright, as they simply cannot relate to her as a female. Glaspell's Trifles shows how women reveal basic truths about life by paying close attention to detail, and shows the true importance of the things which men generally find to be trivial.
She got the idea for the play and short story, after she covered a murder of a woman on a farm. In both of Glaspell’s pieces, the main character, Mrs. Wright, is accused of killing her husband. Minnie Wright was a farmer’s wife who didn’t have much contact with the outside world. The murder investigation took place inside her home. Three men are used to investigating the case and two women come with them.
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).
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.
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, was written in 1916, reflects the author’s concern with stereotypical concepts of gender and sex roles of that time period. As the title of the play implies, the concerns of women are often considered to be nothing more than unimportant issues that have little or no value to the true work of society, which is being performed by men. The men who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable to solve the mystery through their supposed superior knowledge. Instead, two women are able decipher evidence that the men overlook because all of the clues are entrenched in household items that are familiar mainly to women during this era. Glaspell expertly uses gender characterization, setting, a great deal of symbolism and both dramatic and verbal irony, to expose social divisions created by strict gender roles, specifically, that women were limited to the household and that their contributions went disregarded and underappreciated.
In the play Trifles, Susan Glaspell brings together three women through a crime investigation in the late nineteenth century. Glaspell uses symbolism, contrast of sexes, and well-constructed characters to show that justice for all is equally important to finding the truth. Perhaps the most prevalent literary device in the Trifles is the rich symbolism. Each of the women in the play are equally important, but come together to become more powerful. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters directly bond, while Mrs. Wright indirectly contributes from jail by leaving them small clues.
He was first arrested on a disorderly conduct charge while working for fellow gangster Frankie Yale. At this time he also murdered two men to prove his willingness to kill, but he was not tried because of the gangland etiquette of “silence.” Capone was let off of all charges due to lack of proof. After Capone hospitalized a rival gang member, Yale sent him to Chicago until things blew over. He arrived there in 1919.
The very famous gangster, Alphonse Capone also known as, “Al Capone” was born in Brooklyn, NY on January 17, 1899. Born from an Italian immigrant family, Al Capone rose to be one of the most famous gangsters of all time during United States’ Prohibition era. At the time his family moved into the US, he already had 2 other brothers before he was born. His father and mother were from Italy, Gabriele and Teresa, they moved in at a poor apartment where Al was later born. The place where he lived was a very law abiding place, where from a young age it was notable that he would grow up to be in a world of crime. Capone at a young age, went to a catholic school, where he was an outstanding student, and had a very promising
Liebow learned a lot about these women from studying them . Some people may question Liebow and ask him why he would as time as he did in the shelter. Well the answer to that question is that he did what gave him pleasure which was to help people that did need help. First he said that he wondered why that although all of the wome were in the same situation, why some could make it through this and others didn’t. Well his solution to this was some do some don’t. Which meant everyone reacts differently to certain situations. Personally I learned a lot from this book and I thought it was a good book.
The short story and the play written by Susan Glaspell are very much alike. The story takes place in an old country town in the early 1900’s. Mr. Hale has found his neighbor, John Wright, strangled upstairs in the Wrights’ house with Minnie Wright, John’s wife, sitting calmly downstairs. With John Wright dead and his wife in jail, Mr. Hale, the sheriff, their wives, and the county attorney all crowded in the Wright’s house to try to find clues about the murder. While the men go upstairs, they leave the women downstairs “…worrying over trifles.” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 264) Unbeknownst to the men, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clue after clue that would convict Minnie Wright of the murder. Instead of telling the men about the clues, the women hide the clues and the men have no idea what the women have found. The clues are little things like a half cleaned kitchen, sewing that is messed up, and the sugar jar being left open. The clues the women find are very noticeable to them, but a man would over look them without thinking twice.
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.
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...
Just because everything is pre-planned, life in Utopia is so very monotonous that people had to adopt a pleasure-based approach about life, based on happiness and happiness alone: “In fact, they do everything they can to make people enjoy themselves.”²⁹, “Here they seem rather too much inclined to take a hedonistic view, for according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure.”³⁰
Most of the actions take place in the kitchen setting which demonstrates the author’s deliberate move to show the important details about the wifely role. The women hold their conversation in the unkempt kitchen, a domestic sphere that reveals everything about the lives of women. While the men were busy searching for clues around the farmhouse, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale see some evidence in the trifle that Mrs. Wright had left in the kitchen. The women can deduce that the messy kitchen with dirty pans gives a signal of incomplete work. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter spend most of their time in the messy kitchen that significantly reveal Mrs. Wright’s state of confusion (Manuel 61). Mrs. Hale understands Mrs. Wright’s experiences of loneliness and desperation from the male-dominated circumstances. The female characters sympathize with her situation by acknowledging the forces in her life that made her take the roles including that of murdering her husband. The men overlook the evidence that the women can trace in the house, and their dialogue suggests lack of sympathy towards women as noted from their humiliation and sarcasm towards women. For example, the women can relate the death of the canary to the murder scene. The attorney shows how woman’s concerns are unimportant, instead of sympathizing with Mrs. Wright for what has befallen her, they portray their women