The article Silent Justice in a Different Key by Suzy Clarkson Holstein concentrates on an investigation of the hero ladies in the play Wastes of time and their calm inclusion in comprehending a homicide. By indicating out particular occasions from the play, she contends that the examination of "wastes of time" and the general effortlessness of the ladies permit the real consummation happen. Be that as it may, she likewise focuses on the profundity of their circumstance. Holstein opens solid by calling Wastes of time a "misleading play: tricky in light of the fact that, similar to its title, it appears to be straightforward, verging on insignificant. “However the play speaks to a significant clash between two models of observation and conduct" (282). The article concentrates on a few occasions from the play that depict the genuine profundity of the plot. …show more content…
For instance, in the wake of condensing that the men in the play see the house as only a wrongdoing scene, she states, "By difference, the ladies land at a home. Albeit neither they nor the men acknowledge it, they too are directing an examination. “Their procedure appears to be nebulous as they travel through the kitchen, talking and reflecting" (283). Here, she demonstrates that from the earliest starting point the ladies have favorable position over the men. They were not there to chase for proof like the men, so they promptly start to respond to any natural environment and associate with them. In contrast with how they enter the home, Holstein proceeds by saying that "the ladies don't just recollect and feel for Minnie. “They relate to her truly" (285). With this, she alludes to Mrs. Diminish's significant memory of a kid killing her cat, for instance. They gave proof from the play backings Holstein's investigation and contention that the noteworthy procedure which the ladies experience is more significant than it
The play portrays women as inferior to men and stuck with household work while men have absolute control over them. The opening scene description “The kitchen is the now abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, a gloomy kitchen, and left without having been put in order […] other signs of in completed work.” (Trifles, 1) gives a first impression to the reader of how isolated the place is, thereby symbolizing the loneliness of Minnie Wright and her duty towards the household. Such a carefully crafted description in the very first sentence of the text tends to set off a really strong image and perception in the mind of the reader even before they are introduced to the plot. This is a really clever tactic by Susan Glaspell which she uses to emphasize her message from the
While Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are right in covering up for Minnie, Glaspell is wrong in portraying all men as jerks. Now as we approach the turn of another century, we see that there are plenty of men at this day in age that would understand Minnie’s actions and cover for her just like Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale. Surely, there were a few men a hundred years ago that would not have acted as Mr. Peters and Mr. Henderson, and would have covered and understood Minnie’s actions.
You notice this to be so because Mrs. Peters is struggling against what she is hearing the men say versus what she feels herself. When Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters that she would hate for the men to be in her kitchen snooping around and criticizing, Mrs. Peters responds by saying "Of course it’s no more than their duty". This reflects to me a lady who has been so brain washed by the manly view of her time that she can’t even see the simple feelings that women feel for and between each other.
The ‘confessions’ in the play are not usually about truth, as they are enforced and arise out of fear. Discuss the role you think confessions play in the dramatic force of this play.
Nora and Mrs. Wright’s social standing when compared to the men in each play is inferior. Both works expose their respective male characters’ sexist view of women diminishing the women’s social standing. Each work features egotistical men who have a severely inflated view of their self-worth when compared to their female counterparts. The men’s actions and words indicate they believe women are not capable of thinking intelligently. This is demonstrated in “Trifles” when Mr. Hale makes the statement about women only worrying about mere trifles. It is also apparent in “A Dollhouse” when Torvalds thinks his wife is not capable of thinking with any complexity (Mazur 17). Another common attribute is of the women’s social standing is displayed as both women finally get tired of feeling like second class citizens and stand up to the repressive people in the women’s lives (Mulry 294). Although both women share much in common in their social standing there subtle differences. Torvald’s sexist view of Nora is more on a personal level in “A Dollhouse” while the male characters’ sexist views in “Trifles” seem to be more of a social view that women are not very smart and their opinions are of little value. This attitude is apparent in “Trifles” as Mr. Hale and Mr. Henderson’s comments about Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping (Mulry 293). As the women in both works reach their emotional
To begin, in both plays the men dismiss the women as trivial. In Trifles, when Mrs. Wright is being held in jail for the alleged murder of her husband, she worries about the cold weather and whether it will cause her fruit to freeze which will burst the jars. After the women come across a shattered jar of canned fruit, they converse about Mrs. Wright’s concern about the matter. Mrs. Peters states, “She said the fire’d go out and her jars would break” (Glaspell 918). The women here identify with Mrs. Wright’s concern, because they understand the hard work that goes into canning as part of the demanding responsibilities women endure as housewives. The Sheriff’s reply is “Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (Glaspell 918). In other words, the men perceive the event as insignificant; they clearly see women as a subservient group whose concerns hold little importance. Likewise, the reader can relate to this treatment in A Dollhouse, when Torvald complains to Nora about spending Christmas time the previous year making frivolous ornaments instead of devoting it to family. Torvald says, “It was the dullest three weeks that I ever spent!” (Ibsen 1207). He believes her role i...
Devising the perfect murder is a craft that has been manipulated and in practice dating back to the time of the biblical reference of Cain and Abel. In the play, “Trifles” exploration is focused on the empathy one has for a murderer who feels they have no alternative from their abuser. As a multifaceted approach, the author Glaspell gives her audience a moral conflict as to whether murder should be condemned based on the circumstances rather than the crime. Presenting Mrs. Wright as the true victim of the crime of domestic abuse rather than a murderer gives Glaspell a stage which shows her audience the power of empathy.
Men always have the tendency to judge too quickly. In “A Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Minnie Foster and Mr. Henderson are attempting to look for the motive of Minnie killing her husband. The story starts by Mr. Peters informing the group, except for Minnie, while she waits in jail, that when he stopped by the day before to give Mr. Wright a telephone because the couple lived really removed from the rest of the town, he asked Minnie where Mr. Wright was and she calmly answered that he had been hung the night before. Then, the men head upstairs to look at the crime scene, while the women sit around the kitchen to talk. Accidentally, the women figure out the motive of the murder by talking about kitchen supplies, “trifles” as the men call it. They decided not to inform the men to keep Minnie from being convicted because her husband was equally guilty as her. In the short story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, Glaspell employs strong details and details devices to argue that the purpose of the story is how Glaspell portrays men, that a person must not be judged based on off of the external appearance and that the little details in life always are important.
Hale states “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” (561). The same trifles he states women are worried over, are the trifles that if men paid attention to they would have plenty of evidence against Minnie Wright. In “A Jury of Her Peers” Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter basically decided the fate of Minnie. In “A Jury of Her Peers” Glaspell shows how there is criticism of a legal system that denied women the change of a fair trial by an all-man jury. They found evidence that the men could not find and decided “not to turn it in. All of this held a significant role in the story, but they are the ones that solved the case. In the play the sheriff mocks Mrs. Hale “They Wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it” (563). He also said something in “A Jury of Her Peers” on page 575 line 159. There are not many changes between the play and the short story. Most of the changes happen in the opening of the story when it is more detailed, as to where the play is all about action. If you are watching the play it is much better than the story because you can see all the action and
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).
Mrs. Hale feels a natural responsibility to defend and protect Minnie Foster Wright through her connection as a fellow woman and housewife. Upon her introduction to Minnie through her home, Mrs. Hale finds an immediate connection. She understands Minnie’s life as a homemaker and a farmer’s wife and is quick to defend her when her skills as a wife and woman come into question. When the men recognize Minnie’s lackluster cleaning of kitchen towels Mrs. Hale retorts “[m]en’s hands aren’t as clean as they might be” (Glaspell 160). She asserts her loyalty to Minnie and notes that men are not always perfect or without blame, without “clean hands”. As a woman, Mrs. Hale easily sees herself in Minnie’s place and comes to her defense as if she were defending herself. It is easier to share her loyalty with a woman so much like her than it is to be loyal to men that act superior and do not understand the challenges of being a housewife. The men find a woman’s chores as petty, nothing but “trifles” (Glaspell 160).Scholar Karen Stein argues that it is these commonalities that create the responsibility of everywoman to defend one another (Ortiz 165). Mrs. Hale sees herself in every...
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 this play, the men and women characters are separated even from their first entrance onto the stage. To the intuitive reader (or playgoer), the gender differences are immediately apparent when the men walk confidently into the room and over to the heater while the women timidly creep only through the door and stand huddled together. This separation between genders becomes more apparent when the characters proceed in investigating the murder. The men focus on means while the women focus on motive: action vs. emotion. While the men...
At the time of when this play was written the women weren’t considered equal to the man. So a lot of men felt superior over the women causing them to be belittled. We can tell this from the setting of the play the men gather up near the fire to keep warm and the women are in the back shadowing the men. Also when they begin to talk about women and how they worry about little trifles. Showing that they feel that there is no importance in a women everyday task. So instead of them taking out time to search the whole they only search the parts of the house that was more male dominate which cause the detectives to do a partial investigation. The men are so blinded by their cold emotionless investigation prejudiced believing that nothing important can be found in areas in the house where the wife spent most of her time. Stated in the play in this line “I guess we’ll go upstairs first- and then out to the barn and around there. You’re convinced that there was nothing important here-nothing that would point to any motive? Nothing here but kitchen things.” (446) When the down stairs area where Mrs. Wright spent most of her time was where the answers to all their unanswered question was. Their mind is clouded to the point that they disregard the main important clues as just a women’s trifles. “well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worrying about her preserves.” (446). The men are so stuck on men being more dominant and the women being
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