A Play, a form of literature consisting melodramatic dialogues, and characters. Due to complex and ambiguous concept, plays are often difficult to define. (Eberle). When analyzing plays, it is important that we comprehend the theme, the characters and the plot. “The Real Inspector Hound” and “Trifles”, two plays have many similarities and differences. “The Real Inspector Hound”, a play written in 1961 by Tom Stoppard is a play within a play, consisting of narratives of the critics watching the play, and the play they are reviewing. In contrast, “Trifles” was written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell and builds upon the murder investigation of John Wright. While, both plays were influenced from distinctive occasions and written in a different period …show more content…
Regardless of being distinctive in terms of the objective and genre, both play vigorously highlights the theme of authenticity vs insincerity. Throughout the first play, “The Real Inspector Hound”, the author ridicules the theatre critics through personalization of Birdboot and Moon. Throughout the play, both critics are seen bewailing about their own issues, hardly paying any attention to the play they are reviewing. Birdboot’s attitude towards his profession is seemingly summed up when he says to Moon, “I’m not trying to tip you a wink – give you a nudge as good as a tip – for God’s sake, Moon, what’s the matter with you? You could do yourself some good, spotting her first time out – she’s new, from the provinces, going straight to top. I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but a word from us and we could make her.” (Stoppard 8) This quote signifies Birdboot’s excessive interest in actresses rather than the play. By portraying both Birdboot and Moon in such manner, the author disputes the authenticity of theatre critics which is vastly similar to “Trifles”, where the author disputes the Patriarchal dominance as the women are shown to be more efficient in resolving sophisticated matters, despite the men mocking them as typical
In the story, "Trifles", a man named John Wright was supposedly murdered. The characters made some inferences that could possibly lead to Mrs. Wright murdering her husband. The facts stated that Mr. Wright was found to be hung by a rope tied around his neck. My inferences state that at the beginning of the story, Mrs. Wright too relaxed at the idea of her husband being dead. Mrs. Wright was laughing and was rocking back in her chair, turning herself away from Mr. Hale. If someone's husband was dead unexpectedly, a loving wife would more than likely be upset about it and would like to be involved with the investigation. Another inference of mine is that she wasn't active in the rest of the story to try to even help anyone try to discover who
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.
One of the most important tools that an author uses to convey his message to the reader throughout the text is his language. It plays a vital role in setting the overall tone of the text and helps in foreshadowing with crumbs of symbols and imagery. This essay focuses on the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, first performed on August 8th, 1916.
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
The plays, Trifles and A Dollhouse use the literary tool of symbolism to portray the way women were treated throughout the nineteenth century. Susan Glaspell uses the bird cage and the dead bird to signify the role and life of women in marriage and society, whereas Henrik Ibsen uses the dollhouse. These symbols allow the reader to recognize the plays main similarities in the treatment of women, such as men dismissing women as trivial and treating them like property; however, the plays portray the women’s lifestyles as different which seal their fates. 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.
A work of literature often subtlety alludes to a situation in society that the author finds particularly significant. Susan Glaspell incorporates social commentary into her play Trifles. By doing so, she highlights the gender stratification that exists even in the most basic interactions and presents a way to use this social barrier to an acceptable end. Despite being written almost a century before present day, Glaspell’s findings and resulting solution are still valid in a modern context. Trifles demonstrates the roles of men and women in their everyday behaviour and interaction. The women use their ascribed positions to accomplish what the men cannot and have the ability to deliberately choose not to help the men with their newfound knowledge.
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).
The main idea showed in Trifles, the male character, and the empathy described by the females is why the author shows everyone that in every section of this play. Throughout the play, the women were being ignore and belittled by men. With their role, it is showing how back in the early 1900’s men were figured as gods. Women had to give all attention to the children, housekeeping and especially taking care of their spouse. Even though the women think very different as to what men use to think, they still maintain a close relationship in respecting the man 's job. According to Elke Brown, “ As a sheriff 's wife, she is married not only to Mr. Peters, the person but also to his profession”. The women are giving their world just so the men can be satisfied with the job they have and not cause any other problem other than their job. During the play, the men are only looking for hard concrete clues. They seem not to see the reality behind minor things. Mrs. Peters is directed by this belief until she remembers the stillness in her house after a child had died. This memory produces a dominant bond between her and Minnie 's experience of isolation and loneliness. The scene where exactly Mrs. Peters herself attempts to hide the box with the dead canary in it. She is well aware that this action that happens, which can apply to on the society and the way her husband wants the things done. Just because her husband stands
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
In the play Trifles, a handful of people are thrust into a situation that allows us to compare their personalities. The comparison of Mrs. Hale and Mr. Wright is captivating because both characters have striking similarities and differences that are well defined in the events that unfold in the Wright kitchen. Though both show emotions that are unlike from one another, they are similar in their organized lifestyles, and they conduct themselves in such a way to have the respect from others.
I enjoyed this reading this play because the men in the play were typical men-folk. They put on this persona that they are the most important creatures on Earth. They act as if they were Sherlock Holmes himself when in actuality they are not nearly as vigilant as the female characters. Their high-mighty attitude made the women feel inferior and because of that common feeling they form a bond between the three of them. Through this bond they decided to keep the evidence they found and Mrs. Wright’s secret to themselves. Taking the box with the dead bird was them demonstrating gender loyalty and an act of rebelliousness against a the self-righteous male-dominate...
The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard For this unit, the play which we are studying is "The Real Inspector." Hound" written by Tom Stoppard, an English playwright famous for his clever use of language and ironic political metaphors. Stoppard was associated theatre of the absurd, and often his play referred to the meaninglessness of the human condition. He combined English tradition of the "comedy of manners" (a play that attacks the customs).
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...
Susan Glaspell's play, "Trifles", attempts to define one of the main behavioral differences between man and woman. For most of the story, the two genders are not only geographically separated, but also separated in thought processes and motive, so that the reader might readily make comparisons between the two genders. Glaspell not only verbally acknowledges this behavioral difference in the play, but also demonstrates it through the characters' actions and the turns of the plot. The timid and overlooked women who appear in the beginning of the play eventually become the delicate detectives who, discounted by the men, discover all of the clues that display a female to be the disillusioned murderer of her (not so dearly) departed husband. Meanwhile, the men in the play not only arrogantly overlook the "trifling" clues that the women find that point to the murderer, but also underestimate the murderer herself. "These were trifles to the men but in reality they told the story and only the women could see that (Erin Williams)". The women seem to be the insightful unsung heroes while the men remain outwardly in charge, but sadly ignorant.