The Role Of Women In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

In 1916, Susan Glaspell wrote Trifles, when the egotistical male-dominated social order was ruthlessly manipulating women’s right to vote and cruelly restricting their functions in social, business, and government positions. In the home, the husband was dictator and the wife merely a domestic servant. The domestic sphere of women is minimized to the activities of the farmhouse which are considered trifles or insignificant in the world of men. Trifles explores the classical male stereotype of women during this period by expressing that women habitually worry about matters of little, or unimportance. This label creates the perception males are the only people concerned with essential issues, issues that a female would never discuss or confront during this era. Trifles is based on an actual murder case Susan Glaspell wrote about as a reporter for a newspaper in Iowa at the turn of the century. To completely comprehend and give an accurate analysis of Trifles, it is critical to acknowledge the condition of the women’s movement at the time the play was written and first produced.

The significance of the position of women in this early 20th century community and the title of the play Trifles, is condescending. Susan Glaspell manipulatively uses her extensive knowledge about the murder case, to expose and express the way women actually felt during this period. As a reporter she was controlled and restricted to what she could actually publish. She constantly uses subtle but deep ways to associate the play to hash treatment of women and the way they are viewed by males in society. Lewis Hale casually states that "women are used to worrying over trifles"(Glaspell 663). He is enforcing how the men actually perceive the women in society ...

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...ce to society and viewed as a servant to their husband and family. The female was looked down upon and was considered a second class citizen compared to their male counterpart. The significance of the female contribution to society was evolving and was a painful transition women had to endure so women can have what they have today. Women endured mental, emotional, physical, and political abuse that was comparable to that of slaves. The suffering women endured paved the way for future generations of females to be looked at as equals not peasants compared to men. The women decided not to tell the men about the things they found, which undoubtedly stressed the women enduring Minnie’s pain together for the greater good of women. If they had exposed the trifles that they had uncovered, the women would have presented the motive that the men could not find to convict her.