Trifles One woman’s Trifles is another man’s clues. The play Trifles, was written by Susan Glaspell based on the murder of John Hossack, which Susan reported on while working as a news journalist for Des Moines Daily News. Susan Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, actress, novelist, journalist, and founder of the Provincetown Players. She has written nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. At 21 she enrolled at Drake University even after the prevailing belief that college make women unfit for marriage. But many don’t know that her work was only published after the death of her husband George Cram Cook. Trifles is an example of a feminist drama. The play shows how male dominance was …show more content…
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 …show more content…
Wright was described as a beautiful women filled with such joy and life until she married John Wright. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale feels sorry for her because her husband treated her so bad. Due to female bonding and sympathy, the two women, becoming detectives, finds the truth and hides it from the men. The play shows you that emotions can play a part in your judgement. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale felt sorry that Mrs. Wright had one to keep her company no kids and she was always left alone at home. “yes good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debt. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that goes to the bone. I should of think she would have wanted a bird. But what you suppose went with it?” Later on in the play the women find out what happens to the bird. The bird was killed the same way Mrs. Wright husband which leads to the motive of why he was killed. Mrs. Wright was just like the bird beautiful but caged no freedom not being able to live a life of her own. Always stuck in the shadows of her husband being told what to do and
The power of women is different than that of men. Women display a subtle and indirect kind of power, but can be resilient enough to impact the outside world. In Trifles, Susan Glaspell delivers the idea that gender and authority are chauvinistic issues that confirm male characters as the power holders, while the female characters are less significant and often weak. This insignificance and weakness indicated in the play by the fact that the women had the evidence to solve a murder, but the men just ignored the women as if they had no value to the case at all. This weakness and inability of the female to contest the man’s view are apparent. According to Ben-Zvi, “Women who kill evoke fear because they challenge societal constructs of femininity-passivity, restraint, and nurture; thus the rush to isolate and label the female offender, to cauterize the act” (141). This play presents women against men, Ms. Wright against her husband, the two women against their spouses and the other men. The male characters are logical, arrogant, and stupid while the women are sympathetic, loyal, and drawn to empathize with Mrs. Wright and forgive her crime. The play questions the extent to which one should maintain loyalty to others. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale try to withhold incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright, and by challenging the reader to question whether
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.
Mrs. Hale describes her; "She -- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself - real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery. How she did change"; and like a bird, Mrs. Wright even sang in a choir. But after she got married, everything stopped. She didn't sing anymore or attend social functions. Like a bird, her house became her cage.
The male characters carefully look around in the bedroom and outside in the barn for clues. Why, the women are sent into gather some things for Mrs. Wright, who is the main suspect to her husband’s death. The women are mocked at by the men. The attitude the men at this time had toward women is provided by Glaspell in the opening of the investigation when the men noticed the kitchen. For example the male characters don’t take the Mrs. Wright when telling them about the important of having the heat on so that the jars of preserves wouldn’t break because of the cold weather. Yet, the male characters didn’t take Mrs. Wright seriously. As if they are just good for nothing women which lack the smarter to understand how to solve a homicide.
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.
My initial inspiration for this piece was Trifles, which funnily enough only shares the characteristic of detectives being involved within the plot. As per suggestion on my proposal, I developed my idea of detectives solving a case further by including dialogue and inter-personnel relationships similar to those found in Glengarry Glen Ross. Taking the idea of different members of the real-estate office discussing work and plotting in Glengarry Glen Ross, and applying them to a trio of detectives on a case was interesting to say the least.
In several instances throughout the plot, men mentally and emotionally abuse the women by considering their jobs simply as trifles and unimportant. Ironically, the women accomplish something more significant than the men ever will by discovering actual proof that could result in the arrest of Mrs. Wright. In another instance. Mrs. Wright was so dramatically emotionally abused by her husband, it culminated in her murdering him and without any remorse. The severity of this abuse arises from the social issue of gender inequality in the early twentieth century. Finally, both Mrs. Hale and Mrs Peters mutually decide to withhold the evidence from the men in order to preserve Mrs. Wright’s innocence. This action contributes to the empowerment of women and the upbringing of the feminist movement Susan Gladspell hoped to
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
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 two females noticed everything around and questioned everything. The find a bird cage and wondered if she owned a bird and it not, what was the bird cage for. Ms. Peters and Mrs. Hale find the bird and notice that the neck had been twisted. Mrs. Hale states how all the women live close together but feel far apart, they all go through the same thing. George Henderson, The County Attorney says that all these things the woman found and were about to take, weren’t relevant to the crime scene because they were things that weren’t dangerous, in other words I believe that he said these things were unrelated to anything that happened that night, because they were things that belonged to a women or mainly because there were small things that during the 20th century wouldn’t hurt a man or a man wouldn’t let himself be taken down, by something so irrelevant. At the end of the story the women conclude that Mr. Wright, killed Mr. Wright the same way he had killed her bird. Mrs. Hale and Ms. Peter decide to hide what they had uncovered about the event that took place that night Mr. Wright was killed. In my opinion the reason they decided to hide all this information was because like they said Mrs. Wright was very happy and her husband was very
By the end of the play Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters found the dead canary in Mrs. Wright’s sewing kit. The canary had marks around its neck inferring that it had been strangled just like Mr. Wright, but they faced a dilemma on whether or not to turn in the evidence. In the end they decided to withhold the evidence from their husbands. By keeping this evidence from their husbands the two women chose to defend not only Mrs. Wright, but all women during this time period. They felt that the prejudices and discriminatory acts of men during this time period towards women were not acceptable. Men of this time belittled their wives and these women tried to challenge that philosophy. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale help show the audience what women in this time period had to endure in order to get back their freedom.
Susan Glaspell’s most memorable one-act play, Trifles (1916) was based on murder trial case that happened in the 1900’s. Glaspell worked as a reporter, where she appointed a report of a murder case. It was about a farmer, John Hossack who was killed while he was asleep in bed one night. His wife claimed that she was asleep next to him when the attack occurred. No one believed in her statement, she was arrested and was charged on first degree murder.
“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a literary breakthrough. Thought by many to be the first piece of modern work advocating women 's rights, this play made a splash into the male dominated era of the early nineteenth century. Set on a farm after the murder of Mr. Wright, three male characters assign themselves with the position of investigators, while their two wives serve as mere gatherers for the convicted felon Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Peters, one of the women, deliberately challenges society 's social norms. With the surrounding males confining her to only domestic functions, Mrs. Peter not only questions yet takes on his male dominated role, providing justice for a fellow female. By leaving the theme of justice in the hands of Mrs. Peters, Glaspell
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...
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