The Feminist Theory: Everyone Has A Role

Everyone Has A Role

The focal point for the feminist theory is centered on the perceived oppression of the female in a male-controlled society. Feminist theory is concerned with how literature enforces or ignores the socio-political, economic and psychological subjugation of the female (Tyson). The feminist school of thought focuses on how various cultures inherently glorify the male gender. It endeavors to expose the various male biases found in the literature. Susan Glaspell, as a writer in the early twentieth century, lived in a time when women were rising to fight the bias that patriarchal societies used when giving roles to its members. The roles included political, social, productive and reproductive roles.

Women were largely confined to the reproductive role that required them to raise children and look after their husbands and households. As a result, most of Glaspell’s literary works are a critique of the restricting view of women that the society has. Susan

Evidence that Mrs. Wright is responsible for her husband’s death is entwined in Mrs. Hale’s and Mrs. Peters dialogue about Mrs. Wright’s pet bird and sewing. The knots on Mrs. Wright’s quilt match those in the rope that was used to Mr. Wright. The bird, which was a symbol of Mrs. Wright’s vitality is the last thing her husband takes from her. Her husband’s killing of her pet bird breaks the last straw of Mrs. Wright’s subservience. This makes her alien from herself as she is living a lie as Mrs. Hale puts it “Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!” (Glaspell 950). Mrs. Hale understands the desperation, pain and loneliness that Mrs. Wright had been put through. She intuitively realizes that whatever roles Mrs. Wright had played, even that of a murderer, had been molded by the male dominated circumstances of her