Gender Roles In Susan Glaspel's Trifles

1. The women during the 20 century had very few rights. A married woman’s had no separate legal identity from that of her husband. They had no right to control her biological reproduction and no right to sue or be sued since she had no separate standing in court. Women’s had no right to own property in her own name or to pursue a career of her choice. In the played “Trifles” define as a thing of little value or importance. The women were portrayed to be dumb, ignorant and innocent housewives who just cared about cooking, cleaning and making quilts. Susan Glaspel the author, reveal how gender role were played out in rural Iowa, that the housewives were depressed and lonely living in the middle of the country with a man who treated them horrible.

In the play, the reader knows that Susan Glaspell is feminist because the females in the story are the true detectives on solving the crime. The definition of feminist is the belief that women are and should be treated as potential intellectual equals and social equals to men. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter do not have first names in the play besides Minnie Foster (Mrs. Wrights) when they referred to her when she was a young child. Mrs. Hale; “Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.” County attorney; “Ah, loyed to your sex, I see. But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too”. The men see the messy kitchen and believe that the women do not have the abilities to be prefect housewives. In the play the women are more worry about the small details whereas the men thought it was useless. Sheriff; “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot

In the play, there was a lot of foreshadowing and anaphora. The major symbols in the play that stand out to me was the bird, quilt and apron. The bird symbols as revenge and love. Mrs. Wright loved her pet bird as a child but when John Wright killed the bird, she could not think of a more fitting revenge than killing him. Mrs. Peters ' sense of empathy, as she recalls having had similar feelings many years ago when a boy killed her kitten. For these women, the pain that results from the death of a loved one is the resolute for revenge. The symbol of the quilt represents the easy way out, when Mrs. Hale said “we call it –Knot it, Mr. Henderson”. When someone is making a quilt, the “quilt” style is the longer hand detailed way of making a quilt whereas the “Knot” style is the easy, short and fast way of making a quilt. The quilt is foreshadowing the murder of John Wright and how Mrs. Wright took the easy way out from the loneliness and suffering of the emotional abuse, by tying a rope around John Wright neck into a knot. The apron is a symbol for the domestic housewives to stay in the kitchen the role that women had to play during that