Women´s Role During the Twentieth Century: Susan Glaspell

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Susan Glaspell uses a variety of symbols in her play to demonstrate the stereotypical view and treatment of women by men during the start of the twentieth century. She intricately portrays the female characters in her story as intelligent, but passive due to the fact that males dismiss their ideas and conversations as unimportant. The play, Trifles, uses multiple symbols to show how men fail to recognize the intelligence of women, and oppress the feminists’ way of thinking throughout society.
The title, Trifles, suggests that the story is mainly focused on insignificant events or conversations. As the play proceeds, one can be amused by the satirical unfolding of events. Trifles a short story about the murder of Minnie Wright’s husband, who has been mysteriously strangled in his own house. The two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who are supposed to be at the house gathering a few items for the accused killer, Mrs. Wright, actually find evidence to indict her. The male characters who are actually in the house to look for evidence, the County Attorney, the Sheriff, and Mr. Hale, quickly become the antagonists in the story. Glaspell outnumbers the women in the story by three men to demonstrate the harsh reality of male dominance within society. The characters in the play spend the whole time looking for clues to help lead them to Mr. Wright’s killer. Although the men have put his wife into custody, they find no evidence to support the suspicion of Minnie Wright as her husband’s killer. As the men arrogantly mock and dismiss the women’s conversations as “trifles”, they fail to recognize small details that point the guilt towards Mrs. Wright.
Glaspell uses the stereotypical notion that females enjoy sewing. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Wr...

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... society. The murder of Mr. Wright is used to portray the anger she has with men and how they degrade the intelligence of women (Mael 2). Glaspell believes that women are just as smart if not smarter than men, but do not actively voice their opinions due to male’s dominance throughout society. The feminist theme is drawn by the characters, the title, the role women had throughout the play, and the conflict. They all worked together to show how women were oppressed by men and thought to be less important to society. The women discuss seemingly insignificant items such as the sloppy corner of the quilt, the broken bird cage door, and the dead bird. These things gave the women enough information and knowledge about the situation to come up with a motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband, while the men consider these things to be trivial and unimportant to the case.

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