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Annotated Bibliography on trifles
Theme of Susan Glaspell's Trifles
Theme of Susan Glaspell's Trifles
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Susan Glaspell's play Trifles explores male-female relationships through the murder investigation of the character of Mr. Wright. It also talks about the stereotypes that women faced. The play takes place in Wright's country farmhouse as the men of the play, the county attorney, the sheriff, and Mr. Hale, search for evidence as to the identity and, most importantly, the motive of the murderer. The attorney, with the intensions of proving that Mrs. Wright choked the husband to death, was interviewing Mr. Hale on what he saw when he came in to the house. The women, on the other hand, were just there to get some clothing for the wife who was in jail for suspected murder of her husband. However, the clues which would lead them to the answer are never found by the men. Instead it is their female counterparts who discover the evidence needed, but they choose not to tell the men what they found since the man were degrading them the whole time. After searching the house several times, tow of the men choose to stop and they leave while the attorney stays behind to find any sort of clue that could convict Mrs. Wright of the murder. The women withhold all the evidence they find, therefore getting back at them men for all the stereotypical and degrading comments they said. Thus allowing the attorney to attempt to find his own evidence and ending the play. Gaspell's play represents the misjudgment and stereotypes the women faced and how they dealt with those issues.
The men's one-sided view of the women prevents them from finding the key evidence that they need. The male investigators need to find, as Mrs. Peters puts it, "'a motive; something to show anger, or--sudden feeling'" (357). Yet the men never see the uneven sewing on a q...
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...ey says, "But you know jury's when it comes to women" (1316). The county attorney is implying that no jury would ever think that a woman would be capable of actually killing a man, let alone come up with a scheme to kill him. The women were just stuck with the stereotype and they just had to go along with it. Women would not talk back to the men because of the fear of being thrashed at and even being hit by the men. That is why they just stood there and let the men say whatever they wanted to.
In conclusion, the men's prejudices about women causes them to have a weak case against Minnie. The women know this; they are smart, depicted as much smarter than the men. The men got punishment for their mistreatment of the women by not being able to find the evidence that would convict Minnie. They underestimated the women and in the end it was the women who came out on top.
Trifles” is a play written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell. The play’s audience consists of young adults to those in their late 50’s. Mrs. Glaspell takes a serious matter of domestic violence and uses her platform as an author to raise awareness about the issue. In the play “Trifles” a neighbor went to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wright only to find Mr. Wright dead in his bed. He had been strangled to death by a rope. The neighbor questioned Mrs. Wright about the matter and her response was odd and suspicious. Mrs. Wright was taken to jail while the home is being investigated for further evidence. Mrs. Glaspell’s play “Trifles” effectively achieves the goal in raising awareness on domestic violence by the evidence of the crime and through pathos.
...ing and themselves, they see that Mrs. Wright is worth their protection, which has several meanings for the women. They come together with her against the law; they also protect her by not telling her the truth about her ruined preserves. Mrs. Hale regrets not protecting Minnie Wright from isolation and solitude, and she rushes to her defense and protects Minnie Wright earlier by helping her now.
In the story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” by Susan Glaspell, we see how women are subjugated to stereotypical gender roles, where men are superior over women. The two main characters, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale arrive at the Wright residence, with the men to investigate the crime scene. Minnie Foster-Wright has been arrested for allegedly strangling her husband with a rope. Mr. Hale (Martha’s husband), is a witness, who found Minnie sitting in a rocker and her husband dead upstairs. The attorney general, Mr. Henderson asks Mr. Hale and the sheriff, Mr. Peters to help him investigate the crime and explain what he had seen that day. As the men go upstairs and into the barn to investigate, Martha and Mrs. Peters are left in the kitchen to gather
Glaspell is showing how both men and women view households in a different perspective. All the men who were asked to go to Minnie to find evidence to convict her as they took their wives. The two ladies kept coming across clues of a disordered household that the men mocked as to be nothing. The women found an unfinished quilt with a weird pattern, and a strangled canary. They women insinuated that these small details were the motivations of Minnie murdering her husband. The women were sympathetic towards Minnie and talked about her husband being controlling. Glaspell had created a courtroom and women had become the jurors and decided that Minnie was not guilty for her actions. They judged on humanity and not legal aspects. The whole time they withheld the evidence they found from the men investigators because they are supposed representatives of the law in this story. Relating to the story since the men are the law or authorities, they presumably ignore or reject many elements of life or explanation; like unequal rights.
The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is type of murder mystery that takes place in the early 1900’s. The play begins when the sheriff Mr. Peters and county attorney Mr. Henderson come to attempt to piece together what had happen on the day that Mr. Wright was murder. While investigating the seen of the murder, they are accompanied by the Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale and Mr. Peters. Mr. Hale had told that Mrs. Wright was acting strange when he found her in the kitchen. After taking information from Mr. Hale, the men leave the women in the kitchen and go upstairs at seen of the murder. The men don’t realize the plot of the murder took place in the kitchen.
The play, ‘Twelve Angry men’, written by Reginald Rose, explores the thrilling story of how twelve different orientated jurors express their perceptions towards a delinquent crime, allegedly committed by a black, sixteen-year-old. Throughout the duration of the play, we witness how the juror’s background ordeals and presumptuous assumptions influence the way they conceptualise the whole testimony itself.
Men always have the tendency to judge too quickly. In “A Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Minnie Foster and Mr. Henderson are attempting to look for the motive of Minnie killing her husband. The story starts by Mr. Peters informing the group, except for Minnie, while she waits in jail, that when he stopped by the day before to give Mr. Wright a telephone because the couple lived really removed from the rest of the town, he asked Minnie where Mr. Wright was and she calmly answered that he had been hung the night before. Then, the men head upstairs to look at the crime scene, while the women sit around the kitchen to talk. Accidentally, the women figure out the motive of the murder by talking about kitchen supplies, “trifles” as the men call it. They decided not to inform the men to keep Minnie from being convicted because her husband was equally guilty as her. In the short story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, Glaspell employs strong details and details devices to argue that the purpose of the story is how Glaspell portrays men, that a person must not be judged based on off of the external appearance and that the little details in life always are important.
The crowded courtroom was absolutely silent as the 12 all white and all men took their seats at the jury box. Chief Justice Albert Mason, one of the presiding judges in the murder case, asked Charles I. Richards, the foreman, to rise. Mr. Richards was asked to read the verdict. “Not guilty”, replied the foreman. Even though the circumstantial and physical evidence pointed to Lizzie Borden guilty of killing her step-mother and father, the all-male jury, men of some financial means, could not fathom that a woman who is well bred and a Sunday school teacher could possibly commit such a heinous crime (Linder 7).
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.
Pearson, P. (1998). When she was bad: How and why women get away with murder. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Through the crime committed by Minnie Wright, three women grow together and establish that justice for all is deeper than finding the culprit. Justice occurs in all things, in hiding the clues by Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, in the quiet dignity they both have by helping their friend, and by proving that women are capable of anything they are determined to accomplish.
Trifles is based on a murder in 1916 that Susan Glaspell covered while she was a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News after she graduated from college. At the end of the nineteenth century, the world of literature saw a large increase of female writers. Judith Fetterley believed that there was an extremely diverse and intriguing body of prose literature used during the nineteenth century by American women. The main idea of this type of literature was women and their lives. The reason all of the literature written by women at this time seems so depressing is due to the fact that they had a tendency to incorporate ideas from their own lives into their works. Glaspell's Trifles lives up to this form of literature, especially since it is based on an actual murder she covered. This play is another look at the murder trial through a woman's point of view.
Susan Glaspell's play, "Trifles", attempts to define one of the main behavioral differences between man and woman. For most of the story, the two genders are not only geographically separated, but also separated in thought processes and motive, so that the reader might readily make comparisons between the two genders. Glaspell not only verbally acknowledges this behavioral difference in the play, but also demonstrates it through the characters' actions and the turns of the plot. The timid and overlooked women who appear in the beginning of the play eventually become the delicate detectives who, discounted by the men, discover all of the clues that display a female to be the disillusioned murderer of her (not so dearly) departed husband. Meanwhile, the men in the play not only arrogantly overlook the "trifling" clues that the women find that point to the murderer, but also underestimate the murderer herself. "These were trifles to the men but in reality they told the story and only the women could see that (Erin Williams)". The women seem to be the insightful unsung heroes while the men remain outwardly in charge, but sadly ignorant.
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
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in