Preview

Examples Of Sexism In Trifles By Susan Glaspell

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
313 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Examples Of Sexism In Trifles By Susan Glaspell
Susan Glaspell’s drama is a riveting tale of murder, motives and false- or not- accusations. It was written in 1916 and helped to usher in the women’s sufferage movement by generating awareness. In this story, the women discover a vitally important piece of evidence, a bird with a broken neck. Even though Mrs. Wright claims she did not murder her husband, with a motive in hand the courts could easily overturn her plea; however, the men feel the women are worried about silly things- trifles. While the plot initially seems very simple and straightforward, there are actually several complex underlying subplots. Glaspell uses allegory to illustrate one of the main themes of division of the sexes.
In Trifles, one of the major themes, sexism, is

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    chem exam 3

    • 461 Words
    • 3 Pages

    3. If it rotates clockwise then it is referred to as dextrorotatory, and if it rotates counter clock wise then it is referred to as levorotatory (pg292-293).…

    • 461 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Brandon Esssay Life

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” dwelled on the investigation of the murder scene of Mr. Wright. In the beginning of the play, Mr. Wright was found dead in the upstairs bedroom with a rope hung around his neck. Lewis Hale recalled how he discovered Mrs. Wright acting bizarrely, and that she told him that her husband was murdered while he was sleeping. Mrs. Wright’s strange behavior and body language caused Mr. Hale and the Sherriff to believe that Mrs. Wright was the main suspect in her husband’s murder. There are three significant reasons for Mrs. Wright’s strange behavior. Mrs. Wright’s relationship, lifestyle, and the patriarchal dominance during that era caused Mrs. Wright to act inappropriately.…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Phase 4 Ip

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The play “Trifles” is a murder mystery about from 1916. The husband was found strangled by a rope in his bed and his wife was found rocking in a chair. When the authorities came to inspect the property they brought some neighbors of the wife to bring her something from the house. The most compelling part was when they found the bird also strangled and hid this information from the authorities almost to protect her.…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Regardless of cultures, era and time, women have always been receiving fewer rights than men do. Despite they have a lot of moral obligations and duties at home, church and in the community, they however had very limited or almost no political and legal rights in the country. Their main role would be for be married for political purpose, productive, social status and reproductive. Most of the time men do not appreciate what women do, they were also seen as a merchandise to enhance their own social status. Their situation has not been improved until the mid 19th century, where a several brave, outspoken women sparked the fight for social reform, justice, prostitution, and slavery. The force of Feminist then rose to fight for the equality for the oppressed.…

    • 1388 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    After Christopher Columbus’s exploration in 1492, a widespread colonization occurred because of the wonderful opportunities the New World promised to the European countries. While sharing a continent, the Spanish and New England colonies had major similarities and a plethora amount of differences. The Spanish and New England colonies shared significant similarities with the treatment of the natives, yet these colonies had extreme differences with the role of religion and the control of European government.…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Glaspell uses general stereotypes of the time periods gender specific roles. Leonard Mustazza very helpfully points out the difference between the genders and how the characters react to their position (Mustazza 1). Throughout the play, the male characters steers the readers into believing that a woman’s place is at the home, where she is spending most of her time cleaning and taking care of her husband. One knows this because the county attorney remarks, “I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct” (Glaspell 746) after he was through surveying the kitchen. He implies that a women’s duty is to make sure that the home well taken care of. Also, the males expects the women to be submissive and to have the same values as their husbands. For…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The relationships between the institutionalized men and innately suppressed females in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest promotes sexist views of traditional gender roles in order to elevate male power and superiority. While the social and political influences may have potentially fueled Kesey's anti-feminist stance, the presence of the unjustifiable condoning of men's use of force upon powerful women like Nurse Ratched in the Ward, which acts as a microcosm of society as a whole, exposes the innate misogyny present within humanity. In the attempt to voice the sexist societal ideal, the one dimensionality of the women is heightened, leaving them as mere caricatures of either sexless machines or submissive sex toys. The depiction of femininity…

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Susan Glaspell’s one act play Trifles,written in 1916, is based on actual events that occurred at the turn of the century in Iowa. Glaspell worked as a reporter where she covered the murder trial of a farmer’s wife, Margaret Hossack. Hossack was accused of killing her husband, John, by striking him twice in the head with an ax while he slept (Overview: Trifles). Glaspell’s memory of the Hossack trial inspired her writing of Trifles. Glaspell’s play isrepresentative of American turn of the century society that explores gender relationships and power between the sexes.…

    • 276 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trifles and Mr. Hale

    • 1366 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The scene of Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles” is set in a gloomy, unkempt, and now abandoned farm house. The town sheriff, the county attorney, and Mr. Hale along with the sheriff’s wife and Mrs. Hale, a neighbor, enter through the kitchen. The men are there to investigate the death of the owner, Mr. Wright. The women have come along to gather some things to take to Mrs. Wright who is in jail for the murder of her husband. Susan Glaspell ties the use of exposition, conflict, and symbol together to reveal the gloomy and hopeless mood of this play.…

    • 1366 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, weaves a tale of an intriguing murder investigation to determine who did it. Mrs. Wright is suspected of strangling her husband to death. During the investigation the sheriff and squad of detectives are clueless and unable to find any evidence or motive to directly tie Mrs. Wright to the murder. They are baffled as to how he was strangled by a rope while they were supposedly asleep side by side. Glaspell artfully explores gender differences between men and women and the roles they each fulfill in society by focusing on their physicality, their methods of communication and vital to the plot of the play, their powers of observation. In simple terms, the play suggests that men tend to be assertive, rash, rough, analytical and self-centered; while in contrast, women are more cautious, deliberative, intuitive, and sensitive to the needs of others. It is these differences that allow Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to find the clues needed to solve the crime, while their husbands miss the same clues.…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    trifles bird symbolism

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages

    "Trifles" is a play which was written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. The play takes place in the empty farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Wright. The county attorney George Henderson, the sheriff Henry Peters and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Hale, neighbors of Mr. and Mrs. Wright all go to the farmhouse to investigate the crime scene. Throughout the book Susan Glaspell uses a lot of symbolism. One example was the a dead bird that the women find. Hoping to find a motive for the crime the men go upstairs to the bedroom where Mr. Wright was murdered. While the women stay downstairs and look around the kitchen. The women come across a bird which symbolizes Mrs. Wright. The bird becomes the motive for Mrs. Wright to kill Mr. Wright.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trifles Feminist Analysis

    • 2287 Words
    • 10 Pages

    In the play, “Trifles,” Susan Glaspell demonstrates the inequality that occurs between men and women during the 20th century. From the opening scene, the two women are not given much attention unlike the men, until they are separated from them and become the main characters. Although the women are seen as inferior to men, they prove that they are much more capable as they are the ones who solve the case by thinking outside the box. They find the real motive behind Mrs. Wright’s action and are able to understand her doing because of the way women were treated back then. Even though both women decide to defend Mrs. Wright by hiding the evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters sympathize with her, but for different reasons.…

    • 2287 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What is America? This question is posed all throughout history and even in books. In the average history book America is depicted as this place where everything is “happy go lucky”. But there are many underlying factors such as racism and sexism. Racism is defined as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. Sexism is defined as prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. The three books that will be talked about throughout this paper will be The Awakening, Black Boy and The House on Mango Street.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever wondered; just how much can one person take from another? What amount of cruelty and abuse persuades the fury in a typically passive person to leap into aggressive action? Susan Glaspell's play Trifles shows us just how far one woman, Mrs. Wright, is pushed before she snaps. This is a classic tale of spousal abuse, based off of a true story, which was not too uncommon and almost expected back in the late nineteenth century. Back then women were controlled by their husbands and were seen as insignificant by all the men around them. In this play the women fight the patronizing and belittling society and join together to support another woman. During this time in history, "marital conflict, frequently including violence, was mostly taken for granted in many working-class communities; in itself, it was rarely sufficient to warrant communal censure." (Hammerton 155)…

    • 1700 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    According to the table that shows Gamma turnover is 5.8 times and it's mean Gamma collect his receivables about 5.8 times each year but alpha turnover is 1.4 times and it's mean that alpha collect his receivables about 1.4 times each year. So, Gamma Corporation has higher proportion than Alpha Corporation and it shows that gamma corporation operates more efficiently with smoother cash flow and collects the money from the creditor easily and on the time. Also, that probably gathered the credit deals than alpha company that have lower proportion.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays