Gender Roles In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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
Local color or regional writing is when an author writes a piece of work that depicts a realist view of a certain area (book 12-13). In a local color literary work, the author writes about an area’s customs, beliefs, and ideals by using the spoken language and society’s actions (book 12-13). Grose and Mustazza analyzes two of the main hints of this piece being a local color writing. An example of both techniques is when Glaspell writes: “She said the fire’d go out and her jars would break” (book 744). The word “fire’d” is not a word that most hear in an everyday conversation that is not from this area and time period. Furthermore, the above example mentions the fruit jars Mrs. Wright keeps in the house. In the twenty first century it is more common to see one buy cans of fruit instead of one making jars of fruit. The fact that both uncommon dialect and actions are done points to a local color genre. The local color genre helps creates the plot by showing the problems for the women in this area. By making the play local color, Glaspell is able to show the difficulties women face while still being able evoke emotion from her audience. The treatment of the women helps the theme develop by allowing one to fully realize the need for