Preview

The Dramatic Effects of the Setting in the Play, Trifles

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
378 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Dramatic Effects of the Setting in the Play, Trifles
Essay for Trifles by Susan Glaspell
The Dramatic Effects of the Setting
While reading the short play, "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell, one can draw many conclusions based on the setting. The reader can form opinions of the characters and lives that they led just by the detailed description of the setting. But what exactly does the author's use of setting do? The setting in the way Susan Glaspell wrote it was to help the reader to understand just how sad the main character, Mrs. Wright's life was. The setting also helps you to understand why she loved her pet bird so much. And more importantly, the dramatic use of setting helps the reader to understand why she killed her husband.
While reading the beginning of the play, the reader gets the feeling that this woman killed her husband for no apparent reason. It is not until Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter's are alone in the main living quarters that you find out more about Mrs. Wright's life. The reader then learns how much of a happy and cheerful person Mrs. Wright was before her

Is this essay helpful? Upgrade your account to read more and access more than 650,000 just like it! get better grades marriage. However, the current setting of their home is shown as being very dark and gloomy and not very cheerful at all. The unfinished housework all around the Wright's farm suggests that Mrs. Wright was extremely overwhelmed by her household chores. When the empty bird cage is discovered by Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter's, it significantly effects the reader's perception of the setting. The setting of the home now feels even sadder and extremely lonely because it feels like something important is missing from the home.
The setting also helps you to understand why Mrs. Wright loved the bird so much. The reader can conclude from the setting that the only two things that gave Mrs. Wright any enjoyment were her quilting and her bird. The bird served many purposes. The bird

kept her company. The bird

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Brandon Esssay Life

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages

    One significant reason for Mrs. Wright’s behavior was her relationship with Mr. Wright. Their relationship wasn’t good at all. Mr. Wright was seen as a good man, but he was known to neglect his wife. Mr. Wright showed no interest in anything that pleased Mrs. Wright, and he wouldn’t allow her to sing in the choir. Mr. Wright oppressed Mrs. Wright by not allowing her to leave the house or have any interaction with the outside world. The dead canary was also symbolic of how Mr. Wright wanted to kill anything that gave Mrs. Wright pleasure. The bird represented Mrs. Wright’s personality, and how sweet she was as an individual before she was married to Mr. Wright. The dead canary is the motive for why Mrs. Wright killed her husband. When Mr. Wright killed the bird, he killed her along with it. Mr. Wright’s cruel attitude and control over Minnie Foster caused her to change as a person. Her lively attitude had eventually decreased tremendously due to the ways she was treated by her husband. Clearly, Mrs. Wright’s relationship with Mr. Wright had caused her to behave abnormally.…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters clearly did not have respect for the law. They both kept the evidence that Mrs. Wright killed her husband a secret. These two women put themselves in Mrs. Wright shoes. They understood why Mrs. Wright killed her husband. They both knew that if their husband had treated them the way Mr. Wright treated Mrs. Wright that they would have probably done the same thing. They also snuck Mrs. Wright things in prison that they were aware she was not suppose to have. “Mrs. Peters is governed by this dogma, until she remembers the silence in her own house after the death of one of her children. This memory produces a powerful bond between her and Minnie 's experience of isolation and loneliness, so powerful, indeed, that Mrs. Peters herself attempts to hide the box with the dead canary in it—fully aware that this action goes against everything society and her husband expect her to do, not only on legal grounds but also because, as a wife, Mrs. Peters is not supposed to act against her husband” (Brown 2011 ). These two women were not close to Mrs.Wright but illegally hid evidence in this case in her favor.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Individual Fee Setting

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Is this essay helpful? Upgrade your account to read more and access more than 600,000 just like it!…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Milton Levin states “Its picture of women’s isolation in a bleak world is finely drawn.” During the dialogue between Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, they discuss the loneliness of the Wright house. Mrs. Hale states that she stayed away because it weren’t cheerful. It’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. (732) Minnie was isolated from all of society. John Wright would not even consider a telephone. In his opinion, people talked too much. Christine Dymkowski writes, “The separateness of the female and male worlds is thus immediately established visually and then reinforced by the dialogue.” This separation is shown in the text, where the men of the play are often minimizing the women and their responsibilities while patronizing them. Standing in the kitchen, the County Attorney judges Minnie for having a dirty towel. (728) He speaks to the women about it looking for agreement and becomes condescending when he does not have it. He says, “Ah, loyal to your sex, I see.” (728) Then the men proceed to laugh at the fact that the women wondered if Minnie would quilt or knot her pattern.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the story, they find several motives for why Mrs. Wright would kill her husband and sympathize the pain she goes through. As they look through Mrs. Wright’s closet to find clothes to give to her in jail, the two women observe how rugged and old her clothes appear, showing that Mr. Wright must not have been financially stable enough to provide her with the items that she desires. This extremely upsets Mrs. Hale, for she had known the unmarried Mrs. Wright, who was widely known to be beautiful, lively, and one of fashion. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters also examine the kitchen of the house and find everything in a mess and every chore half-finished. While the men degrade her for not fulfilling her duties as a wife, the women support her and exclaim that “farmers’ wives have their hands full” (207). The stove in the poor conditioned kitchen is also used as a metaphor to Mrs. Wright’s relationship with her husband when the two women find it to be broken. The story states that Mrs. Hale thinks “of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with, and Mrs. Peters replies, “A person gets discouraged—and loses heart” (210). This clearly exemplifies the…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    trifles bird symbolism

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When the women are looking around downstairs they come across a bird cage in the cupboard. Mrs Hale observes the door is broken off and someone must have been "rough with it," suggesting the motive for the crime. When Mrs. Hale looks inside Mrs. Wrights sewing box hoping to find scissors she finds a box and inside is the dead bird wrapped in silk. The birds neck looked as if it had been strangled. The women recall that when Minne Foster was younger she was lively, wore pretty clothes and sung in the choir, they said "I heard she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir." The bird represented Minnie before she was married to Mr. Wright. Mrs. Hale says, "She-come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery. How- she- did- change." Minne and the bird were both caged, the bird was in stuck in an actual cage and Minne was stuck in the house all the time. Mr. Wright changed Mrs. Wright, he took all those good things away, he was controlling he didn’t allow her to see her friends or leave the house, he even stopped her from singing. The bird was her motive…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wright’s death. The antagonists throughout the play are the five characters searching the Wright home, until the ending when the two women hide possible evidence from the men. Once the women choose this secrecy they join in thinking that Minnie may be innocent, or at least begin understanding why she did it and thinking that it was alright to kill the husband in order to get out of this…

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    (Glaspell 4) Hesitantly explaining the seeings of the crime scene, Mrs.Hale joins Mrs.Peters, Mr.Peters, Mr.Hale, and Minnie to investigate the crime. The people that Mrs.Hale joined criticizes the Wrights’ home and sees it as dirty and unkempt, but with Mrs.Hale being a farm wife as well, she understands why the house looks the way it does. “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm,” says Mrs.Hale defensively. (Glaspell 6) With Mrs.Peters, the sheriff’s wife, not being familiar with Minnie Foster, Martha repeatedly points out how uncheerful the home is. “But i dont think a place would be any the cheerfuller for John Wright’s bein’ in it,” says Mrs.Hale. This quote emphasizes that Martha knows Mr.Wright and recognizes it is impossible for an individual to be happy if living with him. Outside that home people see him as a good man, but personally he is the opposite of well-behaved. As the others observe the house critically, Martha does so sympathetically. Trying to help Mrs.Peters create a connection with Minnie Foster, Mrs.Hale gives a brief description of the young Minnie Foster…

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wright, formerly Minnie Foster, used to sing before she married. After her marriage, she got a bird that sings. Mr. Wright, having already “killed” one form of singing, proceeds to do so with yet another form, the bird (paragraph 244). The bird is a reflection of Mrs. Wright’s pre-marriage personality, and when killed, it is essentially killing Minnie Foster again. The two women become sympathetic toward Mrs. Wright, backing up the desire to withhold the evidence of the dead bird. Meanwhile, the men are searching for evidence of motive, in order to convict Mrs. Wright. While the women are gathering belongings to take to Mrs. Wright, they discover an unfinished quilt that has some stitching that is out of place; Mrs. Hale decides that it would make Mrs. Wright happy if she fixed the stitching for her. The women also discover that Mr. Wright was murdered in the same fashion that the bird was killed. Mrs. Petersrecalls when her kitten was killed right in front of her, and remembers that she had wanted to “hurt” the person responsible, however, she was being held back. At that, she understands the emotions controlling Mrs. Wright and becomes more sympathetic to…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Jury Of Her Peers

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Being a farms wife, she is bound to these difficult and repetitive tasks in which little to no reward or recognition is given. This gives her and Mrs.Peters reason to help Mrs. Wright and keep details away from their husbands and the sheriff. They feel bad for Mrs.Wright on the personal level understanding how agonizingly…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trifles Feminist Analysis

    • 2287 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Hale and Mrs. Peters become the two main characters during their investigation, Mrs. Hale recalls the good times of Mrs. Wright’s life. There was once a time when she was known as Minnie Foster. Minnie “used to wear pretty clothes and be lively-singing in the choir (778).” Before marriage, Minnie was an upbeat girl who took part in her community, but now, she does not even take part of the Ladies Aid. Unfortunately, once she committed to a marriage with Mr. Wright, Minnie changed her way of being, and it was not a good change for her persona. Her house was disheveled with unwashed things and she was not properly kept herself which shows to prove that she is not the lively girl she once was. She became a more reserved woman and seemed to not care about anything, though she was trying her best to survive by keeping busying with her…

    • 2287 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Jury Of Her Peers Essay

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Mr. Peters describes her disposition as “unconcerned”, reverting the reader to seeing Mrs. Wright as the antagonist and her late husband as the protagonist. This idea that Mrs. Wright is a villain, establishes boundaries between who is the hero and villain. This places the reader on the side of the woman. This shifts considerably as the plot thickens. While in the home, the men begin to comment on the display of the kitchen- complaining of its filth, and labeling Mrs. Wright as a bad housewife. The women quickly come to her defensive, but are shut down as worrying about trivial things. Mr. Peters even exclaims, “well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worrying about her preserves!” (4). At this point in the plot, I got the sense that the men hold a great deal of power over the affairs of the women, and that they have little respect for their duties. Although it bothered me that the men made a mockery of the women, I still saw Mrs. Wright as the villain of the story. Flashing forward a couple scenes: the men now have exited the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale alone to gather some supplies for an incarcerated Minnie. They discuss her as a child as well as who she is currently, both having positive remarks for who she is.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    They also found a bird cage, that had a broken door, like it had been busted open with force, therefore showing whoever opened it was angry. The cage itself is symbolic in multiple ways. The cage held the bird in much the same way as Mrs. Wright’s domestic position held her (Ngezem, 7). So the cage was like a prison to the bird, along with Mrs.Wright’s house and miserable marriage is a prison to her, she feels trapped and when her husband forced the cage open, he also emotionally forced a part of Mrs.Wright open, that had never been there before. It seems to me that this is another run on sentence. In Trifles, Mrs Hale says “Looks as if someone must have been rough with it” (Glaspell 5). This is symbolic because she was no longer happy and no longer wanted to be there but could not leave, so it felt like a prison, which leads to her “breaking out” of that prison, by killing her husband, which is represented by the broken cage…

    • 1476 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mrs. Hale remembers Mrs. Wright as a girl; Minnie Foster. Mrs. Hale described the young girls, as "kind of like a bird herself – real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and – fluttery." (Glaspell) If you notice, even the name Minnie belittles her. There are several indicators that Mr. Wright is abusive to his wife, but the people of their town see John Wright as a "good man." (Glaspell) Mrs.…

    • 1700 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Is this Essay helpful? Join OPPapers to read more and access more than 325,000 just like it!…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays