The Use of Symbols in Susan Glaspell’s Play Trifles

In the nineteenth century until the twentieth century, women lived under men’s shadows. In that time, inequality between genders was the most obvious thing that characterized the society. Women’s role was guided by men and was simply related to their domestic environment; nothing but a caring wife and a busy mother. Unlike now, men looked at women as machines that had to provide comfort and mind relax to their husbands even if their husbands did not provide that to them. To be specific, society in that time took the women’s right away from them; they cannot be what they want to be. However, in this Era, there were many writers, who wrote about this issue. On July 1, 1876, in Davenport, Iowa Susan Glaspell was born. Susan was one of those writers that women’s inferiority in society bothered her. She wrote several literary works which are strongly feminist and discusses the roles that women forced to play in society and the relationships between men and women. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in 1899, in Drake University and worked on the staff of the Des Moines Daily News as a journalist. Her first novel, The Glory of the Conquered, was published in 1809 and her short stories were both sold to magazines such as Harper's and The Ladies' Home Journal. Glaspell married to George Cram Cook who was known as a classics professor, a novelist and poet. They later moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and founded the Provincetown Players theatre group in 1915 with some friends. There, she was encouraged by her husband to write a play to the Provincetown Players. She originally wrote "A Jury of Her Peers" as a play entitled Trifles, it was written in just ten short days. The play was produced in 1916 and in 1917. Noticeably, Susan Glaspell had never liked to feel controlled which maybe gives her the inspiration and the encouragement to write Trifles. But, the main influence of this play came from a murder that Glaspell covered while working for the Des Moines Daily News, as a

Cited: 1- Mary E. Papke, Susan Glaspell Society http://academic.shu.edu/glaspell 2- The Meaning of Symbolism. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/symbolism 3- Literary encyclopedia http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=15992