Treatment Of Women In Trifles By Susan Glaspell

Since the beginning of time society has portrayed men to be superior than women. Dating back to biblical times, it is well documented that the female figure is anticipated to carry the roles of caretaker, cook, mother, among other household duties. In addition, women were expected to be submissive and be the inferior of her husband; no voice of their own. It is evident that the setting of Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” took place in an era where women were just seen as the “wife” of a male figure. Only females of that time period understood the struggles of being a housewife, therefore they felt obligated to ally with each other to protect themselves against men. In this particular story, we have the two female characters: Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters forming an alliance of their own in order to protect Minnie Wright. At the beginning of the story it seemed that Mrs. Hale was the main one that felt compassion and sadness
On the other hand, we can see all the signs within the story, which points out how she seemed to be a different person after marring Mr. Wright. It seemed like this was a product of living with a man chauvinist, which forced her to dressed a certain way and to limit herself to cooking and cleaning. She probably grew tired of living in such manner and stopped caring and loving her husband. Furthermore, the story implies that Minnie’s beloved pet, a bird, was killed by her husband. The author does not confirm this in the play, but by knowing that the bird was kept in a special box gave an impression of grief. In addition, the resemblance between how the bird and the husband died left the us thinking of retaliation by the wife. Perhaps this cowardly action of her husband might had been the last straw in the sequence of events, which might had sent her over the