Trifles By Susan Glaspell Essay

The Capable Women Ain’t Triflin’ Around

Susan Glaspell's play Trifles was written in 1916 after she, as a reporter, covered the court case and conviction of a woman accused of murdering her abusive husband. Based on these events, her play is a social commentary put into the form of a murder mystery. In it, a man, John
Wright, is strangled to death in bed next to his wife, Minnie Foster Wright, who had allegedly slept right through his murder. The neighbors begin searching for clues, but it becomes apparent that some of them are attempting to cover something up. The viewers of the play are then faced with the questions of “Who did it?” "Will they get away with it?" and "Should they get away with it?" The themes presented
in Trifles revolved around key public opinion shifts, as evidenced by the passing of the 19 th amendment to the US constitution in 1920, which recognized the right of women to vote.
Glaspell thought the concept of Trifles was so worthwhile that in 1917 she rewrote the play into a short story called "A Jury of Her Peers." A contrast and comparison of
Glaspell's two works shows that while they differ somewhat in the presentation and content, the overall themes of society’s views of men and women, and fair judgment are the same.
While the play and short story differ slightly in their presentations and content, the most notable difference is the change of focus found in their opening/beginning scenes. Trifles, as is necessary for a play, is written in a format with the characters' names in all capitals preceding the

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lines the actors are to speak, together with stage directions for their actions, and other information about the set or actions on it. As opposed to the visual and physical cues of the play, the short story uses verbal descriptions. The similarities and differences can be seen when putting parallel passages next to each other, such as the following:
COUNTY ATTORNEY [rubbing his hands]: This feels good.
Come up to the fire, ladies. (558)
Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said,
“Come up to the fire, ladies.” (568)
Contrary to how it may appear from these two lines, the story is not nearly a word-for- word
rewrite.
The play weighs in at 9 pages, while the story is almost 50% longer at 13 pages. Some of the additional length is given to descriptions depicting events or conditions such as “the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in,” but some of it comes from additional content not found in the play (573). An additional content difference is seen with the theme of isolation, and therefore vulnerability. This theme is first introduced in the play, when the words
“lonesome” or “alone” are used 3 times; it is continued in the rewritten story, but on a greater scale, with the words used 9 times. Glaspell uses a greater emphasis by placing the words together twice in a sentence, “‘But I'm awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale.’…‘It would be lonesome for me-- sitting here alone,’” is found in both the play and short story, but
“It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome- looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome- looking trees. … "I'm glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door,”
(568)

Blocksom 3 is found only in the short story in three back to back sentences (564, 577). By necessity of the concept that plays have an audience, Trifles is written from a third-person perspective. It starts in the kitchen of the Wrights, with no people present. The first people on the scene are the men, and their conversation dominates the first three pages, with only one female character speaking for only two lines. In contrast to the initial absence of human presence followed by male-dominated dialogue found in the play, the short story "A Jury of Her Peers" starts with the focus on a female character, Martha Hale, and what she is doing in her own kitchen, her thoughts, feelings, and perceptions; it is written in a first-person view from Martha’s perspective. This content is not found in the play. In addition, the play lacks the resulting familiarity with the characters’ thoughts and feelings and instead relies on visual settings and actions of the characters to reveal to the audience their thoughts and motivations. The short story’s shift in initial focus from the men to the women further highlights the theme that both works share of recognizing the importance of women, which we will explore later.
100 years ago, views of womens place in society were somewhat different, and Glaspell paints a clear picture of them being viewed then as second-class citizens; they are mocked, disparaged, dismissed, and derided ceaselessly from page to page in both works. As mentioned previously, these works were created very shortly before the 19th amendment to the US constitution was ratified, and the characters in both works exemplify the mindset common at the time. Both men and women considered there to be a distinction between ‘men’s work’ and
‘women’s work;’ the men are held in high regard while doing “their duty,” yet the women are not recognized or valued:
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?
MRS. HALE [stiffly]: There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm.

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COUNTY ATTORNEY: To be sure. And yet…(561)
Similarly to the passage from the play above, there is also a focus on women as housekeepers in the short story, with Martha having “her eye [make] a scandalized sweep of her kitchen…[it] was in no shape for leaving,” yet as