Trifles Essay
Grace Whittemore
2/8/13
There are a lot of murders that have happened in the world, some of them have been solved and the murderer discovered, while others have been left abandoned, with no suspects in mind. The play, Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, portrays just one of those murders; the suspect not obvious to the reader at first, but in the end, the play is considered solved to some and unsolved by others. There are several detectives involved in this case, some more unconventional than others. This play tells the reader that the small things are important by how women become trifles, trifles become evidence and trifles contribute to the conclusion of the play.
In this era, the women in the play are thought of as unimportant and are looked down upon, thus considered trifles. As the men go around the house looking for clues, they overlook the simplest of clues. The county attorney says, “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (805), making the women look like trifles. Without good housekeeping, a woman is “useless”. The men also look around the house expecting clues to jump out at them, not finding them within the small things. After looking around a crime scene, a quilt may not seem like a worthy clue, and, in fact, a mere trifle, “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it!” (808) Little do the men realize that the final decision that Mrs. Wright made about the quilt reflected her most recent decision. The men show, yet again, that they see the women as trifles and what they do as small, and insignificant by saying, “Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out” (812). The men hardly observe what the women had picked out to take to Mrs. Wright, who is in prison. If they had, they might have realized what had happened to Mr. Wright, like the observative women did. If the men had not seen the women as trifles, they might have solved the case and convicted the real murderer. Throughout this
2/8/13
There are a lot of murders that have happened in the world, some of them have been solved and the murderer discovered, while others have been left abandoned, with no suspects in mind. The play, Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, portrays just one of those murders; the suspect not obvious to the reader at first, but in the end, the play is considered solved to some and unsolved by others. There are several detectives involved in this case, some more unconventional than others. This play tells the reader that the small things are important by how women become trifles, trifles become evidence and trifles contribute to the conclusion of the play.
In this era, the women in the play are thought of as unimportant and are looked down upon, thus considered trifles. As the men go around the house looking for clues, they overlook the simplest of clues. The county attorney says, “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (805), making the women look like trifles. Without good housekeeping, a woman is “useless”. The men also look around the house expecting clues to jump out at them, not finding them within the small things. After looking around a crime scene, a quilt may not seem like a worthy clue, and, in fact, a mere trifle, “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it!” (808) Little do the men realize that the final decision that Mrs. Wright made about the quilt reflected her most recent decision. The men show, yet again, that they see the women as trifles and what they do as small, and insignificant by saying, “Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out” (812). The men hardly observe what the women had picked out to take to Mrs. Wright, who is in prison. If they had, they might have realized what had happened to Mr. Wright, like the observative women did. If the men had not seen the women as trifles, they might have solved the case and convicted the real murderer. Throughout this