Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” dwelled on the investigation of the murder scene of Mr. Wright. In the beginning of the play, Mr. Wright was found dead in the upstairs bedroom with a rope hung around his neck. Lewis Hale recalled how he discovered Mrs. Wright acting bizarrely, and that she told him that her husband was murdered while he was sleeping. Mrs. Wright’s strange behavior and body language caused Mr. Hale and the Sherriff to believe that Mrs. Wright was the main suspect in her husband’s murder. There are three significant reasons for Mrs. Wright’s strange behavior. Mrs. Wright’s relationship, lifestyle, and the patriarchal dominance during that era caused Mrs. Wright to act inappropriately.…
The play “Trifles” is a murder mystery about from 1916. The husband was found strangled by a rope in his bed and his wife was found rocking in a chair. When the authorities came to inspect the property they brought some neighbors of the wife to bring her something from the house. The most compelling part was when they found the bird also strangled and hid this information from the authorities almost to protect her.…
Since the 1900’s, women have struggled with gender roles in society that leaned more in favor of men. Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, reflects on this struggle by blatantly separating the ideas, opinions and actions of the men and women in the play. As the title Trifles suggests, the men in the play view the two women’s concerns as unimportant and frivolous in comparison to the “real” work the men have to do. Glaspell’s characterization of the sheriff, Henry Peters, the attorney, George Henderson, and the neighboring farmer, Mr. Hale, portrays them as typical men of the time who decide to take charge because, as men, that is their duty and only they know what can be done and how to go about discovering the truth. They only take along Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to collect some things for Mrs. Wright, never taking a moment to think that from a woman’s perspective, the answer to the murder could be found.…
Susan Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, novelist, and journalist. Glaspell wrote the play Trifles which tells the story two investigations being conducted over murder of John Wright. While the male characters of the play conduct an “official” investigation the female characters find themselves inadvertently conducting their own “unofficial” investigation. However this is not a run-of-the-mill murder mystery play, in which the focus lies solely on discovering the culprit and the culprit’s motive. Glaspell uses her story to also present a unique perspective of a controversial issue during her time, including the theme of female identity, primarily between women. During the time period in which Glaspell lived, the idea of fighting for women’s…
Glaspell uses general stereotypes of the time periods gender specific roles. Leonard Mustazza very helpfully points out the difference between the genders and how the characters react to their position (Mustazza 1). Throughout the play, the male characters steers the readers into believing that a woman’s place is at the home, where she is spending most of her time cleaning and taking care of her husband. One knows this because the county attorney remarks, “I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct” (Glaspell 746) after he was through surveying the kitchen. He implies that a women’s duty is to make sure that the home well taken care of. Also, the males expects the women to be submissive and to have the same values as their husbands. For…
The scene of Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles” is set in a gloomy, unkempt, and now abandoned farm house. The town sheriff, the county attorney, and Mr. Hale along with the sheriff’s wife and Mrs. Hale, a neighbor, enter through the kitchen. The men are there to investigate the death of the owner, Mr. Wright. The women have come along to gather some things to take to Mrs. Wright who is in jail for the murder of her husband. Susan Glaspell ties the use of exposition, conflict, and symbol together to reveal the gloomy and hopeless mood of this play.…
In Susan Glaspell, “Trifles,” Mrs. Wright’s covert conflict with her husband is not outwardly explained in the gloomy play. Considering the time period the setting is placed in, 1916, family disputes are not openly acknowledged. From the scene in the play, one can only infer the husband's abuse was so intolerable to the point of murder. In my own eyes, her actions are justifiable, to save her own life from her husband’s destruction shown through the bird’s wrung neck.…
Susan Glaspel’s drama, Trifles, critically portrays gender roles and relations in early 20th Century rural America. Its female characters, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and the unseen Mrs. Wright all exemplify this gender portrayal through their experiences and actions. Glaspel’s portrayal is one of women being confined by society, but also rebelling against and breaking out of this confinement. Mrs. Wright was confined by her lonesome house and hard husband, as well as the expectations that society had for a wife. Mrs. Hale said how the house “weren’t cheerful ... I dunno what it is but it’s a lonesome place and always was.” (1054). She also said that Mr Wright wouldn’t have been easy to live with. (“I don’t think a place’d be any more cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it.” (1051) and “But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him—(Shivers.) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.”) She speculated that societal expectations confined Mrs. Wright: “Wright was close. I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. She didn’t even belong to the Ladies’ Aid.…
The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell takes place in a bleak, untidy kitchen of a farmhouse. Farmer John Wright has been murdered and his wife, Minnie Wright, is taken into custody as a suspect to his murder. Sheriff Peters and County Attorney George Henderson pride themselves on their powers of detection and logical reasoning. They begin searching through the house trying to find any sort of evidence. But it is the two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who discover the trifles in which is the key evidence that the men are looking for. Because this story is set in the twentieth century community, the men take no concern in what the women have to say or do. By the end of this play, the women decide not to tell them men of the evidence they found in the farmhouse since the men believe that they are superior. In the play “Trifles”, Glaspell shows us that the men have the role of being head of everything and how the women do not get as fairly treated.…
In the play, “Trifles,” Susan Glaspell demonstrates the inequality that occurs between men and women during the 20th century. From the opening scene, the two women are not given much attention unlike the men, until they are separated from them and become the main characters. Although the women are seen as inferior to men, they prove that they are much more capable as they are the ones who solve the case by thinking outside the box. They find the real motive behind Mrs. Wright’s action and are able to understand her doing because of the way women were treated back then. Even though both women decide to defend Mrs. Wright by hiding the evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters sympathize with her, but for different reasons.…
Women have been treated as lessors to men in the past, feminine equality is a new concept that has only been around for about a century. In both plays “Trifles” and “A Doll’s House” they address stereotypes of women during these time periods. “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell explores the mysterious death of Mr. Wright (Mrs. Wrights husband). As the play progresses the audience gets insight to Mrs. Wright’s life, and how Mr. Wright treated her. Mr. Wright was known to be a brash, and unruly man. The women in this play (Ms. Hale and Mrs. Peters) both know the kind of man Mr. Wright was, The men may have known this too, but the time period the play takes place in, domestic violence toward women was not highly looked into. The text “Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting. Writing” explains that Glaspell’s main force behind the play “Trifles” was to shed light on the treatment of women. The text states that “Women…
Trifles teach that perception can mislead one to erroneous thinking and give false a sense of what’s actually factual. As the play opens up you immediately realize that the men (county attorney, sheriff, and farmer) are making a business trip to figure out how Mrs. Henderson killed her husband, while the women (spouses of the sheriff and farmer) on the other hand tagged along to help a friend by gathering a few items that will comfort her during her imprisonment. The women actually felt as if they were sneaking in Mrs. Henderson’s home rather than conducting business. This scene implies that the women are on board as far as feeling bad about their searching, but Mrs. Peter’s (sheriffs wife) response “Mrs. Hale, the law is the law” destroys the impression that women tend to relate only to their genders thought process. As the county attorney searched the house he continued to make several comments about it house being untidy and needing a touch up. The women did not hesitate to defend Mrs. Henderson and quickly reminded the county attorney that it’s difficult to run a farm and simultaneously take care of the home. From the men’s perspective they never considered entertaining the women’s thoughts about how or why Mrs. Henderson would have killed her husband, because they figured that women were only equipped to handle situations that pertain to the home. The women were actually more detailed (questioning the knot in the quilt and finding the birdcage and dead bird) in their survey of what actually happened by discovering the emotional impact of what Mrs. Henderson had gone through. The women investigated Mrs. Henderson’s history and who she was before entering the marriage and felt her pain of loneliness after being married, which symbolizes their emotional connection and vantage point from Mrs. Henderson view. The men remained puzzled (not finding evidence) throughout the entire investigation in which they never came to any conclusions as to why and…
In “Trifles”, by Susan Glaspell, the character, Mrs. Wright, had come to a breaking point and killed her husband. Although it seems fair for her to be punished, the reason behind her actions are deep and somewhat justify her sin. Her husband, Mr. Wright brutally caused her to suffer emotionally and physically. At the time, for women, it was hard to get help, especially with a sexist justice system. The cruel treatment and isolation Mrs. Wright endured from Mr. Wright and how it all affected her is symbolised by the broken jars, wrung bird, and broken cage, as well as it shows the mistreatment of women throughout that time.…
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In society today, women are being degraded, mistreated, and abused has sadly come to a point to where it has been tolerated and a part of everyday life. If we do not see it every day, we are constantly surrounded by it and goes unnoticed by us because it has simply become “normal”. For those of us who have listen to hip hop and rap stations on the radio, understand first hand that almost every song that comes on include the words bitch and ho, referring to us women. We sometimes don’t realize that we constantly supporting the music that “repeatedly reduces me [women] to ass and encourages pimping on the regular” (Morgan 455). Just like we are some kind of property to the male sex, we are their “bitches” like we have become some belonging that can be easily thrown away and forgotten just as easily as it was for us to become seduced. Now I’m not proclaiming that all men and women are this way, I’m simply putting a spotlight on an issue that I feel has taken a turn for the worst and has come to be part of the society that we continue to live in every day.…