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Isolation In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

558 Words3 Pages

The play of Trifles by Susan Glaspell is about a criminal investigation in a household. A man by the name of John Wright has just gotten murdered in the middle of the night and the policemen have come to the house to try and investigate the crime scene, the wives of the policemen came with them. There is a range of themes that reoccur throughout the whole play. The two themes that are most prominent in this piece of literature is the theme of the difference between women and men and each genders role in society along with the theme of isolation. There was an overarching theme of gender roles in this play. Right off the bat, the play presented how degrading the men were towards the women. These men thought of their own wives as incompetent. The men talk down to the women. For example, at the end of the play, the county attorney said “She was going to -- what is it you call it, ladies?” (Act 30) The last word of this phrase seems to be very …show more content…

The first symbol of this isolation comes from where the house is located. The house is “down in a hollow and you don’t see the road.” (Act 21) This location represents the idea that this house is broken away from society. The society never knows what is happening behind the closed doors because of its seclusion. There are two objects in the house itself that play a role in the theme of isolation that the play holds. These two objects are the telephone and the fruit. The Wright’s do not have telephone service. This represents the distance between society and the family. It is isolated from the whole community, there is no way to communicate with the outside world. The fruit also represents seclusion. The woman is “worried about that (fruit) when it turned so cold.” (Act 9) She was so scared that it would affect her whole life when it really is not a big deal. This shows how she has a distorted view of society because of how isolated she is from the real world and its

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