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Repression Of Women In Susan Glaspell's 'Trifles'

1322 Words6 Pages

Rohan Trivedi
Neeraj Prakash
English 103-AS (17)
26 February 2018

Feminism and repression of Women in Susan Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’ Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, may not be the best story to read and it may be confusing to some people, but it teaches the reader a great deal about how a women were treated and viewed during the early 1900’s. As the play progresses, Mrs. Wright’s motive for killing her husband becomes more clear and understandable to why she did it. The writer gives the reader an idea of how men and women were treated during that time. In my essay, I will use Susan Glaspell’s feminist approach to demonstrate how Mrs. Wrights murdering of her husband is completely justified and will also explore about the repression of women …show more content…

Wright has made her throughout their marriage. Minnie did something that no woman had ever done before, she stood up to her husband but at the same time she also stood up for herself. Minnie Wright had no power over herself because of Mr. Wright and when she killed him, it gave her power over herself. Women are just as important as men and they deserve to be treated as such. Mrs. Wright was not treated as such, so her only escape was to kill her husband. Despite the demeaning view of the women by men, ‘Trifles’ shows how women can make a difference during any …show more content…

During that time in the play resembles, men would ignore the women and push them off to the side because they thought everything a woman said was irrelevant and even today some men still have that same mind set. Also trifles is a thing of little value or importance, which significantly changes between the men and women in this play. The County Attorney and the other men throughout the story thought horribly of Minnie Wright and considered her to be a victim of a terrible crime before even thinking for one second that maybe she killed him for a reason. The men in the play mocked Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters for having sympathy for Minnie. The dead bird is the motive for killing Mr. Wright because Minnie Wright was never really allowed anything of her own and having the bird to keep her company meant a lot to her. The killing of the bird was a way of Minnie getting revenge on her husband for killing the bird, but it was also a way for Minnie to be free. Mrs. Hale infers that when she says “She come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself, real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery. How did she change?” (Glaspell 780), The change their referring to is because of Mr. Wright. He changed Minnie and it was an involuntary change, which in that time period it was common for a man to change his wife

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In the play Trifles, the many signs that make Minnie Wright seem guilty of murdering her husband, John Wright is when the first character, Lewis Hale (a neighboring farmer) went to Mr. & Mrs. Wright’s home to address Mr. John Wright about installing a telephone (Kirszner and Mandell, 2012, p.867-880). Once Hale entered the Wright’s home, thinking that someone told him to ‘Come In,’ after he knocked on the door, he acknowledged that Mrs. Wright was sitting in a rocking chair pleating at her apron in a ‘no eye contact’ manner towards him (Kirszner and Mandell, 2012, p.867-880). Furthermore, the next sign is when Mrs. Wright is asked by Mr. Hale if Mr. Wright is home and if he can see him; this is when all signs pointing to Minnie Wright being

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Trifles, something of little importance, is the opposite of what the women are distraught about. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find several items that were “women things”, such as an unfinished quilt and a bird in a box with its neck snapped. These items are key symbols, not only to the play, but to the motive of the murder. Mrs. Wright never revealed that her husband had done cruel things to her, but her husband was known to be harsh at times. Mrs. Hale brings up how Mrs. Wright lived before she married, “I heard she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir.

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When the fellow housewives probing around the house of John and Minnie Wright they saw the small things that showed that she was distressed, for example when they saw that the quilt that she had been working on at the time was poorly knotted they took the time to correct the quilting, and when they saw that Minnie’s bird was wrapped in silk and held in a beautiful embellished box they realized why she killed her husband. Although Mrs.Peters is the wife to the sherrif she hides what she finds in the Wright’s home because she can relate to what Minnie was going through. So although when Minnie went to court she presumably sat in front of a jury filled with men she had justice through other women understanding her troubles when it counted. Throughout the story the main idea is to find what was the motive of Minnie Wright to kill her husband, although this story will not just come out and blatantly state the reason, it shows the audience through showing the gender roles of the time and what they meant to the women.

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