Section 1: Introduction Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is a play about the effect of gender differences on perceptions of duty, law, and justice. The play Trifles was a murder mystery that got investigated by the County Attorney (George Henderson), the Sheriff (Henry Peters) along with his wife (Mrs. Peters), and a neighbor farmer (Lewis Hale) with his wife (Mrs. Hale). The story took place in an isolated farm house that was miles from the rest of the community in the Midwest. The victim of this murder mystery was John Wright as he was found dead with a rope around this neck.
There is no question that women have struggled over many years to be seen as equals by their male counterparts. Years of struggle and oppression continued throughout time, but the oppression took different forms over the course of history. Susan Glaspell wrote, “Trifles” which explores a woman’s status in society during the 1920s and the political leanings that perverted society at the time. The play demonstrates how women were subjected to mental abuse and viewed as intellectually inferior as dictated by American society and politics. “Trifles” exposes how political leanings in the government favored and enabled a patriarchal society as well as displaying how the Women’s Rights movement was beginning to combat these prejudices.
" Trifles" demonstrates the oppressive attitude usually acknowledged among men towards women. In the play, different scene in this play show how men don’t realize the little things that can help in solving this crime events mystery. Most of the play reflect on gender roles and power dynamics together with stereotypes of both men and women. In the play, men are stereotyped as strong and brave, hardworking as they have a professional positions while the women are seeing to be delicate and weak from the beginning of the play.
Quen Head Comp 2 11:30 Literary Analysis “Trifles” Gender Roles Everyone around the world has a mindset that certain genders have certain rules in relationships and everyday life. The author, Susan Glaspell, showed many ways in the story “Trifles” how males can look at things in a different perspective than women sometimes do. For generations, women have fought for power and rights, one of the biggest events in history is The Women’s Rights’ Movement starting in 1848 and going on for years until 1920 when the 19th amendment that granted American women the right to vote. Throughout history the fight between women and men has been a long process from rights, to gender specific roles in career, pay, and equality.
Feminism is the philosophy advocating equal political, economic, and social rights for women. The idea of feminism was not at all prevalent during the 1850s when Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was published. In spite of this, Hawthorne wrote one of the most influential feminist novels of his time: The Scarlet Letter. This novel was hailed as an important feminist novel because of the main character: Hester Prynne.
The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one explores the difference between gender roles. Glaspell exerts the repression of women in the 1900s. During that time, women were highly looked down upon by men, and were only seen as the housekeepers and child bearers. This example is displayed throughout the play with the men, however, the women in this play prove that the stereotypes of gender roles held against them are completely wrong, which is shown through the characters, set design, and symbolism.
Susan Glaspell, the playwright of Trifles relays feminist drama in a fascinating and psychological way. This play introduces women helping women in confinement to find freedom. Confinement can tear a woman apart, but the desire for freedom from society is embedded deep in the heart of all strong women. Trifles was written
The first chapter looks into the definition and concepts of Feminism. The first article by Sally Haslanger and Nancy Tuana talks about Feminism as a complicated concept – there are arguments on the nature
The one-act play, “Trifles,” by Susan Glaspell, has several themes that are incorporated within it. There are several dominant ideas such as female identity, patriarchal dominance, isolation, and justice are themes that are all reflected in different ways throughout the play; however, gender is the main theme of “Trifles.” There is a considerable difference between the roles of the men and the women in this play. The men are expected to act in a more controlling, dominant way, while the women are expected to act in the typical ‘housekeeper’ fashion. The theme of gender is brought out through the play in many dramatic elements such as character, tone, and dramatic irony.
Trifles the Challenge The play, Trifles, places both men and women in sharp contrast to one another in relationship to their roles and social position in the society. While men occupy the important positions such as the Sherriff and the county attorney, women are basically attributed to no more than playing domestic roles. Indeed, even in the investigation of Mr. Wright’s murder, men are playing the core role of investigators while women are simply left in the kitchen to play the minor of collecting things requested by Mrs. Wrights. The social stereotypes of men playing important roles than women in the society is set and advanced by the setting of the play.
No one can really say how old feminism is for sure or the date feminism started, but most is credited to past centuries. Nevertheless, women have been feminists for much longer. In Sophocles’s Antigone, the heroine Antigone defies the authority of a patriarchal society and takes action on her own belief of what is right. Antigone goes directly against a man’s will and attempts to bury her brother, this gets her in trouble but sets her apart from the women at the time and defines her as a woman and not just a person, Sophocles argues that Antigone is a proto-feminist whose implementation in a mostly male dominated culture is inevitable to cause problems. Ismene, points out to Antigone, “Remember we are women, we’re not born to contend with men,” (Sophocles 646).
The first wave of feminism occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This movement emerged from an environment of liberal, socialists politics with the goal of providing more opportunities for women. It started at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention
“Trifles” which was written during the first wave of feminism in America, consist of various themes that circulate around female issues. The main theme of this play is women’s oppression which is expressed by men’s point of views toward women. From the
She discusses the history in terms of the first, second, and third waves of feminism. When talking about feminisms first wave, it is about women fighting for the right to vote. It follows the fight for suffrage through the story of Lucy Burns who formed the National Women’s Party. The first wave talked about ignores contributions by women of color or less privileged women. The second wave was probably the most well known for feminist history.
2.1 Feminism In the beginning of 11th century women were bound to the religious roots even they had degraded status in churches as Christianity does not allowed them to speak in churches. Hidegard of Bingn, who was born at the end of 11th century and became a nun, later she was known as remarkable and impressive writer but she was plagued with the doubts about her unfeminine activities, she turned to womanly, and specifically maternal experiences and wrote of the Motherhood of God, she writes when a mother offers her weeping child milk, some religion women imagine the infant as Jesus. Later came Margery kempe,a writer who gave an account of her own life. She came up against the painful aspects of motherhood.
