The Hossack Case

Susan Glaspell was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa in 1876. According to Nina Baym, general editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, after Glaspell graduated high school, she worked for a year with the local newspaper. She then attended Drake University in Des Moines from 1895 to 1899. During those years she continued writing various papers for Des Moines. However in 1901, Glaspell abandoned journalism and decided to focus on working towards making a living as a fictional writer. She wrote stories with romantic plots in a Midwestern setting. In 1913, she married George Cram Cook but later they divorced. Cook died in 1924. Glaspell won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize and died at the age of 72 in 1948. Susan Glaspell’s one act play,

In this case like John Wright, John Hossack was murdered while sleeping next to his wife. These wives were both convicted of murder. Two blows to the head with an axe Mr. Hossack in his sleep with his wife supposedly sleeping beside him. Mrs. Hossack had moments of apathy similarly to Mrs. Wright when Mr. Hale found her acting “queer”. The believed motive behind Mrs. Hossack murdering her husband was that he was abusive to her. Margaret Hossack was deemed guilty and was sentenced to the penitentiary, prison, for life. Susan Glaspell ends her journal about this case with the parting words of Mrs. Hossack, “Sheriff Hodson, tell my children not to weep for me. I am innocent of the horrible murder of my husband. Some day people will know I am not guilty of that terrible crime,” (17). This Iowa case Glaspell worked on lead to the writing of “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” both based on this murder

This short play begins with the County Attorney, the Sheriff, a farmer and the wives of the sheriff and farmer. They all enter a house in which a murder has occurred, it is in the winter and the men huddle up around the fireplace. The men are on the search for a motive and the women are there to accompany the men. Mr. Hale, the farmer, tells the men the story about how he found Mrs. Wright, who is the wife to the murdered man and in detention as the prime suspect to his murder, in the house acting strangely and telling him about her dead husband. After Mr. Hale tells his story, the point of focus pans moreover to the women who are in the kitchen noticing the “trifles” of women, for example Mrs. Wright’s preservatives had gone bad in the cold weather. The County Attorney remarks that the house is a mess and the Mrs. Wright was not much of a housekeeper. The men continue on and go upstairs to the crime scene to try and determine the motive of the crime; while the women are left downstairs they begin to discuss the relationship between Minnie Wright and John Wright while also piecing together the true motive and reasoning behind the murder of Mr. Wright. As the women go through Mrs. Wright’s things they find a small dead canary, straggled like the dead husband, thus leading to the motive of the