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Trifles By Susan Glaspell

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“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a play concerning a murder investigation which contrasts the difference between the men’s and women’s ways of solving the murder of John Wright. The title itself is full of irony. The title stems from Hale’s line: "Well, women are used to worrying about trifles”. After this line, the men laugh and leave to do “Important men stuff” such as search the bedroom. The title's irony rears its head when Mrs. Hale's and Mrs. Peters' concern with trifling women stuff solves the mystery. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters would have never figured out what happened if they had not stayed in the kitchen – the “woman's place” – and looked through Mrs. Wright's quilt scraps. It seems this unimportant woman stuff was not just trifled
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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.

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The story opens with Mrs. Wright imprisoned for strangling her husband. A group, the mostly composed of men, travel to the Wright house in the hopes that they find incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright. Instead, the two women of the group discover evidence of Mr. Wright’s abuse of his wife. Through the women’s unique perspective, the reader glimpses the reality of the situation and realizes that, though it seemed unreasonable at the time, Mrs. Wright had carefully calculated her actions. When asked about the Wrights, one of the women, Mrs. Hale, replies “I don’t think a place would be a cheerful for John Wright’s being in it” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 7).

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857 Words | 4 Pages

Hale, the wife of Lewis Hale, is a farm wife just like a woman named Minnie. In the story, there is no real direct description of Mrs. Hale, but what shows who she really is by her behaviors that throw some clues of what she experiences in her life. Through her outspoken opinions and how vocal she is with her opinions, you can sense how she feels about her husband, Lewis Hale, being the man who is a farmer who was the only one to witness the aftermath of the murder of John Wright. It is obvious that Mrs. Hale is he husbands “right hand”, and just like Emilia, is very obedient to her husband when he asks her to collect all of Minnie’s belongings. Compared to Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale is the women who the one to feel free to express her feelings, though she is looked to be less “sophisticated” than the others.

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1408 Words | 6 Pages

The Pursuit of Justice for Women Through the Comparison of Glaspell's Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers Susan Glaspell first wrote the play "Trifles" and then a short time later followed up with the short story "A Jury of Her Peers". The story and the play contain many parallels such as: the setting, the plot, and the same characters. Even though they are very similar they have different titles which seem to be fitting for each. In the play, Hale states that women are constantly "worrying over trifles. " Yet, these trifles are the evidence the men need to convict Minnie.

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796 Words | 4 Pages

Wright’s belongings are incomplete and out of place, particularly in the kitchen. The women find this to be abnormal and begin speculating the significance of these items. During one point in the play, Mrs. Hale notices an uneven stitch in Mrs. Wright’s unfinished quilt. She asks Mrs. Peters, “’what do you suppose she was so nervous about?’” Because of the death of Mr. Wright, Mrs. Hale views the stitching in a suspicious manner.

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1454 Words | 6 Pages

" 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.

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She is brief and so her famous work Trifles is a one-act play. Trifles has been written to prove feminity. It has become the apple of the eye for readers. It creates a powerful impression and meaning. She rejects male-dominant society.

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Throughout a student’s academic career they will find that they will be expected to write an essay and be able to effectively back up their claims; a feat many students struggle with. However, there is an extremely important section of an academic essay which helps to structure the entire essay and is used to state and back up a claim, called a thesis statement. When writing a thesis statement there are two main characteristics that the sentence must adhere to; it must be debatable and the topic must be narrowed down. As stated in OWL’s article, “Developing Strong Thesis Statements”, in an argumentative essay, all thesis statements must be debatable as this is the base of your argument.

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The men also take light of the small details that the women take note of, in particular as to how Mrs. Wright was contemplating the construction of the quilt. As the women converse and share experiences of their own and those of Mrs. Wright, they begin to form

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As Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale uncover bits and pieces of evidence, they recall Minnie’s drastic change in behavior after her marriage to Mr. Wright. More specifically, they discuss her previous cheerful nature and love for singing: “She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir. But that–oh, that was thirty years ago” (Glaspell 988). After marrying Mr. Wright, Minnie became quiet and empty, as depicted in the state of her house. Mrs. Hale recalls, “I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful–and that’s why I ought to have come.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

In the one-act play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, John Wright is found strangled to death in his midwestern farmhouse. Throughout the play, Glaspell suggests that the women are superior than men. Town sheriff Mr. Peters and county attorney Mr. Hale set out to find evidence about the murder in order to bring the killer to justice. The wives of both the men, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale begin their own investigation of the murder themselves. The men of the town make fun of the women for worrying about “women things”, such as an unfinished quilt by Mrs. Wright.

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335 Words | 2 Pages

Trifles a one-act play by Susan Glaspell was one of the first examples of American feminist drama. The basis of the play surrounded two farmwives who protested the male chauvinistic characters by concealing evidence from a murder. The theme of the play was quite frank, in fact, Glaspell made the feminism so apparent that anyone could figure it out. Even the title, Trifles, foreshadowed the sexism—basically, the men viewed the women to be unintelligent and incompetent; however, the ladies’ unofficial investigation turned out to be successful while the men’s official investigation did not. This was Glaspell’s way of utilizing irony—trifles by definition means, “treat (someone or something) without seriousness or respect.”

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1070 Words | 5 Pages

Trifles, a play by Susan Glaspell, is about a group of men and their wives who go and try to solve the murder of a man. While the men go upstairs to investigate, the women stay downstairs to gather items for the suspected wife, however, they begin to uncover the truth about what really happened. Glaspell uses gender conflict, setting, and symbolism to portray the prejudices commonly associated with the time period and how it affected the women, including the wife, in the play. The main issue Glaspell hints at is the gender conflict between the men and the women. She uses the story of a wife who murdered her husband to demonstrate the roles of women in the early twentieth century.

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Glaspell’s one-act play is a feminist murder mystery about the murder of John Wright. John Wright is believed to have been murdered by his wife. Throughout the story, county attorney George Henderson and Sheriff Henry Peters are trying to find a possible motive of John Wright’s murder so Mrs. Wright can be tried in court. However, while the men are investigating upstairs, their wives are surveying around the Wright’s house downstairs and find what is believed to be Mrs. Wright’s motive to kill her husband of thirty years. “Trifles” has an obvious approach towards the inequality of women in the legal system when it comes to marriage, divorce, and arrest.

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1001 Words | 5 Pages

Nevertheless, while using the play’s setting to first project the notion that men are superior to women in the society, the actual murder investigations depicted by the play goes to underline that indeed women are not inferior to men. Therefore, while placing the women’s intelligence over that of men, Trifles challenges the typical male-dominated detective story by deviating from the norm of men being superior, women only being good for the kitchen, and women paying attention to unimportant things like a jar of preserves busted. Although the men in the play, Trifles, are depicted most determined to resolve the murder by combing throughout the entire house to discover the clues related to the murder and the motive of the murder, women are keener in observing the small spaces they have been allowed to access. In the

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