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Who Is Susan Glaspell's Trifles?

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Recommended: Analysis of the Short play trifles by susan glaspell

Introduction
In Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, a short play about rural life in the early twentieth century, a strong standpoint on feminism is presented to the audience. Throughout the play, much of the plot revolves around contrasting the men in power’s perception of a crime scene with the more subjective, emotional women’s point of view. It shows the discriminatory mentality men had towards women that were commonly accepted. The play also includes elements of what the women’s suffrage movement was all about and incorporates the mood of society during that time towards women; being that their social status was viewed beneath that of a male. During the play, the Attorney and Sheriff see a mess of preserves in the kitchen. Instead of investigating …show more content…

Here she lived in a community that had high ideals of socialism and feminism (Ben-Zvi). This influence encouraged her to create female characters who desired to free themselves from the stereotypical roles into which they had been cast (Ben-Zvi). Glaspell was one of the most influential playwrights to come from the Provincetown collaborative, and Trifles in particular has come to be known as a feminist work that deals with the psychology of crime through the lens of female domesticity (Biography of Susan Glaspell). With acting in the group, Glaspell wrote eleven plays for the Provincetown Players between 1915 and 1922. The Provincetown Players manifested to be extremely successful. Later, since Glaspell 's husband wanted to move away with new initiatives, they moved to Greece for the two years prior to his death in 1924. Glaspell then moved back to Massachusetts, where her writing continued. She collaborated with her second husband, Norman Matson in the play “The Comic Artist” in 1928. Six years later, she divorced Matson and in the same year as her divorce, she won the Pulitzer Prize for “Drama for Alison 's House,” a play based on Emily Dickinson 's biography. She also wrote a number of novels prior to her death in Provincetown due to a pulmonary embolism in

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“At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were outsiders to the formal structures of political life—voting, serving on juries, holding elective office—and they were subject to wide-ranging discrimination that marked them as secondary citizens” (Evans). The lack of rights for women during the early 1900s was a severe problem that motivated Susan Glaspell to publish a short story “A Jury of Her Peers.” During the early nineteenth century, women endured cruel and unjust treatment from men and had limited options in their careers, as well as political and social lives. Glaspell conveys the serious oppression of women in the beginning of the twentieth century through the presence of gender inequality, symbolism of a songbird, and hidden evidence. Written in the early 1900s, “A Jury of Her Peers” was originally a play, Trifles, which Glaspell decided to turn into a short story in 1917, only a year later.

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In Susan Glaspell's play “Trifles,” there is a difference between the men and women’s way of perceiving evidence to Mr. Wright’s murder case. The men spend most of their time searching for solid evidence upstairs where Mr. Wright's murder takes place. However, the women spend most of their time in Mrs. Wright’s kitchen. Instead of seeking tangible evidence, they inspect the condition of the items and acknowledge how they have been muddled around. Different perspectives lead to a variety of discoveries such as the women’s way of perceiving evidence.

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She founded the Province Town Players with her husband, George Cram Cook, in 1915. This would be the first influential noncommercial theater troupe in America. In the summers of 1915 and 1916, the Players staged the plays of Eugene O’Neill and works by John Reed, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Glaspell herself. Moving their company to New York, they changed the company’s name to “Playwrights’ Theater. Glaspell has written several

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In comparing and contrast both drama A Doll House by (Henrik Ibsen), and Trifles by (Susan Glaspell). The authors shine a light on how a woman had no place in society in the nineteenth century .A woman place was in her home and her responsibility’s consist of taking care of her husband, her children and her home. Mrs. Wright was introduce to the reader as woman that was held for murdering her husband after a long time of abuse. Nora was introduce to the reader as woman that had everything in life.

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The battle for gender equality is a never ending fight between men and women. For years, long before Trifles was ever written in the early 1900s, women were fighting for their right to vote, their right to be their own person and not follow a man’s orders, and their personal freedoms. Women have been known to make decisions for someone else and not for themselves, despite the desire to do so. This issue has been an ongoing struggle for many years, and Trifles demonstrates that. The gender war in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is displayed in three ways: the men’s words and actions towards the women, the setting of the story, and the symbols embedded within the play.

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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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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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Sarahana Bajracharya Instructor: John Cole ENG 102- 01 May 1, 2016 Trifles “Trifles” is a one-act play by Susan Glaspell and is based on early 1900’s, in the time where men viewed women were underneath them. The play consists the characters of Mrs. Wright, John Wright, county attorney George Henderson, Henry Peters the sheriff, Lewis Hale neighboring farmer and witness. And the main protagonists female characters in story are Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, the wives of Henry Peters and Lewis Hale. The play contains elements that show the discriminatory mentality that was commonly accepted among men towards women as well as presents the women inequality portrayed through theme, dialogue, character and symbolization.

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