The play Trifles by Susan Glaspell shows how underappreciated women are and how they are confined to their homes and household chores. The two women in Trifles are Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife, and Mrs. Hale, the farmer’s wife. These two female characters have different views on the men and their actions at the beginning of the play, but as time passes by they start to realize their own strength and how they can do anything that their husbands can do. Both Mr. Peters and Mr. Hale treat the women as if they are useless in what they think are more “manly” things, like a crime scene or the investigation of a murder. They have the mindset that “real work” is something carried out by men and all the concerns of women are trifles or something …show more content…
Wright were trapped and she couldn’t take being mistreated anymore, and that is why she did what she did. Mr. Wright was very “protective” of his wife in a sense because he didn’t let her do many simple things like going outside and socializing, but really it was just that he treated her like an object instead of a person that he loved and truly cared about. During this time and sometimes even now, in the 21 century, men see women as a joke, and they treat them with disrespect because they aren’t considered valuable in this society. In Trifles, I feel like all the female characters have formed a connection because they all share the same experience of being treated with lesser value than a man. Although she does not appear throughout the play, Mrs. Wright is what connects Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale because she represents all women that have been mistreated by men and how eventually they get tired of coming in second place to a man. This implies to human nature because this is the mindset that most people used to have during that time period and right now is when women are taking a stand and speaking up for themselves. Men have always been superior to women because we live in a male dominated society and because of this, nobody listens to what a woman has to say. In general, I think that this play has described very well how men, or even women, can say something or do something that can negatively impact someone enough to murder them or do other types of
At the beginning of the short drama, “Trifles,” Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, is painted as timid and submissive wife. She willingly submits herself to the responsibilities she has as a wife. As the play unfolds, Mrs. Peter’s submissiveness begins to diminish. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale work together to uncover the murder of Minnie Wright’s husband. When the women find the evidence, they refuse to share it with the men. Mrs. Peter’s character transforms into a more confident individual over the course of the play.
The play ?Trifles?, by Susan Glaspell , is an examination of the different levels of early 1900?s mid-western farming society?s attitudes towards women and equality. The obvious theme in this story is men discounting women?s intelligence and their ability to play a man?s role, as detectives, in the story. A less apparent theme is the empathy the women in the plot find for each other. Looking at the play from this perspective we see a distinct set of characters, a plot, and a final act of sacrifice.
The County Attorney presumes that the covered box has little to no value because the women discover it. He also mentions that Mrs. Peters is married to a sheriff, so she is obligated to obey the law. This demonstrates that the men think of Mrs. Peters as a part of her husband and not as her own individual person. The men believe that both Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale’s help is pointless, but in reality, the women solved the murder. Meanwhile, the men have found no evidence that gave any clue to who killed Mr. Wright. The men undervalue the women’s capabilities only because they are female.
"Trifles," a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there are five main characters, three men and two women. The weather outside is frighteningly cold, and yet the men enter the warm farmhouse first. The women stand together away from the men, which immediately puts the men against the women. Mrs. Hale?s and Mrs. Peters?s treatment from the men in the play is reflective of the beliefs of that time. These women, aware of
“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a play that is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one is the inferiority of women over men, though the play also explores the differences between genders in general.
The dialogues between the men and women in “Trifles” are important because they help the reader understand the patriarchal society which does not allow women to have a life of their own. In their dialogue towards the women, the men ridicule women’s roles. As we see this in the beginning of the play, Mr. Hale despises the women because
Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, weaves a tale of an intriguing murder investigation to determine who did it. Mrs. Wright is suspected of strangling her husband to death. During the investigation the sheriff and squad of detectives are clueless and unable to find any evidence or motive to directly tie Mrs. Wright to the murder. They are baffled as to how he was strangled by a rope while they were supposedly asleep side by side. Glaspell artfully explores gender differences between men and women and the roles they each fulfill in society by focusing on their physicality, their methods of communication and vital to the plot of the play, their powers of observation. In simple terms, the play suggests that men tend to be assertive,
The two other women in the play are the most intelligent in the entire play. Their husbands give them freedoms and believe that they could do no evil. Mrs.Hale and Mrs.Peters show that not all women are suppressed by men and society. While that is true, they are never referred by their first names. They are are called by their husbands titles.
Glaspell develops the theme of gender roles by what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters fret about at the crime scene. For instance, the first concern that Mrs. Peters voices revolves around Mrs. Wright’s fruit preserves and implies that the women are housekeepers. Both the Sheriff and Mr. Hale remark about how the women are “worryin’ about her preserves” and “worrying over trifles” (Glaspell 3). Later, when the men go upstairs to look for evidence, the women decide to bring Mrs. Wright’s apron, fruit, shawl, and quilt for her in prison. To further establish Mrs. Wright as a domesticated housewife, Mrs. Peters suggests that Mrs. Wright wants her apron “to make her feel more natural” (Glaspell 5). Because of what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discuss at the crime scene, Glaspell verifies that the women play the role of housekeeper and cook.
Trifles, Susan Glaspell’s play written in 1916, reveal concerns of women living in a male dominated society. Glaspell communicates the role that women were expected to play in late 19th century society and the harm that can come of it to women, as well as men. The feminist agenda of Trifles was made obvious, in order to portray the lives of all women who live oppressed under male domination. John and Minnie Wright are two main characters who are never seen; however provide the incident for the play. In this play women are against men, Minnie against her husband, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters against their husband’s, as well as men in general.
The men in this story are mocking the women, because they do not expect the women to know anything of importance, and to only know their “womanly” duties, which are deemed unimportant. Another similarity between the two works are the changes that the women undergo towards the end of the plays. In “Trifles”, the women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, are stuck with the choice of aiding a murderer that was in an abusive relationship, or to tell their husbands what they have found:
In the play, Mrs. Peters is one of the women who supports in the hiding of the evidence that will evidently prove Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder. The plays revolves around theme that is associated with the title, Trifles, wherein the irony of it is the women meddling in their trifle things find the motive. Mrs. Peters is a dynamic character that sees the most change, from siding with the men and making excuses for them to hiding the cutting piece of evidence for the case, being the wife of the sheriff she faces conflict in helping Mrs. Wright however in the end it is her trying to hide the bird in her pocket that triggers Mrs. Hale to take action in the end, her character turns from a woman “married to the law” to an a criminal by withholding evidence. All these triggers of Mrs. Peter’s
Susan Glaspell’s one-act play “Trifles” was written in 1916. It was written based on real events. When Glaspell was a reporter, she covered a murder case in a small town in Iowa. Later, she wrote this short play which was inspired by her investigation and what she observed. Glaspell used irony, symbolism, and setting in her creation of the authentic American drama, “Trifles”, to express life for women in a male-dominated society in the early nineteen hundreds.
While the men in the story where playing Sherlock Holmes looking for evidence that Mrs. Wright killed her husband, they missed the bad fruit and the bread left out of the bow, a quilt that was not finished and had a few bad stiches, an unclean table and a birdcage that was empty. They were so determined to find specific clues of the murder, that they missed the clues of the emotional abuse that Mrs. Wright was subjected to from her husband. They were also so busy criticizing everything that Mrs. Wright did or did not do, that they missed everything that was right in front of their eyes. They even slipped with some sexist remarks Mr. Hale says ‘Well, women are used to worrying over trifles’, not realizing that the women were in the room.