Trifles By Susan Glaspell Essay
Trifles
The title of the play, written by Susan Glaspell, Trifles, signifies the misrepresentation perpetrated by a male dominated society in 1916 concerning women’s abilities and perceptions. To illuminate this misconception, Glaspell provides a murder scene as the setting of the play to allow for character development and stereotyping. The setting of the play is restricted to the murder victim’s house, Mr. Wright, and the pursuit of evidence to convict the wife for his murder. The male characters within the play, Henry Peters (Sheriff), Mr. Henderson (County Attorney), and Mr. Hale (the witness) are portrayed as single minded to the point of being oblivious to what is around them. It is due to their inability to deviate from
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Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves.
COUNTY ATTORNEY. I guess before we’re through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about.
HALE. Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. (Trifles. p.1128)
Their inability to deviate from these dismissive and condescending stereotypical viewpoints towards women prevent them from being able to solve this case. It is clear that the men feel women are merely extensions of themselves with only the ability to perceive that in which they tell them or provide for them. Consequently, it is with extreme irony that through the limited dialogue between the female characters the circumstances with which the murder is committed is discovered, and indeed a sense of justification established. Glaspell is able to provide well rounded female characters that discredit the previous demeaning perceptions implied by their male counterparts with intuitiveness and astute observations. It is also with a sense of culpability that Mrs. Hale responds, “I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be – for women” (p. 1134). It is that sense of female solidarity and deference to Mrs. Wright’s plight that differentiated the male and female perspective, therefore enabling them to not only determine motive, but preempted the need to protect Mrs. Wright in an unsympathetic male dominated
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