Trifles Research Paper

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are here today to discuss the murder of John Wright. On November 15, Mr. Wright was found in his bed with a rope around his neck, presumably strangled to death. His body was discovered by his wife supposedly and did not bother to notify to the local authorities. At eight o'clock in the morning, Mr. Hale went to look for Mr. Wright and found Minnie, Mr. Wright’s wife, sitting in a rocking chair inside of the house. Mr. Hale asked Minnie for her husband and she stated that John Wright was dead in the bedroom. Mr. Hale and his son, Harry, went upstairs and found the body in the bed with a rope around his neck. Alarmed, Mr. Hale told Harry to go to call the police through a telephone across the road while he stayed behind at the Wright's’ residence. The police then arrived to the scene of the crime and took Minnie into custody. We are here today to prove that Minnie Wright is guilty of the premeditated murder of her husband, John Wright.

Minnie’s quilt, the dead bird and its cage, and the kitchen show that living in a man’s world is not easy. In the end, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale recognize that they too have experienced the same loneliness and mistreatment that led Mrs. Wright to murder her husband. The men don't value the women in this story and they don't see them as being very intelligent either. It is for this reason “A jury of her peers” is created. Peers being the women themselves as they stand up, united against the subjugation they have all experienced. “A Jury of Her Peers” is a valuable resource for anyone curious to what life was like for women in the twentieth century for which it demonstrates women struggling to publish and define

Hero: A person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities; however, heroism is not synonymous with perfection. Man can be a hero in spite of having some flaws. This is apparent in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, a story about the Salem Witch Trials in which Abigail Williams accuses dozens of innocent people of witchcraft. Despite being flawed, John Proctor, Reverend Hale, and Elizabeth Proctor can demonstrate their heroism in The Crucible.

Susan Glaspell’s short story, “A Jury of Her Peers” is full of symbolism, which is portrayed through the bird in the story. The story takes place in a house that is set far back and is a lonely place. With the story being written in the 1920’s the attitude men have towards women is by far noticeable throughout the story with them being doubted or looked down upon. There is a murder scene that is being investigated with the wife of the murdered man as the number one suspect. The men in the story are looking in all the wrong places, where the women looked in the one spot to find the one clue that would close the entire case. The number one clue, the bird.

Every person has that one person that they believe is completely evil. Now imagine a town full of that person with a couple of good role models thrown in there. That is exactly how Salem, the town in The Crucible, is. The whole witch trials started with people getting revenge on the people they believe wronged them. For some reason, the public just goes along with it and believes their lies. Most characters just believe the lies all the way until the end but Reverend Hale does not. Reverend Hale believes the lies in the beginning, in the middle he starts to question what is really happening, and in the end, he believes the truth and tries to have people confess to being a witch.

everyday, people's thoughts change. For example, politics, people's thoughts on politics can change. in the play, The Crucible, Reverend Hale's Thoughts over witchcraft in salem changed.

Hale and Mrs. Peters relate more to the woman as they too feel the isolation. “I’ve not seen much of her of late years. I’ve not been in this house—more than a year” (Glaspell 763). Mrs. Hale says, as she’s talking to the Sheriff. “Trifles” makes the isolation of women into something that the man caused her. The women began to pity Mrs. Wright as they knew her before she married to Mr. Wright. The females felt pity, where the men just accessed the situation at hand. After the women examine the empty bird cage they remember the way that Mrs. Wright use to sing and compared her to her former self as Minnie Foster. “Trifles,” introduced the masculinity here from the Sheriff’s side instantly putting his instinct into saying that there was a murder that happened at the farmhouse, was caused by Mrs. Wright without any hesitation. He didn’t look into the sadness, or let the depressing home get to him as much as what his intentions and his well-being come into play before his

Reverend Hale goes on an emotional journey in the novel. His mind and heart are being twisted and turned when he starts to realize that things are not what they seem. His faith is shaken and watches as Salem falls partly due to his own fallacy.

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, villagers of Salem demonstrate greed through the service their self interests, whether it be preservation of reputation, or land possession, despite conducting unjust acts. Arthur Miller, in turn, uses the setting of the play, Abigail’s willingness to perjure in preservation of her desires, and imagery to highlight the importance of the greed as a social issue upon the play as a whole.

Wright it is easy to tell that she is not at all upset about her husband’s death. When being asked about the situation she “laughed and pleated her skirt” (4). Mrs. Wright is compared to a bird that is found later in the story. The bird was found in a pretty box with marks around its neck. Hale and Peters say that the death of her bird would have been her motive if she actually was her husband’s murderer, but the author utilizes the bird and its broken cage to be a comparison to Mrs. Wright’s life. The bird is Mrs. Wright. It was locked up in a cage as was Mrs. Wright when her husband was alive. He wasn’t a very “cheerful” man, therefore, people didn’t come to visit them. Over the twenty year time period of their marriage she became lonely, which resulted in her buying a bird and the drastic change in personality. The broken door to the cage represents Mrs. Wright’s freedom from her husband. He caused her to be lonely and that caused her to go a little crazy. This madness is what made her feel no sympathy when she realized John was dead. These actions are what led Hale and Peters to come to the result of she killed her own husband. However, the attorney didn’t realize the radical alteration in her personality like Mrs. Hale did, only because he did not know Minnie Foster when she was beautifully happy and full of life. This is evident in the short story when the attorney refers to her as Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Hale

Wright is an example of a battered wife that experienced many levels of abuse” (Schanfield 1655). Schanfield outlines “physical and sexual abuse, but also emotional, economic, verbal and isolation as methods of control and domination” (Schanfield 1655). Mr. Wright completely dominated Mrs. Wright and uses isolation to make Minnie Foster inferior in their relationship and in society. In “A Jury of Her Peers” the women were caucusing over who Minnie Foster used to be and Mrs. Hale said she “remembers her as a lively girl with pretty clothes, wearing a ‘white dress with blue ribbons’” (qtd. in Schanfield 1656). In the text, Glaspell insist on Mrs. Wright being identification as a “songbird” before she married John Wright (Schanfield 1655). Glaspell chose to do this so the audience can see how an independent woman is happier and better off alone. As her marriage played out with Mr. Wright she slowly morphed into the mold a woman was forced to fit into. In “A Jury of Her Peers” Mrs. Hale (referring to Mrs. Wrights singing and happiness in the context of the bird) said, “No, [Mr.] Wright wouldn't like the bird… a thing that sang” she went on to say “She used to sing. He killed that too”, which is an exact representation of how women were inferior, muted, and defused (“A Jury of Her Peers 1643). Because the women felt so inferior to the men, they never spoke up when they found the dead bird which explained that Minnie Foster was the murder of John Wright. Another reason for this action was that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters felt united as women due to their social status and situation. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale chose to hide the dead bird and not to disclose the actual murder clues and details they found as it was their moral duty as

Mrs. Wright and Nora both have different personalities. Mrs. Wrights personality in the play is innocence. She exhibits this by not allowing Mrs. Hale to see John. She acts as if she is completely shocked by his death. Mrs. Hale states, “She was rockin’ back and forth. She had her apron in her hand and was kind of-pleating it” (Glaspell 1081). This allows us to know that Mrs. Wright was still shocked from what happened. It is also seen in her unfinished quilt and her messy kitchen. Her unfinished quilt has many knots in it. This shows that Mrs. Wright is very confused and not in the right state of mind. Her messy kitchen shows how long it had been since she cleaned the kitchen. This also states that Mrs. Wright is very confused, because she is expected to always keep the house clean, and after the death of

Authors, especially female authors, have long used their writing to emphasize and analyze the feminist issues that characterize society, both in the past and the present. Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Susan Glaspell wrote narratives that best examined feminist movements through the unreliable minds of their characters. In all three stories, “The Story of an Hour”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “A Jury of Her Peers”, the authors use characterization, symbolism, and foreshadowing to describe the characters’ apparent psychosis or unreasonable behavior to shed light on the social issues that characterized the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The struggles of women have subsisted in countless pieces of literature. Stereotypically speaking, women are not always seen as strong leading characters. Often women are found confined in stories as they are in life. Literature frees women in a way that real life simply cannot. Female authors as well as characters gain that feeling of freedom, due to the less constricting binds of literary writing. Susan Glaspell, the playwright of Trifles relays feminist drama in a fascinating and psychological way. This play introduces women helping women in confinement to find freedom. Confinement can tear a woman apart, but the desire for freedom from society is embedded deep in the heart of all strong women.

There are a lot of similarities between “Lamb to Slaughter” by Roald Dahl and “A Jury of her Peers” by Susan Glaspell and an abundance of differences. The largest one thing in common being, the wives in each story kill their husbands. Another comparison are the women 's roles. They are both victims to their husband 's’ cruelty. In “Lamb to Slaughter”, Mary Maloney waits patiently for her husband to get home from work so she can make him dinner and get him a drink, do anything to make him happy basically. Instead, her husband came home and announced he was leaving her and their unborn child. Mary snapped, and she killed him. In “A Jury of Her Peers”, Minnie is repeatedly referred to as a “housekeeper” by the men. They see her as a