trifles literary analysis essay

“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell: Literary Analysis

Trifles is a piece written by Susan Glaspell in 1916 in the genre of the one-act play. The play explores the connections between husbands and wives, focusing on a murderous marriage. The play contains many symbols with specific meanings that enhance the contents of the play. Every symbol is related to the context of a scene it is seen in, yet contains a wider meaning applicable to the whole play.

The play’s script develops around the murder of John Wright who was choked with a rope. Two couples of husbands and wives arrive at the place and have to stay there. During their stay, the investigation goes on and it eventually is found out that the murderer was John’s wife, Minnie (Litcharts). The play is heavily concentrated on the symbols it contains as without understanding them it is hard to define what happened in terms of the meaning of certain events.

The Wright is the surname of Minnie Foster, the main character. “Wright” has a resemblance with “right,” and it refers to anything that must be acknowledged by others, as well as something that one may do or own. The use of the surname “Wright” as a surname indicates that the tale will be about right, as will the challenges that the protagonist faces in this drama. “Minnie” has a nearly identical sound to “mini,” which refers to something little or in the minority. “Foster” has the same sound as the word “force,” which denotes “power.” Minnie Foster’s name implies that the character lacks authority and feels herself to be a weak person.

Minnie rests in the rocking chair after murdering her husband. Minnie’s approach to staying relaxed and becoming as natural as she can is indicated by the rocking chair. It’s a place where Minnie can relax and enjoy herself, allowing her to disconnect from reality for a time. Minnie is seated in the rocking chair because it allows her to relax for a moment. She was terrified, so she attempted to act as naturally as possible by clutching her apron and pleating it while she rocked back and forth.

The cherry preserve had already cracked from the cold when the two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, discovered it. The cherry is a seasonal fruit that ripens in the spring. Its hue is red, exactly like Minnie’s attitude toward life as a little child, which was cheery and joyous. Minnie, like the cherry in the preserve, felt she could not do what she wanted once she married. The wall had cracked and fractured due to pressure and an extremely low temperature (Puspuritani 21). It looks just like Minnie. She preserved her secret so she could do what she pleased. She is obviously under duress, and the outcome is a break in Minnie’s heart as a result of her marriage’s coldness.

The quilt is composed of fabric patches that are sewn together to form an expanding square. The quilt isn’t finished yet in the drama. It represents Minnie’s fate; the patches of cloth represent every piece of information discovered, and it was through this that the ladies discovered Minnie’s murder. Minnie’s fate, like the unfinished quilt, is still up in the air.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters were seeking a piece of paper and string when they came across a broken birdcage. Mr. Wright’s attitude toward Minnie is symbolized by the birdcage; his coldness and harshness hinder Minnie from making friends and socializing with others. Minnie is like the bird caught in the cages herself as a result of this. She is unable to do anything she desires and must instead focus on cleaning. When the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, initially discovered the birdcage, it was already shattered with no bird inside, as if someone had grabbed the bird forcefully and destroyed the cage. It alludes to what recently transpired in Minnie’s life, and how she was finally able to free herself from a cold and unforgiving spouse who treated her badly. The birdcage appears to be a jail built by John Wright for Minnie over many years.

Mrs. Hale discovered the bird had died. She failed to see that the bird perished not of natural causes, but rather as a result of someone breaking its neck. The body of the dead bird was placed in a lovely box and wrapped in silk. It implies that the bird is something precious to the owner and that the killer was not Minnie (Samman 73). Why would she wrap the dead bird in something as lovely as silk, one could wonder? It’s because the owner considers the dead bird to be a respectable object, and she wanted to offer it the final respect it deserved, so she presented it with beautiful silk and a lovely box.

After analyzing the symbolic contents of Trifles, it is clear that the issues emphasized by the author regard inequality. The main character Minnie suffers from the problems she faced because of her marriage, which is just an element of the whole system that works similarly.

Works Cited

“Trifles Symbols” . Litcharts .

Puspitarini, Diana. The hidden meanings seen from the symbols, characters and settings in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. 2019. Universitas Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta.

Samman, Maram. “The Bird Imagery in Suzan Glaspell’s Trifles and Joseph Kramm’s the Shrike: A Feminist Comparative Study.” Critical Space, 2018.

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Analysis: trifles.

Social commentary and satire are standbys of the murder mystery genre , and Trifles is no exception. The play serves as an indictment of the patriarchal manner, by which men underestimate and dismiss women—often, to the detriment of their own purported expertise. That “expertise” in this play, is that of crime detection, and police and legal work. Throughout the play, the County Attorney (George Henderson) and Sheriff (Henry Peters) bluster in and out of the farmhouse, thoroughly convinced that their work is important and that they are the experts who will get to the bottom of the murder. They self-importantly stomp around while taking every opportunity to remind Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale how perfectly ridiculous and useless they find them.

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Trifles summary and analysis of part i.

(Note: Because the play is not officially split into scenes, artificial divisions have been created at convenient points for the purposes of analysis.)

The sheriff Henry Peters , the young county attorney George Henderson , and the neighbor Lewis Hale enter the gloomy, disordered kitchen of John Wright 's farmhouse, followed by the thin, wiry Mrs. Peters and the larger Mrs. Hale . The men warm themselves up by the stove, but the women hover fearfully by the door, and Mrs. Peters refuses Henderson's invitation to join them at the stove. Peters steps away from the stove and takes off his coat as he asks Hale to describe what he saw yesterday morning. Before Hale answers, Henderson and the sheriff have a conversation explaining that no one had touched anything but the stove, but that the site of the crime had been unattended for most of the previous day.

Hale states that he was going to town with Harry but stopped on the way to visit John Wright's house to ask about acquiring a telephone. Although Wright had previously disliked the notion, Hale was considering the unlikely chance that Wright's wife would be able to persuade him otherwise. Sometime after eight o'clock, Hale knocked on the door and, upon hearing what he thought was an invitation to enter, he opened the door to find Mrs. Wright rocking in confusion on the rocking chair and nervously pleating her apron. She did not look at Hale or ask him to sit down, and when he asked about John, she informed him that he could not see her husband because he was dead from strangulation by rope. Hale called for Harry, and they went upstairs to see the body. When they returned, Mrs. Wright told them that she had not notified anyone and that she did not know the culprit because she had been asleep.

After Harry went to find the coroner, Mrs. Wright moved to a different chair and stared at the floor. Hale tried to talk to her, but when he mentioned the telephone, she began to laugh before stopping and looking scared. At this point, Henderson looks around the kitchen and finds the fruit preserves making a mess in the cupboard because the jars broke from the cold. Mrs. Peters explains that Mrs. Wright had been worried, and Hale dismissively says, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles," which causes Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to draw closer together. Henderson also criticizes Mrs. Wright's dirty towels, but Mrs. Hale defends her, although she has not visited the Wright farmhouse for over a year because it was not cheerful. Henderson blames it on Mrs. Wright's homemaking abilities, but Mrs. Hale hints that Wright was the real cause.

Trifles begins with stage directions that introduce the five speaking characters of the play as well as the dismal setting of the disheveled kitchen in a recently abandoned farmhouse. Susan Glaspell got her inspiration for Trifles from her real-life visit to the dreary kitchen of Margaret Hossack, whose trial for the murder of her husband formed the basis for the plot, and accordingly, the setting establishes the melancholy, thoughtful mood of the play. Furthermore, although Trifles is in essence a murder mystery, the play takes place in the kitchen instead of at the crime scene of the bedroom or in a more official domestic setting such as the police station. As a result, the play exists in a private, domestic, and female domain rather than what in the early twentieth century was the primarily male public domain, foreshadowing the focus of the work on the women.

Although Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale later become the central characters of Trifles , the first third of the play concentrates on the male characters, especially Lewis Hale and George Henderson. Their entrance into the farmhouse and Hale's account of his discovery of the murder serves as the exposition of the story, where the murder is the inciting force of the plot. Within the context of the opening section of the play, the main conflict appears to revolve around a search for the murderer, whether such a person is John Wright's wife or some other individual - although later events will cause our understanding of the conflict to shift during the course of the play. Nevertheless, at this point, the scene consists of male figures who treat the kitchen as the scene of a crime and not a home, an identification that Mrs. Hale in particular comes to resent.

Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale initially appear in a separate group that trails the men into the kitchen, thus immediately suggesting a distance between the two genders that becomes increasingly prominent throughout the play. Whereas the men appear confident and businesslike, the women are fearful and nervous, indicating their sense of isolation and distress. Instead of joining the men at the stove, they remain at the door and implicitly declare themselves as spectators rather than actors. They do not share the men's task, having come to the Wright homestead for a different reason, to offer a bit of comfort to Mrs. Wright by collecting a few minor objects. At the same time, only the men receive a first name in Trifles , while the play refers to the women by their husbands' last names, hinting at the false intrusion of male identity in the female self with which the two women struggle throughout the play.

Despite the sense of male dominance that exists throughout the majority of this part of the play, the women seem to resist the status quo imposed by the men. By declining Henderson's invitation to join Hale and Peters at the stove, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale also symbolically deny their obligation to stand in the traditionally female area of the hearth. Mrs. Hale quickly shows herself to be the more outspoken of the two women when protesting against the male view of the world, as shown when Henderson belittles the state of Mrs. Wright's kitchen and implies that she was not skilled enough to take care of a home. Mrs. Hale dislikes his rather supercilious accusation and turns around his hypothesis that the kitchen's appearance must be the woman's fault by hinting that John Wright might have been at the root of the problem. Lewis Hale echoes Henderson's androcentric interpretation of events by saying, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles," when the conversation turns to preserves. At the foundation of the gender disconnect lies the assumption that both women and women's affairs are trifles.

In addition to helping create the mood of the play and providing an opportunity to highlight the separation of the genders in Trifles , the cold temperature also foreshadows our interpretations of Mrs. Wright's life and psychology. Mrs. Hale hints that Mr. Wright did not have "the homemaking instinct," and Mrs. Wright lives in a cheerless home that is as cold as the outside weather. In fact, her jars of preserves break from the lack of warmth, which parallels Mrs. Wright's own situation as the women later realize that her mental preserves have shattered because of the house's emotional winter. Hale admits himself that Mrs. Wright has no influence over Mr. Wright, and because the lack of a telephone in the house further cuts Mrs. Wright off from the world, it becomes a sign of her solitude as well as a reason for Hale to have entered the house.

Trifles Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Trifles is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How do the womens perspectives on men differ?

Womens perspectives on men differ as men are dutiful and are sincerely searching for the evidences in the house where murder took place but women are just worrying about the trivial matters and when they find the motive behind the murder,the dead...

The bird represents Minnie.... when she was a girl, she was happy vivacious, and loved to sing. The bird's death represents her life after marriage.... isolated and confined.

The birdcage represents imprisonment.... the isolation Minnie feels in...

What is the theme of the the story

Female identity and patriarchal dominance make up the main theme of the story. In Trifles , the men believe that they grant female identity by virtue of the women's relation to men rather than through their inherent qualities as females. Except for...

Study Guide for Trifles

Trifles study guide contains literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Trifles
• Trifles Summary
• Character List

Essays for Trifles

Trifles essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Trifles by Susan Glaspell.

• The Unheimlich in Susan Glaspell's Play Trifles: A Feminist Interpretation of Freud's Uncanny
• Layers of Significance in Susan Glaspell's "Trifles"
• From Courtroom to Stage: Susan Glaspell's "Trifles"
• The Institution of Marriage in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” and Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”
• Portrayal of Women in Trifles

Lesson Plan for Trifles

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Trifles
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Trifles Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Trifles

• Introduction
• Adaptations

Susan Glaspell

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Social Oppression of Women

The play presents a world of strict gender roles, in which the men occupy the sphere of work while the women exist solely in the home. Yet the separation of men’s and women’s spheres is not merely one of a division of labor. Rather, Trifles portrays a world, dominated by men, in which social expectations and restrictions have essentially confined women to the home and bound them to their husbands, with little control or identity…

The Blindness of Men

As described in the theme on the Social Oppression of Women, Trifles’ use of gender roles establishes the men in the sphere of work and influence and the women in the sphere of the home and trifling concerns. Yet, at the same time, the title of the play highlights the trifling concerns that the men mock, and in doing so emphasizes that the “ trifles ” that the men overlook because they are feminine concerns…

Gender Allegiance vs. Legal Duty

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are torn between their loyalty to another woman – a loyalty born of their shared experience of social oppression – and their duty to obey the law and present the evidence they uncover. The men in the play stress the importance of legal duty, particularly reminding the sheriff’s wife Mrs. Peters, that she is, for all intents and purposes, “married to the law.” Responsibility to the law is thereby equated…

Trifles might be described as a kind of murder mystery. Yet a murder mystery usually ends with the criminal being brought to justice, and instead in this murder mystery it is the idea of justice itself that is complicated. In discovering the dead bird , Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find evidence that serves as a motive for Minnie’s killing of her husband but also, from their viewpoint, somewhat justifies Minnie Wright ’s act of…

Trifles By Susan Glaspell Analysis Essay

We all know the one-act play: ‘Trifles’ By Susan Glaspell. We all understand the main moving forces in that the story, and the main characters that cause the problems or come up with the solutions. We know that Mrs. Wright killed her husband because she had dealt with abuse and neglect for years, and was pushed past the point of breaking, we know she was being subjected to pretty much slavery, and we know the women empathize with her, see, we know everything. Or do we? I don’t reccomend you to use a question in your introduction.

What if there were other moving forces in this story, that weren’t I suggest you to change your contractions. given the credit they deserve, or just brushed off as little details that were ignored by some teenager just reading the story to get a grade in their english class. What if there was another story? An untold story, a story told by symbols. In this paragraph you repeated the word “we”, you could use synonyms to replace it. Also, where’s your thesis? (You don’t have a clear topic senetece. The topic sentence should identify the main idea and point of the paragraph. Mrs. Wright had Remeber to add present tense verbs! her own space in the house, where she could do what she wanted, at least for a little while. You should subsitute the use of Mrs. Wright’s name to something else. Mrs. Wright’s kitchen Kitchen is a place that she expected to cook, clean, and be left alone. It is evidently the most female feeling and looking space in the house, but this has a dominant male presence. She was her husband’s wife , before he was killed, or the men investigating his death (Wright, 16).

Pay close attention to the kitchen, which is a representation of her life, she is unable to keep one room she enjoyed being in, inside her house, clean. This is clear when County Attorney (Don’t add the word “the when it’s not nessacary) says: “Here’s a nice mess” (Glaspell 3). This shows the miniscule amount of effort she put into her own piece of joy she had, because she felt obligated to make her husband happy all hours of the day. Even though she wasn’t happy, she never stops trying to make her and her husband happy; however, he was never satisfied. This ultimately led to her snapping and killing her husband.

The Wrights marriage was Use present tense verbs broken and cold. While they were walking through the kitchen, the men investigating the scene found some broken preserves jars. Mrs. Peters says “She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fire would go out and her jars would break” (Glaspell 3). She is not talking about just jars, Mrs. Peters is talking about how the fire in Mrs. Wright’s life went out. This is representative of her marriage and that the fire and love with her husband went away, or went out, and it broke, just like the jars did.

This shows try using synoynms for the word shows. that at one time they loved one another and had fire and passion for each other, but as time went on, the fire went out. Rey your best to stop repeating the words “the and “they” because it’s becoming repetitive. e jars, along with the kitchen have significant meaning, and represent important parts of Mrs. Wright’s life, so it is hard to grasp how dirty and messy the kitchen was, and that the jars were broken, because this means her life is messy and dirty, and her marriage is broken. Some of your sentences are run on sentences, so try to fix that.

I suggest you to use stronger transitional words and sentences for the topic sentence in your body paragraphs. They also found a bird cage, that had a broken door, like it had been busted open with force, therefore showing whoever opened it was angry. The cage itself is symbolic in multiple ways. The cage held the bird in much the same way as Mrs. Wright’s domestic position held her (Ngezem, 7). So the cage was like a prison to the bird, along with Mrs. Wright’s house and miserable marriage is a prison to her, she feels trapped and when her husband forced the cage open, he also emotionally forced a part of Mrs. Wright open, that had never been there before. It seems to me that this is another run on sentence.

In Trifles, Mrs Hale says “Looks as if someone must have been rough with it” (Glaspell 5). This is symbolic because she was no longer happy and no longer wanted to be there but could not leave, so it felt like a prison, which leads to her “breaking out” of that prison, by killing her husband, which is represented by the broken cage door. You should replace the word because with something else and try not to repeat the same word in a sentence.

Try to improve your concluding sentences. Mrs. Wright loved loves her bird, it was a: ‘last chance at happiness’ type love. The bird is probably the most important back story telling symbol. The canary represents Mrs. Wright herself before her husband’s enforcement of his will changed her (Ngezem, 7). In the story they talk about how Mrs Wright used to be like a bird in many ways: I suggest you to use better wording to lead your examples. “She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery.

How-she-did-change” (Glaspell 5). I suggest you not to use “this is” for every explanation of your examples. This is explains her motive because John Wright is strangles, just as he strangles his wife’s canary (the only thing that Minnie’s husband could not possess) which gives her happiness and joy, but he took that from her (Stobbs Wright 7) This isn’t a proper citaton. The bird gave her happiness, and her husband hates that. He wants his wife to be miserable, so he forces the cage open and strangles the bird, just as Mrs. Wright breaks out of her own “cage” and strangles her husband.

Remember to use your story as an example for EVERY body paragraph. I tried to change all the past tense verbs to present tense verbs, nut try to use present tense verbs. Women wanted to be happy and stand up to their abusive husbands, but they were afraid of what might happen. The male position on female space is reluctantly tolerates by the women, but the scenes in the kitchen shows the differences between the male and female point of view, which leads to conflict between male and female views of law and justice. Wright 16)

You keep on repeating the kitchen scene and this might make your paper more redundant. For example, if the character’s are thought of as members of a defense and judges in a court, the women would be the defense and the men would be judges, and any little piece of evidence that the defense brought up was inadmissible, for the simple fact was that they were women and they are used to worrying about trifles” Here’s another run on sentence, try to fix this to make your paper more understandable.

It is unfair that the men completely base clue finding and detective work on being men and assume that the women can not do anything right. This tells the time period of the story, which was in the early 1900’s when women didn’t have many rights or freedoms, and the women didn’t really start fighting back yet. The topic sentence and the concluding sentence in this body paragraph is pretty good. I suggest you to work on synonyms for certain words thatyou obseeve that you keep on repeating throughout the whole paper.

The power of symbols I would’nt reccement you to start off your conclusion like this becuase you’re stating the title of your paper in this sentence. has many positive things to put into a story, such as giving background or insight on a short story or a one act play that might need it, they can help us empathize with certain characters, can even show us the setting, or can add suspense to a story, or can even show how or why people were killed.

I suggest you not to keep on using commas in your sentences. Power is enforced as one of the main forces in the story because they take more effort to find and understand what they need to be picked apart for the story to unravel. They take time and patience to understand, or to even find. They are complicated, thats for sure, but if they are found, they tell a great story, a story like no other, an untold one.

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Hopelessness in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles Literature Analysis Essay

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Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles (1916) is based on the real-life criminal story about the woman accused of killing her husband. In spite of the fact that the play is constructed as the detective story, the main play’s idea is in presenting the realities of the American society in the early part of the 20 th century. In her provocative play, Glaspell discusses the story of analyzing the murder of Mr. Wright from the female and male points of view.

Thus, John Wright was killed at night, and now it is necessary to conclude whether Mrs. Wright killed her husband or the farmer was killed by the other person (Glaspell 982-983). In this play, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, as well as Mrs. Wright who is never presented on stage, can be discussed as the main female characters because their actions change the story’s ending.

Although women in Trifles combine their efforts to protect Mrs. Wright, the female characters depicted in the play can be discussed as hopeless because these women are ruled by the desire to state their social position among men; furthermore, Mrs. Wright has to kill her husband in order to protect herself in the patriarchal society; and the female characters have to hide the evidence in order to oppose the social injustice in relation to the issue of gender and distribution of social roles.

Despite the fact that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are portrayed in the play as rather decisive women, these females are hopeless due to the years of experiencing discrimination in their families and in the society. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are portrayed as suffering from many disparaging discussions of their positions and roles in the society. Thus, discussing the female roles and thoughts, the men depicted in the play state that “women are used to worrying over trifles” (Glaspell 982).

The audience can guess that now Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are rather hopeless, and their actions are caused only by one desire which is to emphasize their unique social position among men. The women’s role in the American society of the early part of the 1900s is shaped only by social conventions, and this situation makes hopeless women find different, even risky ways to change the situation.

The female characters presented in Trifles are hopeless because the unjust situation observed in the American society makes them focus on any ways to cope with the situation. Thus, Mrs. Wright can kill her husband because of the impossibility to overcome the obstacles of living in the traditional American society where men can be discussed as the only dominated force.

Referring to this detail, it is possible to discuss the play Trifles as the “realistic portrait of women’s lives in patriarchal society” (Goodman 191). Therefore, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are inclined to sympathize with Mrs. Wright and understand her act because each of them knows the details of living in the society dominated by men.

As a result, the female characters’ hopelessness even makes them violate the traditional principles of morality and hide the evidence which can be used against Mrs. Wright who is discussed as the murder of her husband. From this point, the female characters represented in the play are hopeless, but they are rather strong. It is important to pay attention to the fact that Ben-Zvi states in her work: “Women killing somebody else, especially when that somebody is male, has fascinated criminologists, lawyers, psychologists, and writers.

Fascinated and frightened them” (Ben-Zvi 141). Focusing on Ben-Zvi’s statement, it is important to note that hopelessness experienced by many women in the patriarchal society affected their dramatic choices to accentuate their power.

Focusing on finding the evidence to state Mrs. Wright’s guilt, the female characters concentrate on a lot of features and details which make them think that the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Wright was not happy, and Mrs. Wright had many reasons to kill her husband (Glaspell 983). Thus, it is possible to assume that Mrs. Wright lost her hope for the better future in relation to her family life.

In spite of the fact that the audience can hope that Mrs. Wright is able to avoid being accused of her husband’s murder, many female characters presented in Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles should be discussed as hopeless because of their impossibility to change the social situation for better.

That is why, hopelessness can be considered as the main explanation to the female characters’ judgment of Mrs. Wright’s behavior and to their women’s further focus on hiding the evidence. Those women who are depicted in the play can also be discussed as ruled by their anxiety in relation to such ‘trifles’ as their social position.

From this point, the idea of hopelessness serves as the effective explanation to the discussion of the women’s actions described in the play. In this case, the story of Mrs. Wright’s choice is rather typical for the patriarchal society of the early 1900s.

Works Cited

Ben-Zvi, Linda. “‘Murder, She Wrote’: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”. Theatre Journal 44.2 (1992): 141–162. Print.

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles . Web.

Goodman, Lizbeth. Literature and Gender . USA: Routledge, 2013. Print.

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Critical Analysis of Trifles by Susan Keating Glaspell

How it works

Susan Keating Glaspell’s background influenced her to write Trifles. One important influence on the drama was the author’s case that she reported when she worked for The Des Moines Daily News. In “Literary Contexts in Plays: Susan Glaspell’s Trifles,” just after Glaspell graduated college in 1899, she started work for The Des Moines Daily news. Bailey McDaniel had said that Glaspell first became aware of the Hossack case and subsequently became interested in not the case itself, but the public’s strong reaction to it.

As being a reporter Glaspell worked closely on the case, which she wrote multiple stories about an Iowa woman by the name of Margaret who killed her husband, John Hossack, with an axe. By comparison, Mrs. Wright, who never showed her face in the drama, had killed her husband the same way he had killed her bird. Though this case is about Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale, the neighbor of the Wrights, is seen to be the protagonist. In addition to her upbringing, another influence on the drama was her husband. On April 14, 1913, Glaspell married George Gram Cook, a rebellious son of the prominent Davenport family (“Susan Keating Glaspell”). According to “Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale,” Staci Stone explained that Glaspell had to announce this drama ahead of schedule as to during the time period she was living in, she had to abide by her husband. Glaspell had said, “I didn’t want my marriage to break up so I wrote Trifles”. Perhaps another important influence on the drama was the social impact that was around her. Usually when a person goes on trial, they are evaluated through their peers. This is not the case as it was said that women did not have the ability to serve on juries…female violence towards husbands was prohibitive (McDaniel). Trifles was written in the early part of the twentieth century during World War I and before women had the right to vote in the United States of America. This background, together with a believable plot, convincing characterization, and important literary devices enables Glaspell in Trifles to develop the theme that deals with the female role in society and how justice has a whole different meaning to different people.

To develop this theme, Glaspell creates a believable plot through a social conflict and a determinate ending. Glaspell formulates a believable plot through the protagonist’s social conflict. The protagonist, Mrs. Hale, deals with how the men treats her while in Mr. and Mrs. Wrights’ house. The County Attorney, George Henderson, made a comment that said, “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (Glaspell 1477). His comment upset Mrs. Hale in such a way that she replies in a sarcastic tone and this sets how she feel throughout the rest of the drama. Suzy C. Holstein mentions in “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s Trifles,” that because the way society had viewed on the women, it shows that they can do a different procedure on things than what the men could do (Holstein 288). Along with the social conflict, Glaspell further creates a believable plot in this drama by using a determinate ending. “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson” (Glaspell 1484). This simple statement from the protagonist can make the reader look deeper into why she had said this to the County Attorney. Throughout the drama, the protagonist and the Sherriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters, had found all the evidence stating that Mrs. Wright had murdered her husband. At the end, the women had concluded not to tell the men anything for many reasons: the first reason being the men would not listen to them, the second is that they could relate and see why Mrs. Wright did it while seeing how she felt, and lastly that they felt what they did is right even if it went against the law to. Elke Brown had said, “The women thus decide that their humanistic idea of justice outweighs the men’s dogmatic reading of the law.” Mrs. Peters could not fit the box that contained the dead bird in her purse, so the protagonist had hidden it in her coat instead. This is one of the main reasons that Mrs. Hale said the line, that is mentioned before, at the end of the drama. Mrs. Hale’s social conflict leading to a determinate ending wonderfully reinforces the theme, of how women were being treated by society and how justice has a whole different meaning, in Trifles.

In addition to creating the theme with a believable plot, Glaspell also develops the theme of Trifles by convincingly characterizing the protagonist. The protagonist is convincingly characterized because she constantly trying to do what she thinks is right. Mrs. Hale, once seeing how the condition was in the kitchen, started to tidy it up bit knowing that this is not usually how Mrs. Wright does things in her home. “[Mrs. Hale] feels guilty for having abandoned Minnie and partially responsible for Wright’s murder” (Brown), she feels this way as to being neighbors with Mrs. Wright and could have continued to visit to keep Minnie happy. As Mrs. Hale’s tone had already been set throughout the entire drama, it is said that, “[she] expresses discomfort at the men’s violation of Mrs. Wright’s house” (Holstein 289). No matter if the home is a crime scene or not, she feels that the men still need to be more respectful for other people’s home that they enter. Besides being convincing because she behaves consistently, the protagonist is a convincing character because she sees how men treats them motivates her to do the right thing. In the drama, Mrs. Hale made a comment to Mrs. Peters stating “I’d hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticizing” (Glaspell 1478). When the protagonist said this comment, she continued to do what she can and start to tiding up the kitchen before checking on Mrs. Wrights preservatives. Finally, the protagonist is convincingly characterized because she is plausible. Brown stated, “Mrs. Hale questions the institution of justice as it is pursued by its officials; to her, Minnie’s crime-through gruesome- is justified and the people who should be on trial are John Wright and her as representative of the community that abandoned Minnie” (“Justice in Trifles”). Mrs. Hale feels that she should be the one to be on the jury even if she stopped visiting Mrs. Wright about a year before this horrific murder that has taken place. The protagonist’s consistent behavior, motivation, and plausibility convincingly delivers the message of that justice has a different meaning for different people.

Perhaps the most important way that Glaspell develops the theme of this Trifles is that she uses symbolism and irony. Susan Glaspell also reinforces the theme of this Trifles though symbolism. 

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Trifles — Analysis of Susan Glaspell’s Novel Trifles From a Historical Point Of View

Analysis of Susan Glaspell’s Novel Trifles from a Historical Point of View

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