Trifles
By Susan Glaspell
Susan Glaspell
•
Susan Glaspell: Pulitzer prize winner,
co-founder of the drama company
Provincetown Players, noncommercial,
experimental theater group, journalist
(this one act play is based on an actual
trial that Glaspell covered as a reporter);
in the 1916 production of the play she
performed Mrs. Hale.
Physical setting
•
desolated village in Iowa, abandoned
farmhouse, very cold (read the text),
must be winter; from Mrs. Hale: not
cheerful, down in a hollow, and “you
don’t see the road…a lonesome place
and always was”
Social context
• social context: latter half of the 19th
century
American women at the turn of the
century
• Domestic life: men’s possession, not
allowed to make a contract, or sue or be
sued
• Political rights: Suffrage: until 1920;
Women could not sit on juries
• Social domain: limited job opportunities
Plot
• a whodunit type of murder mystery.
• Instead of focusing on the men and their quest
to solve the case, Glaspell concentrates on the
women in the kitchen.
• Rising action—small discoveries: nervous
sewing patterns, broken door on the bird cage, a
dead canary
• Climax—discovery of the dead bird
• Falling action—feeling closer to the suspect
• Resolution—decision to conceal the evidence
Trifle images served as symbols
• Rocking chair
• Cherry preserves
• Broken jars: women’s hard labor and
confinement, shattered mental state
• Quilt: messy stitching—symbol of emotional
turmoil; help to show that Mrs. Wright knew how
to tie a knot; incomplete quilt—symbol of
uncertainty of heroine’s fate; women’s knitting—
symbol of endeavor to comprehend a woman’s
life; Mrs. Peters’ reply, “We think she was going
to – knot it.”
Symbolic images
• canary
• Birdcage
• Dirty kitchen
Men vs. Women
• Men—ridicule, presumption of guilt, draw
conclusions quickly, speed
• Women—defensiveness based on
compassion, reasoning by what they know
and her surroundings, more intuitive,
empathy
Major Themes
• Women and men comparison
--Social status
--way of thinking
--moral judgement
--language style
• Women’s subversion of power