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 t

o 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