Essays on Trifles

Symbolism in Trifles by Susan Glaspell

While setting a story, the writer should mind both the social and physical contexts in which a story develops. (Meyer 2001) Those contexts set the atmosphere of the story, which helps readers to perceive the general mood. The general parts of the setting are the social and historical background, place, time that surrounds the characters. (Meyer 2001). The setting of the Trifles by Susan Glaspell is dark, lonely and gloomy. In order to present a clear understanding of the characters, the author uses symbols. The three symbolic objects used are canary, bird’s cage and placing of the Wright’ ...

Literature analysis: “Trifles”

“Trifles” is a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell and it deals with the murder of John Wright. The play is about feminism because women protect one another although they seem to be dependent on their husbands. The main theme in the story is Mrs. Wright’s guilt and although it is not proven, it is implicated, bit the women still protect her. The characters in the story are: County Attorney, Henderson, the Sheriff, his wife, Mrs. Peters, Hale, a farmer who is a neighbor and his wife Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Wright is deprived of her name as are ...

Trifles was written by Susan Glaspell and was first played in theater in 1916. It is based on a true story of John Hossack, whom Glaspell worked for that placed his wife a suspect. The play is set in a house, Mrs. Wright’s house, where an investigation is carryout the murder of Mr. Wright. Though the County Attorney and the Sherriff do adequate investigation, they ignore the little things that points out the murdered as his wife. The women on the other hand, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find out from these trifles that the murder was Mrs. ...

Susan Gaspell’s “Trifles”, written exactly a hundred years ago, brings out the gender disparity and the male dominance experienced by her in her society. The plot, the investigation of the murder of John Wright, brings together a few men and women in John’s farmhouse. The ladies prefer to stay back in the kitchen and share their views among themselves, instead of joining their husbands who go upstairs where John was found hanging. The two separate narrations, coming from men and women, enable the playwright to bring out the different gender perspectives, or the opposing perspectives of male ...

Answers: I

3. How is the setting in the stories listed below essential to our understanding of the events in these works? The setting of the story, The Lottery, stirs the readers to the very core as it helps in setting up the ambiance that leads to the climactic sequence in the course of the narrative. The description of the beautiful day and the open space in stark juxtaposition to the final barbaric act in the course of the story makes one understand the dichotomy between the societal norms and logical outlook. Right up to the very end, one is unable ...

Part 1

In “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning we meet the narrator who is a Duke. The duke is meeting an emissary in order to discuss marrying the daughter of a very important man. As he is giving the emissary a tour of his home he stops to admire the portrait of his dead wife. The Duke begins to speak of his dead wife with affection. This quickly turns into bitterness when he goes on a rant about the fact she engaged in behaviors that he found distasteful. As he goes on he reveals that he “gave commands; / Then ...

The defendant, Minnie Wright has been the focus of investigation involving the murder of her husband, John Wright. Her guilt in his murder has been determined due to a body of evidence suggesting this to be the case. Minnie's murder of her husband has resulted in her going to trial. In assessing the circumstances of Mr. Wright's death, it is evident that there were a variety of extenuating psychological and emotional circumstances that led her to act in such an irrational way. The events occurred on a cold day in the winter. When visiting the Wright's farmhouse, Mr. Hale ...

The Haunting of the Hill House Shirley Jackson

“The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, unimagined, perhaps nonexistent (Jackson 1.49)” The car journey to the haunted house means a lot more than just a road trip. She defies her sister’s rule about taking the family car and going to Hill House and gets out to be on her own after a long time. Eleanor lives a repressed life even after the death of her mother curtailed by her family who smother her and refuse to let her grow up. This act of defiance and the car ride gives Eleanor a sense of freedom. ...

The play, Trifles, is one of the most significant literary works penned by the famous playwright, Susan Glaspell. The drama with its content and portrayal succeeds in leaving a very lasting impression on the audience. The playwright exudes her literary quintessence and raises a number of grave societal issues through this drama. A close scrutiny of this play would lead to a better understanding of the dynamics between Mrs. Wright and her husband who has met with his demise. The entire perspective is portrayed through the other characters who are engaged in conversations about the death. The audience comes ...

The men in the play show identities of reason and scientific aptitudes in leading their examination. The men put down the ladies, demanding man's part as open figure and lady's part in the home. Truly, this open/private dichotomy has been utilized to impart and manage the thought that men work in the outside world and a lady's place is in the protection of the home. For instance, close to the end of the play, Mrs. Subsides wryly recognizes that the men would giggle at their confirmation and any proposal that it (proof) may prompt a decision about the wrongdoing. ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, took on themes of Hollywood and the film industry, pointing out its glitz, glamour and tragedy in equal measure. In the 1930s, the film industry began a transition from the artistic experimentation of its early days to the greater commercialism of Hollywood; Fitzgerald’s novel explores this transition in very intriguing ways. Telling the story of Monroe Stahr, a character loosely based on MGM’s golden boy Irving Thalberg, Fitzgerald paints Hollywood and the film business as an incredibly complex and inscrutable place, with its own politics ...

“Trifles” is a play written by Susan Glaspell who was inspired by a murder she had reported for a newspaper. This one-act work depicts two farmwives who hide evidence that could convict another woman abused by her husband, John Wright. The play was performed in 1916, and cause resonance by its unusual plot and daring female characters. In general, it is a detective drama with some unexpected twists that captivate the reader and creates tension. However, there are no policemen, ghosts or mystery; it is a narration about how two housewives challenge the male domination without rights to do ...

“Trifles” is a one-act play by Susan Glaspell who depicts the casual things in the casual environment but everything is not as trivial as it seems on the surface. The drama talks about a murder committed by a woman and the gender conflict that stands behind it. Glaspell focuses on the differences between man’s and woman’s point of view and different perception of the same things. In the play, men are described as rude and authoritarian and place women in the secondary position. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, women were subservient to men and had to take ...

A symbol is something that represents something else. A symbol can be an object, words, an action, a song, a person, or anything that seems to be one thing but also has another meaning. In Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, there are several symbols that help the audience to understand what Mrs. Wright’s life was like, what the men think of women, and what the women think of the situation.

The first symbol is the “kitchen things” that the men refer to when they visit the Wright house. The reference to the “kitchen things” shows that the men do ...

Question 16

Dear Kales, I guess you are aware of what took place in Mr. Wrights household. Minnie is apprehended for being among the suspects of Wright's murder. Why, I doubt this should be the situation! It was yesterday that I and Mrs. Peters went to the house for some things that Mrs. Wright wanted. You will be shocked of what was discovered! My husband, county attorney and sheriff accompanied us. Lewis explained when he discovered Wright's death. All of them looked for evidence around the house, but we stayed with Mrs. Peters in the kitchen. It is ...

Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles is based on the culture of the 1916s when men were dominant and the women were merely trifles and were given no status in the society. Trifles is a one act play showing the deception of a woman, who rejects her husband’s dominance to the extent of committing his murder. The very name, Trifles, depicts that it would be a deceptive play, where something extremely wrong is expected to happen. The play totally portrays the twentieth century environment where women were merely a household administrator, whereas men a dominant figure who could criticize even in household matters. Glaspell ...

A dream within a dream is a romantic poem by Edgar Allan. Throughout the two-stanza poem, the theme of love and romance takes center stage. The persona of the poem is a male lover, who addresses his ladylove through the poem. The poem opens with the speaker informing the readers about his dreams about a certain girl. The speaker openly tells the ladylove that she is actually correct in concluding that he (the speaker) has spent his entire life dreaming about her. However, according to the speaker’s choice of words, there is a high probability that he will not get the lady. According ...

A quilt is traditional blanket made up of three layers. Quilting is the process of joining at least two fabric layers by stitches. Trifle refers to something that is not of a high value or rather something of little value. According to the plot of Trifles, Mrs. Hale discovered that Mrs. Wright must have been piercing a quilt. It was said to be pretty but as she was examining it she noticed that there was a part that seemed all out of place (780). This implied that when Mrs. Wright began sawing it, she was fine but during the process something started ...

The words that a playwright chooses, i.e. the language, is one of the elements of drama that moves the action and plot of the play along, while it also helps define the various characters and provides exposition. Playwrights tend to come up with their own particular style in when it comes to the language they opt to use in order to establish character and dialogue. In the play Trifles, Susan Glaspell uses symbolic language as both an element of drama and a literary device in order to highlight her theme. Symbolic language has been used in the play to justify the ...

Literature

QUESTION ONE: Love in LA The setting of this story is located at the Freeway in Los Angeles. The protagonist is Jake, an irresponsible, lazy and self-absorbed person. The other character is Mariana, an innocent and naïve woman. Jake caused a careless accident by hitting Mariana’s car. Jake being a dishonest person, he cheated Mariana by giving her fake insurance and phone numbers. The freeway in the story symbolized freedom of Jake to daydream leading to an accident (Perrine, 2002). The themes of this story are deception, lies and fantasy. The irony is indicated by the fact it ...

Background and Setting

“Trifles” is a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. Glaspell brought base for her play from a real murder story of a former John Hossack, the case that she had covered when she was a journalist with Des Moines Daily News Paper. In that case, the victim’s wife, Mrs. Margaret, was suspected as a murderer. Based on this story, she built a story for her one-act play, “Trifles.” The action of the play revolves around a murder of a farmer Mr. John Wright. Someone put him to death by strangling him by a rope. His wife was sleeping next to him when he was murdered, ...

Introduction:

Susan Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and co-founder of the Provincetown Players, America’s first modern American theater company. A powerful woman of time she has a lasting effect into today’s literary world. In her writing, she looked at the inequality of how society treated sexes differently and the difficulties of women faced if they tried to live independently by trying to live their own lives without relying on men and how they circumvented the attempts at social repression. . The Provincetown Players provided a stage for her to mature as a writer. The Provincetown Players were as the ...

Introduction: Background

Origins in abject poverty. Related to Chapter 8’s topics of status granted a group based on race. Relocated Looking for a Better Life. Continued to live similar to the plantation with the company store and poverty. Racism continued to define the family. Looking for a Way Out of Social Inequality. College on an athletic and scholastic scholarship.

Becoming an Activist

Moving to Oklahoma. Unaware of racism in Norman at that time. Happy to Go. Race riots were motivating for change from violent racism. The Harsh Reality of Racism. OU’s segregation of the students became clear quickly with lack of ...

Both Margaret Edson and Susan Glaspell can be considered feminist playwrights. Both women explored a number of themes that plague women in difficult situations. One of the fundamental themes of both plays is loneliness; although both authors develop this theme differently, the intersection of womanhood, loneliness and isolation is one of the most important thematic interactions within both plays. Wit by Margaret Edson tells the story of a woman who is diagnosed with cancer. This, in and of itself, can be quite an isolating experience; when the main character is diagnosed with cancer, she begins to quote Donne’s sonnets ...

There are various approaches of women and feminism in the literature of the early 20th century. For depicting the feminine psych, authors use various literary devices for allowing readers to enter the mind of their characters. Susan Glaspell’s “Trifle” uses symbolism and irony for resenting her character, Mrs. Wright and for illustrating her hardships that drove her to murdering her husband. Moreover, after studying Glaspell’s “Trifle”, the manner in which she develops the narration indicates that she considers Mrs. Wright’s action as justified. Mrs. Wright, a character of the early 20th century, resembles Kate Chopin’s Mrs. ...

Introduction

- The desires and ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth drove them to commit the most hideous act. - Innocent thoughts and ambition become corrupt when you cast aside your moral judgment. - Loyalty and kingship replaced by the sweet taste of success. - Thesis statement: Lady Macbeth, unlike her husband, is unscrupulous. Her strong nature overpowers her husband’s forgiving nature and causes him to think evil. She becomes the most ruthless female, committing one act after another leaves her satiated with blood.

Body

A. - Macbeth questions the three Witches predictions (“All hail, Macbeth, that ...

For centuries, various societies have always defined the role of women and men. These roles continue to change and evolve as time pass. However, it is only in recent times that women began to break away from the roles that defined them. Nowadays, there is more of a demand throughout many societies for women to be seen and treated as equal to a man. In Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" and Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House", both writers' uses female protagonists in situations that many would think of as being male dominate. Glaspell and Ibsen use the female characters point of view ...

The original title of Trifles was Jury of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles, explores the gap between male and female perceptions of judgment. The central character never appears on stage. Mrs. Wright’s husband John Wright was murdered in his sleep and is already in jail, now the sheriff, the neighbor who discovered the crime and the County Attorney are back looking for evidence of the wife’s guilt. The wives come too. After the men dismiss the contents of the kitchen as trifles, nothing but women’s things and go upstairs to find hard evidence the women ...

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on gender differences separating the boys from the girls. It considers historic gender based roles and looks at how those roles are perpetuated today. It reflects on how the gender roles are reinforced from before birth in how the parents and their friends design the nursery and plan the layette. This paper also reflects on how those roles continue to receive reinforcement during the educational process and how it might affect adult men and women.

Introduction:

Thesis: The early conditioning boys and girls receive results in vastly different treatment and life choices later on. Argument: ...

“The Story of an Hour,” “I Want a Wife” and “Trifles” all touch on the subject of marriage and especially the role of a woman according to the standards set by society. They highlight the irony of married women, though sailing in the same boat that is marriage; all face the same problems all on their own. In the three stories, the importance of a woman is secondary to the man in the institution of marriage. Perhaps one of the more prominent themes in all the three books is how both genders identify with each other and their accepted defined roles ...

‘Name’

‘Instructor’s name’ ‘Subject’ The play trifles by Susan Glaspell, premiered in 1916, was considered far ahead of its time in terms of its theme and presentation, by many critics of that era. Despite of its many localized elements like way of speech, customs and setting, the play enjoys a universal acclaim. Though almost a century has passed since the play was first staged, the play still has an enduring appeal. The main reason behind the timelessness of this play is the simple, strong, universal and time-proof theme of the play which is – men do not appreciate women. Yes, women ...

In the play Trifles, a lot of the message of the play is unspoken. The viewers of the play get a great deal of the message from the setting and from symbols in the play. For example, the bird in the play was a symbol for Mrs. Wright herself. It is assumed that the bird was strangled for singing, just like Mrs. Wright was made quiet by her husband. The ladies talk about how much she had changed since marrying Mr. Wright, and that she had been “much like a bird herself” (755). There were other symbols in the play, and the understanding ...

Trifles

1. Setting The play Trifles takes place during a cold weather in the early 20th century .It takes place in a deserted farmhouse in the American Midwest. Glaspell in this play utilizes simple but effective setting elements to generate suspense in a bid to understand or resolve the mysterious murder that has happened on Minnie Wright farm. The choice of place, time and weather does a good job in attaining a mood characteristic to the mystery surrounding the murder. An important emotion evoked by the setting is disgust and disturbance. Moreover, the choice of characters plays an equally important role in evoking this ...

Glaspell’s character Minnie Wright from “A Jury of her Peers” is fundamentally a character created to instigate discussion about the complex relationship between the genders as it exists in Western society. Minnie Wright is a woman that is suspected of killing her husband via strangulation; the murder is discovered by a man named Mr. Hale. Mr. Hale tells the story of the discovery of the murder, claiming that Minnie Wright, at the time of the discovery, was acting in an extraordinarily odd manner. The story goes on to discuss the search for evidence, and the ways that the searchers split down ...

According to Laurence Perrine, there are two primary purposes for any literature – to entertain and enlighten. While entertaining is the easier part, Perrine opines that a literature should do more than just entertain, if it is worth scholarly scrutiny. Thus, a fiction can be categorized into escape and interpretive literature. An escape literature is one, which mainly aims at entertaining and intended as a time pass. Whereas, an interpretive literature aims at making the reader delve more intensely into the world around him. While an escape literature aims at taking its reader away from his world for a while, an interpretive literature takes ...

Food is often very closely tied to familial and cultural experiences; time spent cooking food, making food, and sitting around the dinner table reveals much about a family dynamic, as well as the connective tissue that combines all of our experiences. The preparation of food is a nearly-universal cultural experience, and every family, every culture has their own unique ways of behaving and working in the kitchen. However, historically the role of primary food preparer and slave to the kitchen has been women; different women react to this role in different ways, which is a subject often explored in literature. Susan Glaspell's ...

At the end of A Doll House, Nora leaves and gets Torvalds out of her life. In Trifles, Mrs. Wright finds a way to be free from her husband. Both of these women will pay a heavy price for their actions. This paper makes the argument that of the two characters, Mrs. Wright is more justified in taking the drastic action because of three main reasons. First Mrs. Wright s has no social life bur Nora has children and friends. Secondly, Mrs. Wright is poor and a low class woman but Nora lives is affluent and enjoys the abundance of the upper-class. ...

Question 1

- Chorus Chorus is a literary device that refers to the situation when people do something in unison. It was used in the ancient Greek drama. As seen in Lysistrata when the old women chastised the younger women when they said they would not give in to the demands of their husbands (pg 149). - Dramatic irony Dramatic irony is seen when the audience or readers get to know certain things that certain characters in the play do not know. An example of dramatic irony in ‘trifles’ is when the women find the evidence to show that ...

Relationships, as displayed in the acts, Sure Thing" by David Ives and "Trifles", by Susan Glaspell, have a tendency to take different shapes. This mainly depends on the pattern of communication adopted and how the couple reacts to the issues that arise. Even though the stories are different and presented as different plays, they reflect the different lifestyle of people and what they get out of life. This is just s display of how communication and lack of it can influence a relationship. In the play sure things, betty and bill establish a strong and meaningful relationship through persistent communication. A seemingly ...

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles, A Play In One Act. Baker's Plays, 1951. Print. In Susan Glaspell’s play, “Trifles,” is a feminist drama that primarily takes place on a farmhouse, which is the scene of a murder, and dialogues keep shifting from one character to another. Henry Peters, the sheriff and Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer arrive at the Wright farmhouse with their wives and George Henderson, the county attorney to investigate the murder of Mr. John Wright. Lewis Hale retells Mrs. Minnie Wright’s story, who claimed that her she was asleep when Mr. Wright was murdered, and was behaving oddly. Even ...

In the one-act play, Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, the Wright household sees the entry of the sheriff, his wife, the neighbors, county attorney and Mr. and Mrs. Hale. They all enter the kitchen while Mr. Hale describes his visit to the house when Mrs. Wright behaving in a bizarre way had eventually expressed in a hebetudinous voice that her spouse was dead, upstairs. Mrs. Wright is never seen onstage. The men seem to be sure of the fact that she had killed her husband as she had queerly claimed that someone had strangled Mr. Wright while she was sound asleep. While ...

Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written in 1917 that revolves around the murder of a farmer, John Wright. Minnie Wright, John’s wife, is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband and awaits trial. Sheriff Peters and Lewis Hale, accompanied by their wives, and George Henderson, a country attorney, travel to the crime scene, the isolated house. The women join their husbands to collect some of Minnie’s personal items. Initially, Mrs. Hale feels sympathy for Minnie and she expresses her disapproval of how the men are “snoopin’ round and criticizin’” her kitchen (200). On ...

In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare uses irony in different ways. Sometimes it is used for humorous purposes, and sometimes for dramatic purposes. It works because the audience hears the character saying one thing, and yet the audience knows that the literal meaning is not true, and in fact the opposite is true. By using irony in both humorous and dramatic scenes, Shakespeare allows the audience to enjoy the experience of sometimes knowing more than another character does about what is really happening. In contrast, the irony in Trifles is not so much a play on words as it is ...

"Trifles" by Susan Glaspell is a play replete with symbolism part of this is in what is not said as much as it is in what is spoken. The play is about a farmer’s murder. Mr. Wright was found dead with a rope knotted around his neck and the men believe his wife did it. When the play opens, she has already been arrested and taken away to jail and the farmhouse kitchen is abandoned. Nothing was put into order before the wife was taken away to jail. The sheriff enters first then the county attorney and Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer. ...

Trifles, by Glaspell Susan, is a play that tries to draw the line between morally correct and incorrect actions. This it attempts through the choice of moral development schemas, which either seek to uphold morally correct principles which are applicable universally or those which are differentiated and reflective in nature, dynamic with changing sets of circumstances. However, through the play, the issue of feminism or the lack of it is clearly brought up (Gilligan 39). In this play, a murder most foul occurs. A woman referred to as Minnie Wright is the main suspect in her husband’s murder n ...

"Trifles" by Susan Glaspell "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell is a play replete with symbolism. While the men go and search the crime scene for forensic evidence, their two wives solve the crime by examining the small trifling details in the kitchen. Each of these is symbolic of a greater truth in another woman’s life. More by what is left unsaid than spoken it is clear they can do this because they relate to the small details of a marriage turned bleak. They can do this because the symbolism of these trifles is so strong that the third woman never appears on ...

Trifles, by Glaspell Susan, is a play that tries to draw the line between morally correct and incorrect actions. This it attempts through the choice of moral development schemas, which either seek to uphold morally correct principles which are applicable universally or those which are differentiated and reflective in nature, dynamic with changing sets of circumstances (Gilligan 39). In relation to morality as a theme in ‘Trifle’, the differentiating factor according to many is the choice between the psychological logic of people’s relationships and the universally accepted and politically correct formal logic of fairness. In this play, a murder most ...

Part I. The men in Trifles act like they are professional detectives who are on the track of a deadly killer. Unfortunately, in their haste to look impressive, they forget to check out items in the kitchen, such as the ruined preserves and the dead canary that is wrapped up in the quilting material. These “trifles” would have given them insight into the personality of the murderer, as well as some of the emotional influences she had been undergoing. Rather than look at the “kitchen things,” the men dismiss them, saying that “women are used to worrying over trifles” (10) ...

The American Dream has proven to be a highly elusive goal for many people. While there are quite a few stories of people who made themselves into successes, for many other people, that success has not only proven to be hard to come by, the difficulties of life, even in America, have shown that human nature can overcome even the best of intentions. From the very earliest American writers, such as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to such satirists as H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain, to the pessimistic worldviews that emerged during the Jazz Age with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and even ...

Much Ado about Nothing in the movie by Kenneth Branagh

Despite the law that exists to protect women in the society against inequality, men still look down upon women and still nothing is done about the oppression. This is a concept that is evident in the two plays as we can be able to see women in the play ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ being manipulated at will and the ones in the play ‘the trifles’ also being looked down upon by their male counterparts. Much Ado about Nothing is a comedy that was initially written by William Shakespeare and was later on presented in a movie by Kenneth Branagh. It revolves around ...

‘Stubborn Husband, Stubborn Wife’ – Traditional Persian Tale

‘The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses’ – Bessie Head

An Interpretative Analysis

These three texts differ greatly in many ways. The dates of their composition are separated by many years and the social context in which they were written is greatly different. Trifles might be said to be a proto-feminist work in the way it describes the marriage of John and Minnie Wright, and in the way that Mrs Hale and Mrs. Peters understand why Minnie Wright killed her husband and conspire to keep the truth from the police in sisterly solidarity with Minnie Wright. ‘The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses’ is set in South Africa ...

Movies have always been a brilliant reflection of reality. Many directors all over the world have done their best to create masterpieces, which would catch a person and would not leave him until the end of the movie. Undoubtedly, cinematography has always been a perfect tool to express the feelings and emotions of people by reflecting hem in the movies. It should be stated that thrillers and dramas are the genres of movies, which don’t but reflect all the aforesaid in a more vivid and bright way. Not only do these genres cover topics, which have always worried the society, but also ...