Essay on the Play Trifles free essay sample

She traveled to the scene of the crime in Indianola, Iowa, where the farmer John Hossack was murdered after midnight on December 2, 1900. According to Margaret Hossack, who had been married to John Hossack for thirty-three years, she was sleeping beside him and awoke to the sound of an axe twice striking something that turned out later to be her husbands head [2]. In her testimony, she leapt out of bed and ran into the living room, where she saw a light and heard the door closing. She returned to her bedroom with her children and discovered him to be mortally injured. Setting The sheriff Henry Peters and the county attorney George Henderson arrive with the witness Lewis Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale at John Wrights farmhouse, where the police are investigating Wrights murder. Lewis Hale recounts how he discovered Mrs. Wright acting bizarrely, as she told him that her husband was murdered while she was sleeping [2]. Although a gun had been in the house, Wright was gruesomely strangled with a rope. The men continually disparage the women for worrying about trifles instead of about the case, but Henderson allows the women to collect some items for Mrs. Wright, who is in custody, as long as he agrees that the objects are irrelevant to the case [3]. Characters George Henderson The county attorney, he has been called to investigate the murder of John Wright and will probably serve as the attorney for the prosecution in the event of a trial. He is young and professional in manner, but he often dismisses the female interest in minor details of domesticity, and he disparages Mrs. Wright for what he perceives as her lack of homemaking abilities [3]. Henry Peters The middle-aged local sheriff and husband of Mrs. Peters, he is at John Wrights house to examine the scene of the crime. Like Henderson, he gently teases the women about their interest in Mrs. Wrights quilt [3]. Lewis Hale A neighboring farmer, he had entered the Wright farmhouse to ask John about acquiring a telephone, only to find a strangled man and a wife acting very bizarrely. He says, Women are used to worrying about trifles. Mrs. Peters A relative newcomer to the town who never knew Mrs. Wright before John Wright married her, Mrs. Peters is a slight, wiry woman with a thin, nervous face. She is married to the sheriff and prefers to follow the law, often apologizing for the behavior of the men because they are only doing her duty. Mrs. Peters understands loneliness and the world of the female domestic [4]. Mrs. Hale The wife of the farmer Lewis Hale, she is of a heavier build than Mrs. Peters and resents the condescension shown to her by the men in general and Henderson in particular because of her gender and domestic occupat ion. She remembers Mrs. Wright as the young Minnie Foster, and she feels sorry for Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale regrets not having come to visit Mrs. Wright to alleviate her cheerless life [4]. John Wright A local farmer, he was commonly considered a good, dutiful man, but he was also a hard man and neglected his wifes happiness. He paid little attention to his wifes opinions and prevented her from singing. The play centers on the motive for his murder [4]. Mrs. Wright Born Minnie Foster, she used to be a happy, lively girl who sang in the local choir, but after she married John Wright, her life became unhappy and forlorn. Although she does not appear in the play, she is the main suspect in her husbands murder and sends Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to collect a few minor items for her from the farmhouse[2]. Plot Upon investigation, no items were missing from the farmhouse, and the coroners inquest divulged no new information. The local sheriff eventually arrested Margaret Hossack during her husbands funeral, based on the discovery of the murder weapon in the corn granary and on neighbors suggestions of discontent within their marriage. Glaspell provided thorough coverage of the case, from the news of the murder to the results of the April 1901 trial, and she often made use of a lurid combination of gossip, rumor, and truth to report her stories. Glaspells descriptions of Margaret generally painted her as an insane murderer until her visit to the farmhouse in mid-December, after which her depiction softened Mrs. Hossack into a meek, elderly woman [1]. Without retaining any names or specifics, Trifles nonetheless allows the fictionalized Margaret Hossack in the form of Mrs. Wright to regain her ignity by giving her a motive for murder which is sympathetic and understandable, if not entirely moral. In the first Provincetown Players presentation of Trifles at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Susan Glaspell played Mrs. Hale, the woman who empathizes with the plight of the suspected Mrs. Wright and who convinces Mrs. Peters to hide the evidence so that Mrs. Wright will be acquitted in trial. In the yea r after her August 8, 1916, performance of Trifles, Glaspell adapted the play into the short story A Jury of Her Peers. This title reflects the sense that women have a better comprehension of Mrs. Wright’s dismal domestic situation than do the men who dismiss female opinions and difficulties [4]. Stage Directions 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 [3]. Symbolism In Susan Glaspells, Trifles, symbolism is used to emphasize the meaning of the play. Glaspell writes of a woman who murdered her husband because he was to blame for her cold and lonely life. The women characters in the play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, solve the murder, while the men, the county attorney and sheriff, wonder about trying to figure it out. Glaspell used symbolism as clues to the murderers motive that only the women were able to figure out, and in turn kept the motive of the murderer a secret due to the bond of women [4]. Themes When speaking to the female characters in Trifles, Henderson and the other men make a key mistake in their assumption that the women derive their identity solely from their relationship to men, the dominant gender. For example, Henderson tells Mrs. Peters that because she is married to the sheriff, she is married to the law and therefore is a reliable follower of the law. Mrs. Peters response is Notjust that way, suggesting that over the course of the play, she has rediscovered a different aspect of her identity that ties more closely to her experience as a woman than to her marriage to Henry Peters. As Mrs. Hale concludes, women all go through the same thingsits all just a different kind of the same thing. For Mrs. Hale, Minnie Wrights murder of her husband is the ultimate rejection of her husbands imposed identity in favor of the memory of the person Minnie Foster used to be [1]. Genre In Trifles, the men believe that they grant female identity by virtue of the womens relation to men rather than through their inherent qualities as females. Except for the absent Minnie Wright, the women have no first name and take their husbands last names, despite being the protagonists of the story instead of the named male characters[3]. This institutionalized male superiority is so pervasive that the men feel comfortable in disparaging Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hales interest in trifles, with the clear implication that the women are too flighty and small-minded to worry about important issues such as the investigation at hand. In addition, when the men observe the troublesome state of the kitchen, they immediately conclude that the woman must be at fault in her homemaking abilities because they all know John Wright as a good, dutiful man and in consequence form a unified front protecting John Wrights reputation. Because of this male solidarity, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale can only aid Mrs. Wright if they ally with their own gender[1]. Conclusion Symbolism was a key part to this short play. Glaspell used it throughout to show the bonding between the women. She used certain items that only the women could understand and relate to in order to exemplify female bonds. The men in the play didnt understand the jar of cherries or even notice the bird cage without a bird because, as Glaspell showed, the men dont think or notice the same things women do. References: 1. Glaspell, Susan. â€Å"Trifles. † The Norton Introduction to Literature. 9th ed. Booth, Alison et al, eds. New York: WW Norton, 2005. 1314-23. Print. 2. Alkalay-Gut, Karen. Jury of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles. Studies in Short Fiction 21 (Winter 1984): 1-9. 3. Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. 8th Ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2007. 4. Makowsky, Veronica. Susan Glaspells Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation of Her Work. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.