Susan Keating Glaspell was a doctor, actress, playwright, novelist, and poet who won the American Pulitzer Prize. In 1915, she was one of the founders of the Provincetown Players who was influential in developing modern drama in the U.S. The themes of ther novels and plays focus on understanding life, religion, and philosophy. As a playwright, Glaspell wrote her first play, Suppressed Desires. Along with her friends (Provincetown Players), they produced the plays she wrote which received critical acclaim. Glaspell and her husband Cook moved to Greece but the latter died there. Glaspell returned to Cape Cod to write the biography of her husband, The Road to the Temple.
The Play
This one-act play was written in 1916 and it was during this era that women in the United States were not allowed to vote and cannot be a member of the jury. A womans role is simply domesticated where here she can only work at home. Males are clearly the dominant sex and they made sure that women are kept where they are. The physical setting of the play is set in freezing winter. This is symbolic of the life of Mrs. Wright who lives a lifeless, freezing, and hollow life (Glaspell 458). The kitchen of the Wrights is highly stressed in Trifles. This is a setting where the play was specifically spotlighted stage setting. This also symbolic of the role of women who were expected to spend most of their time. Glaspell uses the kitchen setting to emphasize the value system between males and females.
As the play progresses, Glaspell is able to clearly paint the picture of how gender issues were a big deal during that time setting. The most significant theme of Trifles is the gap between men and women. In an artistic way, the playwright differentiates the roles each play in the society during that time. The settings (19th century, farmhouse/kitchen, winter) lend significance to the understanding of the theme of the Trifles. The play portrays men to be dominant, aggressive, proud, eccentric, self-centered, and analytical compared to the women who are sensitive, wise, diligent, careful, and instinctive.
This short play by Susan Glaspell vividly but indirectly shows the typical stereotyping of women by men by stating that the latter almost always worry about petty and non-important things at all. Moreover, this assumption by males on females implies that only the former are really concerned about important things that women do not dare discuss nor face. The whole play finds the characters looking for evidence to solve the killing of Mr. Wright. However, it is the female characters that discovered the significant clues. There are three things wherein men and women differ in the way they deal with elements in the play. First, is how they perceive Mrs. Wrights quilt and the quilting activity. Second is the prevalence of bird cage where both genders had different views on it. Third is how the male and female characters in the play see farmhouse work. Trifles depicts how women were treated as the weaker sex, capable of only simple things.
The male investigators find humor in the trifle things that they labelled on womens roles and works. In addition to perceiving household work as menial, the men believe that women are too just too simple and are shallow. In the dialogue that pursued, the men indicated that women are too base to think and do important things in life. The male investigators have been going around the Wright household looking for clues of a motive that shows anger and sudden feeling” (Glaspell, 357). They went about the house searching for proofs but they never saw what the women aw on the quilt that Mrs. Wright left unfinished. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale read the anger and agitation in the uneven and erratic sewing. Clearly, the quilt symbolizes Mrs. Wrights emotions but the men laughed at the curiosity that the women showed about it. For the men, the quilt was irrelevant and unimportant.
Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are united in their thought and agree on most parts. Their unity and bond show how country wives in the past are commonly tied to the most basic of womanhood. Although not that close friends, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have unexpressed closeness to Mrs. Wright who was suspected of her husbands murder. They deem their job as homemaker as noble and they were ready to defend Mrs. Wrights way of keeping the house when the men commented on the topsy-turvy way the kitchen was kept. The women show their loyalty and sympathy to one another. The male character in this play by Glaspell underestimates the women (Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale) since they (the men) believe the women are only good at very petty and simple things and that they are not capable of discussing and dealing with more serious and important issues. It turned out that the women characters in Trifles were the ones who were able to discover the evidences that the men never thought of.
Personally, I believe that this play and the themes and symbolisms that Glaspell included are aimed at expressing what the society believed during that time. It is indeed quite a challenge to be a woman on a man-dominated society. Glaspell knew better how to creatively portray the themes and characterization and it seems that I am brought to the setting of the play. In total, the play was an eye-opener and very informative.
