Trifles ( A Play) by Susan Glaspell - Essay Example

Gender Discrimination in the Characters and Events of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles Susan Glaspell’s 1916 play Triflesis more than just an investigation of how a wife murdered her husband. As the play progresses, one gets to realize how men in early 20th century America dominated and discriminated against the women. Indeed, the play is about gender discrimination. The characters and events in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles help describe the discrimination that American men afforded their women during the time when the play was written.

First of all, the female characters in the play are addressed only as “Mrs” followed by their husbands’ surname, thus giving the reader an impression that the identities of women only existed because of their husbands. The fact that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are addressed as such while the men are called “County Attorney” and “Sheriff” somehow simply affords the women a rather cheap, subservient role of a wife and somehow demeans the role of women in society in general. Aside from being assigned subservient roles, the women in the play are shown to be “worrying over trifles,” which implies that women in 20th century America are concerned about anything but useful (Glaspell).

In the play, Haley somehow ridicules the women for “worrying over trifles” because instead of worrying about the crime, they worry a lot about the preserves that Mrs. Wright has left frozen (Glaspell). The two women also busy themselves with other “trifles” such as Mrs. Wright’s sewing things (Glaspell). The fact that women are shown to be worrying over trifles may also imply that they too should be treated like trifles themselves. The play also shows that women are inferior to men and should simply just keep themselves silent. What Mrs. Hale means when she mentions, “We think the—cat got it,” seems to be the old expression to mean that one is speechless: “Has the cat got your tongue?

” (Glaspell; Holstein 285). This means that women in America in the early 20th century somehow did not have a voice of their own in a male-dominated society. In fact, throughout the whole play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are considered ignorant by the men. The suspect Mrs. Wright may also have been forced to keep silent by her husband, and so this could have become her motive for killing him. Moreover, one symbol in the play used to show that the silence of women is the dead bird in the birdcage with its neck wrung.

The singing bird was once Mrs. Wright – “one of the town girls singing in the choir” (Glaspell). However, her marriage turned her into a dead bird that obviously cannot sing anymore. Other instances in the story demonstrate the superiority of men over women is the overall dominance of the men in the conversations. Firstly, one hears “only male voices for the first quarter of the play” (Holstein 283). While the male characters talk about important matters related to the crime, the women are simply shown to be concerned only about trifling matters.

Moreover, the play shows the men searching the house rather “methodically from room to room,” but the women just stay in the kitchen (Holstein 283). This somehow means that men are methodical, but women are merely simple. Secondly, according to Wright, “the kitchen is evidently the most female space in the house, but even this is dominated by the presence of men” (302). This simply means one thing – even the men dominate the women’s space; thus, it is implied that men controlled women’s lives in 20th century America.

The characters and events in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles indeed show the dominance of men in 20th century America and its consequence – discrimination against women. The female characters are named only according to their husband’s surnames, thus showing a loss of identity upon marriage. They are also shown to be worried only about trifling matters. Moreover, among the noticeable events in the play that show male dominance and female inferiority is the fact that the women are portrayed as silent especially through the symbol of the dead bird.

Lastly, the men dominate the conversations throughout the greater part of the play even in the kitchen where women are supposed to talk.Works CitedGlaspell, Susan. “Trifles.” 2011. University of Virginia Library. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. Holstein, Suzy Clarkson. “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’.” Midwest Quarterly 44 (3): 282-290. Houston Community College, 2003. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. Wright, Janet Stobbs. “Law, Justice, and Female Revenge in ‘Kerfol’, by Edith Wharton, and Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’, by Susan Glaspell.

” Atlantis: Revista de la Asociacion Espanola de Estudios Anglo Norteamericanos 24 (2): 225-244. Atlantis Journal Organization, 2002. Web. 29 Oct. 2011.