A Critical Analysis of the Portrayal of Women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of the Portrayal of Women in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” In her play, “Trifles,” Susan Glaspell manipulates ironies and mystery genre to portray women capable of perceiving right and wrong, planning accordingly and finally of executing their plans by destabilizing the patriarchy-induced stereotypical notion of women’s frivolity and frailty. Defying her contemporary feminist authors’ tendency to depict women’s subservience and inferiority as the lingering results of male expectation and male desire to view women as such, Susan Glaspell portrays her female characters - possessing of intelligence sharper than the patriarchy – as quite competent opponents of their male counterparts (Makowsky 35). These women are found to possess a strong sense of affinity and communal feeling among themselves. These affinity and communal feeling of one woman for another seem to evolve from their common fate wrought at the hands of their male counterparts. Though such communal zeal among the women runs throughout the whole play, it is more evident in Mrs. Hale’s speech: “I know how things can be--for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of the same thing” (Glaspell, “Trifles”). Indeed in the late 19th century, many female authors like Chopin, Fern and others “wrote about the inequality of the sexes and the inability of women to live their own lives without reliance on men” (Maillakais 3). But in “Trifles”, Susan Glaspell has clearly defied this undertone of portraying a woman as frail, frivolous, and incapable of doing male jobs in a male dominated society. Late 19th century feminist writers’ tendency to portray in this way, though not deliberately intended, ironically perpetuated the legacy of male expectation and perception about women (Makowsky 47-9). Defying the traditional patriarchal assumption that women are both physically and mentally weak and incapable of deciding what is good for them, the sisterhood among Susan’s women rather evolves from their perception of their condition in a society that tends to main their freedom in every step of life. In the drama they appear to be fully aware of the humiliating approach of their male counterparts towards them and eventually they perform actions that ultimately challenge and falsify the male superiority. Filled with trifles or minor details that ultimately take on major significance, Susan’s play creates a clear dichotomy –physical, psychological and social – that separates the male characters from the females. The plot of the play has produced two twists about the female triumph over their male counterparts: first, they discover by investigating into the trifles what the male characters fail. Second, they develop their own moral ground from which they decide to help the murderer. Susan Glaspell has portrayed the women’s triumph mainly in two ways: first, how the male characters in the drama view them; secondly, how they like to view themselves and finally, how they act or behave. In fact, Susan has manipulated the male characters in the play to represent patriarchy, patriarchal expectation and patriarchal notion about women, and generally to develop a woman’s image of how patriarchy perceives them. Indeed, this patriarchy-induced image of a woman is heavily infused with feminine psychophysical inferiority to masculinity. The following dialogue represents the best early 20th century patriarchal conception about a woman: SHERIFF: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves. HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. COUNTY ATTORNEY: And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?...Dirty towels!...Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies? (Glaspell, “Trifles”) This dialogue depicts how in the early 20th century men thought of the women in their households. The County Attorney reasons that a good housewife would have taken care of the dirty towels. But since Minnie, the main suspect of the murder, has not fulfilled her duty of keeping the house as well as other things clean following her husband’s order, she was not having good relationship with him. In fact, the County Attorney attempts to draw a connection between the dirty towels as a symbol of Minnie’s antagonism towards her husband and the murder. But such attempt to convict Minnie has been refuted by Mrs. Hale. She argues that a woman, who is assigned to work on the farm, may not have enough time to take care of dirty towels, as she says, “There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm” (Glaspell, “Trifles”). Mr. Hale’s assumption that “women are used to worrying over trifles” is reminiscent of an early twentieth century male perception of women’s manual jobs. In this regard, Baker Rambles comments that this line shows …how women were used to being out in the field as well, performing manual labor and possibly being paid by their own husbands for minimal wages, just enough to get by with food and basic necessities, a allowance more so than a paycheck (1). In the play, the women’s perception of their manual labor outside the house is in quite contrast with their male counterparts’ perception of their jobs as “trifles.” Meanwhile, such male assumption about women’s manual labor and intelligence appears to be ironical too. Indeed, one of the ironies of the play is the importance of trifles in the women’s investigation process while overlooked by the male. Mrs. Hale acknowledges the importance of ordinary things in the investigation as follows: “I don't know as there's anything so strange, our takin' up our time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence” (Glaspell, “Trifles”). A woman’s kitchen works are as trifles as to let it pass without paying much attention. The male characters’ disparaging remarks about Minnie’s kitchen are evident in their tone. The County Attorney attempts to convince others about the triviality of Minnie’s kitchen in their investigation: “You're convinced that there was nothing important here – nothing that would point to any motive” (Glaspell, “Trifles”). Here Susan’s gender divide in the investigation is clearly remarkable. Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Hale are engaged in what the Sherriff and his companions decline to put proper emphasis on, and their instinctual obsession with the trifles in the kitchen leads to the discovery of the motif behind the murder. The gender divide in the investigation not only reveals Susan’s women’s superiority in certain realm of life, in other words, a woman’s realm, but also a female standard of justice and morality. Suzy Clarkson Holstein comments on the development of a radically female moral choice as follows: Their method from the very beginning of the play leads not only to the discovery that eludes the men, but also to their ultimate moral choice, a choice which radically separates them from the men. That is, their way of knowing leads them not simply to knowledge; it also leads to the decision about how to act on that knowledge. (Holstein 282) In the second half of the play, the women begin to form a moral choice of their own while growing comprehension about the motif of the murder. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter gather scattered household goods around the house. Meanwhile the two characters “begin to reconstruct the accused woman's life” (Holstein 283). Their memories of Minnie, memories of their own lives and their household, their attempt to guess Minnie’s feelings to her condition in John Wright’s household – all these together help them to conjure up the suspect’s life as well as the motive behind the murder. Instead of following a bookish style of inquiry, they run their investigation instinctively by putting themselves in Minnie’s place. They discover a dead pet bird in Minnie’s sewing box, and the juxtaposition of their conditions, in their husbands’ households, with the Minnie’s reconstructed life leads them to the thinking that “her husband would not have liked a thing that sang and would have silenced it as he silenced the singing Minnie” (Holstein 285). As the women continue pondering, the ordinary details of Minnie's life lead them to comprehend what the male characters fail to discover. In fact, these trifles “that allow them this insight—details overlooked as unimportant by the men—lead the women to understand the almost tangible oppression of Minnie Wright's everyday life” (Holstein 284). This reconstruction of Minnie’s life in John Wright’s house ultimately provokes them to reach the moral conclusion derived from the perception John Wright’s crime, a “greater crime . . . is to cut oneself off from understanding and communicating with others, and in this context John Wright is the greater criminal and his wife the helpless executioner” (Alkalay-Gut 7). Susan’s “Trifles” renders mainly two arrays of apparently contradictory messages to the readers. Primarily the play tells the story of male oppression in the early twentieth century. But at the same time, it testifies women’s superior capability in certain domain of life and foretells women’s increasing participation in outdoor jobs in the coming years. In her era, Susan’s “Trifles” was indeed a challenge to the academic assumption that women are incapable to discovering facts because of their reproductive psychology, as Baker Rambles says, “One psychologist from the early 1900’s, Dr. G. Staneley Hall, a very gender biased individual believed that if women were given power, then proper research would be tainted because of their reproductive capabilities” (2). Opposing her contemporary society’s view about women’s physical and intellectual inferiority to men, Susan’s women show evidence of superior intelligence unlike men’s fight or flight decision. Works Cited Alkalay-Gut, Karen. "Jury of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles." Studies in Short Fiction 21 (Winter 1984): 1-9. Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. New York: Twayne, 1966. Holstein, Suzy Clarkson. “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's 'Trifles.'” Midwest Quarterly 44.3 (Spring 2003): 282. Print. Makowsky, Veronica. Susan Glaspell's Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation of Her Work. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Rambles, Baker. Trifles Analysis. Hubpage. Web. 24 April, 2012. Read More