Trifles by Susan Glaspell - Essay Example

The of Susan Glaspell’s plays Trifles is derived from the attitudes regarding the concerns of women at the time which the work was written. At this time, the concerns of women were treated as essentially unimportant, or, trifles, which have no importance within the inner workings of a male-oriented society. Thus, the feminist themes which run throughout the piece revolve around invoking a paradigm shift in how societies as a whole value, or devalue, the relevance and significance of male and female perspectives.

Glaspell does this by creating a drama full of tension, in the form of what is really two stories in one: a male perspective and a female perspective. Trifles, I believe, is feminist in the most true sense of that word: it does not seek to speak only about injustice or the place of women in a society which undervalues their importance; it goes deeper than this. Glaspell seeks to understand and, consequently, show how attitudes and perspectives shape these social constructs, and thus, when individuals are appreciated or cheapened in particular societal contexts.

To elaborate on this point, consider the lines when the women decide to protect Mrs. Wright. Glaspell wants to focus upon the minds of the individuals involved; although some would like to interpret the women’s actions (to protect Mrs. Wright) as motivated by a shared gender or social status, the truth of their decision lies in what Mrs. Peters succinctly summarized by “the law is law”. That is, her motivation for helping Mrs. Wright does not consist of purely traditional feminist notions of womanhood, but of a concern for truth and objectivity.

The women find evidence at Mrs. Wright’s home, gathered with an open-mind and interpreted fairly. When law enforcement—the Sherriff and the County Attorney—interpret this same evidence, they will do so differently. This, as Glaspell wishes to suggest, is a matter of epistemological difference, and not of the metaphysical difference which many feminists like to suppose exists between the different realms of male and female.Centrally, Trifles is a work centered around the two separate stories, one male and one female, combined into one in the setting of a commonplace American location.

To illustrate the separate perspectives between the different genders involved in the place, following the murder, the law enforcement, male-oriented crowd sees the scene as a place where a grievous crime was committed, whereas the female-oriented crowd sees the scene as a home, or as somewhere that they could relate to intimately. The difference between the two perspectives is inflexibility and flexibility: the males possess a certain function to perform at this scene, whereas the females have the responsibility of giving some items to the incarcerated Mrs. Wright. This difference in perspectives and attitudes is further demonstrated by the males’ disinterestedness in the contribution from the women, from whom the men expect nothing to help them complete their jobs at the scene.

In addition, the women’s ability to view the scene their way, it corresponds to more compassionate action and fellow feeling and a different kind of knowledge which the male investigators are not privy to. This culminates in the males’ inability to accept the methodology which the females use to eventually solve the case.In the senses laid out in this discussion of the feminist themes which run throughout Trifles, Glaspell’s play is at one time simply another feminist play which analyzes and deconstructs strict gender roles in society and the social divisions which they cause; and yet at another times, it is incorrect to merely describe it this way.

Glaspell’s piece delves in deeper than the archetypal examination of these social constructs insofar as it analyzes human perspectives in trying to understand what causes them. Her attempt is to interpret and evaluate what people value and how they perceive reality. In such a fashion, she cuts through traditional feminism’s attempts to draw metaphysical distinctions between male and female, and get down into the thick of a detailed examination to find the complex truths which may belie the appearances.