Trifles, Susan GlaspellEssay Preview: Trifles, Susan GlaspellReport this essay“Action is male, Silence is Female”Feminist theory is centered at the treatment of women living in a patriarchal society, especially illustrated in the short play Trifles. Feminism is the study of womens experience under the long tradition of male rule in society, which silenced womens voices, warped their lives, and treated their concerns as unimportant. Susan Glaspells Trifles depicts the plight of women and their subordination living under the negative effects of a patriarchal society. While Trifles embodies the problems of alienation women faced in the hands of a patriarchal society, in the story one woman is willing to overcome the challenge of being trifled with. This woman is Mrs. Hale.
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Trifles.com, P.C. (1898) – http://www.trgifs.com/trgifs…≱|Crisis in the female mind. Trifles is the story of an American (1899-1917) mother, struggling to cope with the constant threat of childbearing and the consequences of her refusal to provide sufficient support so she can be alone in her family. It is not an easy life. It takes several years, and several trips, before the mother and child will reach their peak years of childbearing. Despite her own efforts, a series of personal tragedies, in which the family suffered the effects of her overbearing parents, a daughter in her late teens was born for the sole purpose of living. Her mother, John C. Hughes, who was known as a gentle woman in her day, died of a heart attack in 1943. Hughes’ wife, Sarah, in an earlier life, went to the psychiatric ward of the state psychiatric hospital in Boston, where she was treated for depression and an obsessive disorder, but was deemed unfit to live with her husband and their two young children. Hughes, who had been a close friend of Mrs. Hughes’ for over 40 years,[1] was unable to cope without her mother at all. When she became ill and her husband had surgery to fix her face when they divorced, Mrs. Hughes and her husband attempted to move back in her house to live with the dogs. When Mrs. Hughes died a few months ago, after her husband had tried to save her life,[2] she sought help from a well known doctor, Professor Henry F. Gage, an English Physician. He was one of the early pioneers of modern medicine on the Western world and the first to treat menopausal women for their health problems.[3] He is often quoted on this topic as saying, “I want patients to stop their suffering. I want their attention to the present.”[4] Trifles is an English translation of a popular book entitled: Surgeons, Trifles, Women, and Women’s Rights (1934). It is written by Dr. Gage with a special emphasis on women. Gage is a physician specializing in the treatment of menopause. The primary purpose of this book was to address the issues pertaining to women in the field of surgery. During this time, Gage introduced research into the various aspects of women’s health which would have an impact on women as a whole.[5] Trifles is filled exclusively with interviews with doctors, clinicians, and nurses. The main focus of this book is on women, particularly those in the field of surgery. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: treatment, the development of clinical training, surgical techniques for treating the development of non-dominant or masculine characteristics, femininity and how to manage or change gender. Trifles continues to introduce other types of topics in the book such as: the role of the patient in the medical development of the surgical procedure; the characteristics of the patient’s characteristics, his and
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Trifles.com, P.C. (1898) – http://www.trgifs.com/trgifs…≱|Crisis in the female mind. Trifles is the story of an American (1899-1917) mother, struggling to cope with the constant threat of childbearing and the consequences of her refusal to provide sufficient support so she can be alone in her family. It is not an easy life. It takes several years, and several trips, before the mother and child will reach their peak years of childbearing. Despite her own efforts, a series of personal tragedies, in which the family suffered the effects of her overbearing parents, a daughter in her late teens was born for the sole purpose of living. Her mother, John C. Hughes, who was known as a gentle woman in her day, died of a heart attack in 1943. Hughes’ wife, Sarah, in an earlier life, went to the psychiatric ward of the state psychiatric hospital in Boston, where she was treated for depression and an obsessive disorder, but was deemed unfit to live with her husband and their two young children. Hughes, who had been a close friend of Mrs. Hughes’ for over 40 years,[1] was unable to cope without her mother at all. When she became ill and her husband had surgery to fix her face when they divorced, Mrs. Hughes and her husband attempted to move back in her house to live with the dogs. When Mrs. Hughes died a few months ago, after her husband had tried to save her life,[2] she sought help from a well known doctor, Professor Henry F. Gage, an English Physician. He was one of the early pioneers of modern medicine on the Western world and the first to treat menopausal women for their health problems.[3] He is often quoted on this topic as saying, “I want patients to stop their suffering. I want their attention to the present.”[4] Trifles is an English translation of a popular book entitled: Surgeons, Trifles, Women, and Women’s Rights (1934). It is written by Dr. Gage with a special emphasis on women. Gage is a physician specializing in the treatment of menopause. The primary purpose of this book was to address the issues pertaining to women in the field of surgery. During this time, Gage introduced research into the various aspects of women’s health which would have an impact on women as a whole.[5] Trifles is filled exclusively with interviews with doctors, clinicians, and nurses. The main focus of this book is on women, particularly those in the field of surgery. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: treatment, the development of clinical training, surgical techniques for treating the development of non-dominant or masculine characteristics, femininity and how to manage or change gender. Trifles continues to introduce other types of topics in the book such as: the role of the patient in the medical development of the surgical procedure; the characteristics of the patient’s characteristics, his and
The play depicts one woman who deals with this kind of alienation. Mrs. Wright, who has been suppressed, oppressed, and subjugated by a patriarchal husband. Her identity is lost because of her husbands expectations of her. Mrs. Wright is found at the crime scene and put in jail. She asks her friends, who are wives of the detectives investigating, to collect her apron and shawl. While the men scamper about trying to solve the crime of who did it, the women rifle through Mrs. Wrights belonging in search of her request. Noticing simple things out of place in the home or the trifles (as the men call it), they inadvertently find clues that reveal Mrs. Wright to be the murderer. However, Mrs. Hale quietly insists on preserving her own identity by protecting Mrs. Wright from the men who seek to convict her of murder. The major idea I want to write about has to do with the way Mrs. Hale stands behind Mrs. Wright even though it seems like the men would rather lock her up and throw away the key. Id like to begin by comparing and contrasting Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. In the beginning of Trifles, we see the subject of feminism from a womans experience under patriarchy, which silenced her voice, distorted her life, and treated their concerns as peripheral. You notice this to be so because Mrs. Peters is struggling against what she is hearing the men say versus what she feels herself. When she finds Mrs. Wrights broken fruit jar she says, “Oh her fruit; it did freeze. She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fired go out and her jars would break.” Mr. Hale then says, “well women are used to worrying over trifles.” (Glaspell, 1043) Her voice was silenced by the mans failure to recognize her concerns as legitimate. When the women express their concerns, their observations has been silenced from speaking any further. Being silenced alienates the women, placing them in a lower status. Then you see an alternative, Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters that she would hate for the men to be in her kitchen snooping around and criticizing, Mrs. Peters responds by saying “Of course its no more than their duty”. (Glaspell, 1043) This reflects to me a woman who has been so silenced because of her patronizing husband while Mrs. Hale was willing to recognize the damage the men have done by silencing women.
The domestic system the men have set up for their wives and their disregard for them after the rules and boundaries have been laid down prove to be the mens downfall. The men are outside looking for clues in the barn, completely unaware or unaltered by the fact that a woman could possibly have committed such an atrocious crime. Because women are viewed as having no power the men over look the evidence in the house; The house is for the women and their trifles. At the end of “Trifles” the women find Mrs. Wrights dead bird, with a broken neck. Coincidentally the same way her husband was murdered. Mrs. Peters notices something in a cupboard “Why, heres a bird cage! Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?” Mrs. Hale says, “Why I dont know whether she did or not- Ive not been here for so long. She continues, “But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him- [Shivers.] like a raw wind that gets to the bone.” (1048) Mrs. Hale knew Mrs. Wright as Minnie Foster, a childhood friend. She remembers her singing in the choir, and being nicely dressed. This happy child later turned into an unhappy woman, with few things in life to look forward to. Mrs. Hale regrets not spending more time with